The Khilafa Of Abdullah Ibn Zubair
THE KHILAFA OF ABDULLAH IBN ZUBAIR
A more serious challenge to the rule of the Umayyads came from another son of another great sahaba, namely Abdullah ibn Zubair born of Prophet’s sws cousin Zubair b. Awwam (one of the ten given the good news of being bound for heaven- all asharat al mubash-shara) and Asma daughter of Abu Bakr nd sister of Aisha R anhum). Parallel to Hussein Abdullah had claimed the Khilafa and easily turned the allegiance of Arabia and even
Three Umayyad khalifas succeeded each other in three years with the last, Abdul Malik enduring. He quelled all opposition with characteristic ruthlessness of his dynasty but once he pacified the scene ruled wisely and successfully. His star general and perhaps the most brilliant tyrant muslims ever saw, Hajjaj b. Yusuf (Nicknamed Zalim- cruel) exterminated both the Zubairi and Kufan challenges to his master, having captured and hanged Abdullah after a second battle in Mecca, sending his head to Damascus by state post. The body was displayed for a time and then returned to the mother for burial. After 20 years under Abdul Malik his son Walid I took over and was even more successful than his father. Hajjaj in the meantime had ruled with an iron hand in Iraq and Persia as the governor for life, putting down with unspeakable severity and effectiveness all challenge to Umayyad power, in the course even executing some sahaba who dared to speak out. After one too many cruelty to the sahaba he was visited in dream every night by the victim which experience eventually broke him and he soon perished by drowning in the
His barbarities contrasted with his great services to both the public amenities and economic measures as well as to the standardization of the Qur’an. He drained marshes, built canals and increased the productive capacity of Iraqi lands while also designing the diacritical marks used in the Qur’ans to this days, ensuring that the Qur’an could be read correctly by anybody even with no knowledge of Arabic. After all his original profession was a schoolmaster.
Conquests continued during Walid’s time, the most spectacular one being that of
Lastly we must mention Abdul Malik’s civil and social contributions. He expanded and beautified both the mosques of Mecca and Medina, built in Damascus the great Umayyad Mosque which still stands today, many other mosques, then hospitals, poor and leper sanctuaries (first ever in history) and did a lot for general welfare.
He was succeeded by his brother Sulaiman who ruled only a few years and wasted them on an unsuccessful attempt to conquer Constantinople (
Then came the great Umar b. Abdul Aziz, the only true saint-king Umayyads produced. His three year rule turned the clock back- the sahaba era almost came back. He put an end to all Umayyad impieties, banned the ritual cursing of Alids in mosques, reinstated the honor of ahl al bayt with whose living members he established loving and respectful relations and personally lived as ascetically and piously as his namesake Umar (al Khattab) RA. But his clan were mortified with his U-turns and his turning the screws on them in suppressing their epic nepotism, corruption and waste. Eventually they disposed of him by poisoning him.
Another Yazid (II) followed him doing the opposite. He was consumed by his love for a concubine whose death he caused by mistake (playfully throwing a grape into her mouth, which ended up in her windpipe choking her. He himself followed her to grave within a week destroyed by grief.
He was followed by Hisham who ruled for 19 years (724- 743) and proved not only as successful as Walid I but also as almost as pious as Umar b. Abdul Aziz. But his saintliness went against him. He could not defeat any rebels as well as his predecessors and the more mercifully and justly he conducted himself the more ungrateful and unmanageable the ambitious and the malcontents became- proving in a way that the severity of most Umayyad’s before him was not for good reason.
His successors proved worse on both counts- they were not only unmitigatedly impious but also incompetent showing thereby that dynastic rule has its serious and even lethal downside. Any degenerate can ascend the throne and undo any amount of good done by his predecessors. Among them Walid II was so bad as to swim in a pool of wine and drink from it, use the Qur’an as his archery target, and send his concubines to lead the public prayers- exactly like the most corrupt Roman emperors like Nero and Caligula would. They emptied the treasury wasting it on silliest whimsical luxuries and rewards to cronies and sycophants. In the end, one of the generals deposed the last Umayyad Ibrahim and usurped the throne as Merwan II (744). For six years he committed blunder after blunder until a mighty rebellion being cooked by the Abbasid family from all over
OVERALL EVALUATION OF THE UMAYYADS
The dynasty, with a few exceptions, featured extremely pragmatic, worldly and brilliant politicians with all the dashing and unscrupulousness going with it. It was ironic that the caln headed by Abu Sufyan and guilty of fighting against the Prophet until towards the end could usurp the rulership of the Prophet’s spiritual and temporal masterpiece that Islam had been and that at the expense of the Prophet’s own clan, own descendants.
Therefore contrary the contention of the Shia that Sunnis supported, aided and abetted the Umayyads Sunnis from sahaba times to this day always deplored the Umayyad usurpation and only spared the first of them Muawia from their lethal criticism. Yezid for example is as much hated by Sunnis as the Shia but unlike the latter the Sunnis saw the reality that Umayyads were proving a hard nut to crack because they were Allah’s response to a fast degenerating Islamicity of the fast multiplying muslims. That such a spiritually poor quality mass could only ruled by the sword, the whip and the gallows was too obvious- neither kindness and justice dispensing Ali and his sons nor equally pious Abdullah ibn Zubair could impose their authority on their subjects and supporters while the impious and cruel as well as bribing Umayyads could.
Apart from this religious aspect and inn terms of worldly success as comparable to the performance of other great empires Umayyads were quite successful. Their vast domains were kept in effective order and prospered in every sense- their wrath fell only on rebels and challengers. Cities and towns went up, monuments and public amenities multiplied as in the Roman example, well-paid, trained and led armies won great victories and achieved prize conquests and all categories of under-privileged people like the poor and the sick were taken care of under the general welfare measures. But people’s already wanting piety was not served. Towards the end of the Umayyad period true piety had become as rare as today and worldliness called all the tunes. Their rising challengers the Abbasids were no better. They were just more thorough in their exploitation of religion which Umayyads had long abandoned even for that role.
THE ABBASID AGE - RISE AND APOGEE
THE CALL OF BANI ABBAS
The Umayyad policies were such that while they secured fast and lasting successes for the regime it also sowed the seeds of its own destruction. By being cleverly unscrupulous they failed to be wisely self-securing. As great Umar RA had once remarked “the only secure foundation of kingdom is justice”. Umayyads were anything but just. Being fair never crossed their minds except cynically appearing so when it would serve their selfish interests in which philosophy they were not alone however. Without God in the centre of one’s vision a ruler is nobody but a lucky member of his society who somehow gets the biggest opportunity to serve his big ego and anything then goes to keep that opportunity his. In the end he and those who play the same game among his cronies and subjects pay for their false success with grief and ruin although these disasters may not always be obvious to most. Allah said “Indeed the one who loads himself with ‘zulm’ (wrong, injustice) wastes and destroys himself” (20: 111).
Among the impieties of the Umayyads were regarding non-Arabs not only inferior to Arabs by definition and therefore not fit for high office but and even worse, not even worth having as muslims. They were not so anxious to have them converted into Islam as to keep them outside it so that they continued paying the poll-tax into Umayyad coffers. So, even when many did convert despite the discouragements they were not excepted from the poll tax nor from military conscription- in other words they were made to have the worst of both worlds: Non-muslim for tax purposes and muslim for military service. All these indignities and resentments had to accumulate and fester and foster a growing mass opposition to the Umayyad rule. Individual or regional rebellions erupted and were brutally suppressed but they only helped to drive the roots of the discontent deeper into the social body as well as spreading it wider.
So towards the end of the Umayyad Age we find another dynasty in the making intending to replace the Umayyads. These were the Abbasid clan, the descendants of Abbas the uncle of the Prophet sws. These were the worldlier branch of the Prophet’s sws clan Bani Hashim in the habit of producing geniuses not inferior to Bani Umayya’s. One of these, namely a certain Abul Abbas was just the right person to provide the required leadership to the greatly agitated but confused body of rebellion which ranged from Central Asia to
REVOLUTION ARRIVES
In 749 Abul Abbas felt strong enough to declare himself as the khalifa at Kufa (to make the Shia think that he was indeed championing the Alid cause) and soundly routed Umayyad Marwan’s (the second) army. It took another year for Abul Abbas to conquer Damscus itself and collect the cut off head of Marwan as his prize. The Umayyad rule evaporated in panic but that was not enough for Abul Abbas. He assumed the title ‘as Saffah’, the blood-shedder’ and vowed to wipe out the entire Umayyad princely class. He wanted them to be hunted down and killed but Abdullah his governor of Syria, being wilier explained to him that there was a surer and easier way to exterminate the vermin. Under his plan a hearty amnesty was declared for the Umayyad ‘cousins’ who were invited to a festive reunion.
All except one, a certain youth Abdurrahman, turned up at the arranged fabulous dinner and mid-festivity were descended upon by guards hidden behind heavy curtains at the signal of as Saffah. All were butchered while the Abbasids ate their dinner as if nothing was amiss and they especially enjoyed continuing their feasting while the hall was covered with all those fallen bodies seeping with blood. So the Umayyads had their own mass Kerbala adding to the already many times proven proof that sayyidina Hussein’s blood were to haunt them until they were utterly destroyed and that with equal brutality. Remember the Qur’anic verse above. Their rise despite their abomination against Hussein only helped to make their fall even more painful- falling from a higher height! And that was not all. The corpses of many Umayyad caliphs were exhumed, some reduced to skeletons. All were whipped, hanged and burned and ashes thrown to winds.
SHARE OF THE SPOILS
The supporters of the Abbasid revolution were mostly non-arabs except some Iraqi Shia who were arabs but knew nothing but oppression from the Umayyads. While Persians formed the educated and bureaucratic elite Turks and other Central Asians formed the fighting arm. The actual revolution was commanded by Abu Muslim Horosani who won all domains to the East of Iraq and handed them in a silver tray to the new usurpers the Abbasids. They were usurpers because as soon as they achieved power they pushed aside the Shia and after a few years of uneasy co-existence and cooperation seduced Abu Muslim into a trap and executed him for ‘growing too big for his boots’. So Shia tried to rise against them but were suppressed as they were done so by the Umayyads.
COMPLETE SEA CHANGE
Yet with Abbasids came also a sea change. Firstly they stopped the discrimination against non-Arabs; indeed arabs gradually became the new pariahs while non-arabs prospered and advanced. While Persians filled the bureaucracy and Persianized the Turks filled the military cadres and eventually came to dictate everything.
Secondly with Persians came their royal system to a fault- all those pompous titles, divine rights of the kings, dynastic privileges, institutionalised sycophancy, lavish corruption, especially bribery; ‘good’ living bringing back all perverse abuses of pre-Islam from unabashed wine consumption in all high places and obscene entertainment; homosexuality became so ‘exonerated’ that became a theme of high literature while wanton butchery among rivals part and parcel of court and harem intrigues… all those notorious pre-Islamic Persian ways which from then on became, at least occasionally and with ebbs and flows integral with muslim sultanates down to the Ottomans, depending on the personal calibre and piety of individual rulers. In other words a pious ruler would nearly put an end to all that only to be let down the next ruler.
SUCCESSORS OF SAFFAH
Saffah was followed by rather better khalifas whose obsession was not blood-shedding but enlightenment and refinement. A sudden interest in the fruits of all antique civilizations exploded and Greek was especially valued. The increasingly better educated and refined Abbasid khalifas attracted to their court which came to be settled at the new, purpose-built capital city Baghdad all buyable Greek scholars and manuscripts which were translated into Arabic and found enthusiastic admirers among the literate muslims. Colleges and publishing houses sprang up everywhere and eventually reached central Asian centres like
Saffah himself died of smallpox in 754 and was succeeded by his brother Abu Jafar who took the new name (like Persian shahs in the East and Roman popes in the West) al Mansur (Victorious). He was borne of a Berber concubine and from then on concubinage almost replaced marriage and parentage of rulers apparently with a view to reduce the chances of having too many princely equals and ambitious dynastic in-laws threatening the ruler. This second ruler proved a true muslim and true gentleman and a generous patron of sciences and arts. But his liberality did not extend to indulging any thieving underlings. He fought against corruption and abuses and brought to book many culprits and made the disgorge their ill gains. Almost everybody greedy for lining their pockets well while in office Abu Jafar’s anti-corruption strictures made him no friends and behind the scemes he was derided as a ‘father of farthings’, i.e worse than a penny-pincher. Instead he spent his reign and budgets on creating an efficient and sophisticated state machinery, meticulously and departmentally organized and mathematically audited. He instituted the ‘wazarah’ (prime ministership) appointed as his ‘wazir’ a Persian belonging to a dynasty of high officials in Sassanid times, namely Khalid b. Barmak who set the trend for a succession of similarly brilliant viziers from the same ‘Barmaki’ family.
After Mansur his son al Mahdi succeeded (775) and did equally well. His legacy was continuing with the civil and architectural improvements and patronization of arts and sciences even more. However he also had to fight against the Byzantines who had recovered some of the lands taken from them in
HARUN AL RASHID
From then on 809 for 25 years Harun reigned in legendary splendor, proved an enlightened prince and patron of arts, sciences and religious scholars as well as quite a pious muslim when his extremely tempting means for self-indulgence are considered. His grand mufti was none other than Abu Yusuf, the star pupil of great Abu Hanifa. He kept the Barmaki dynasty as his wazirs but eventually it was him who exterminated them when he found them grow too big for their boots and even try to censure and control him.
Harun al Rashid, true to his arab roots preferred poetry to all art forms and rewarded poets he admired very handsomely. In general his court played host to more and greater calibre artists, wits and scholars than any contemporary rivals whether the Chinese emperor or the Byzantine or Charlemagne the Holy Roman Emperor in the West. Without doubt he was also the most accultured and polished of all royals of his times, a brilliant scholar, poet and orator in his own right. But his basic piety and wisdom could not overrule the entire pre-Islamic Persian influence pervading both his court and domains. Luxury and hedonism, ‘free-thinking’ (read indulgence and impiety) and occasional arbitrary brutalities were all there. He led his armies in person and consistently won, he was a just judge with great legal knowledge and discrimination and also ruled personally and sometimes in great detail. Among the ancients he resembled Solomon the prophet-king and among those who came after Suleiman the Magnificent.
He eventually died in 809 while on a military campaign towards the rebellious eastern provinces, accompanied by his mutually extremely jealous sons, al Amin and al Ma’mun. Although their father had supposedly made them swear in front of Kaaba each to rule over one half of their father’s empire, once the father was gone they fell out and in the end it was al Ma’mun who won and executing his brother re-united the empire under himself. In this, like most previous examples of succssion we see the Achille’s heel of muslim statecraft- an inability to sort out and institutionalise the succession. Only late Ottomans managed to do it a bit too late in their history- the senior surviving prince in the family, whatever his relation to the dying sultan, brother, uncle or nephew, automatically succeeded provided his mental health was regarded adequate enough if not perfect. Not a perfect system but perhaps better than random bloodshed.
REIGN OF AL MA’MUN
Abdullah al Ma’mun proved both a boon and curse. On the one hand he was almost as good as Harun al Rashid in everything and ruled wisely and justly. But occasional and arbitrary cruelty was never away. On the plus side it was under him that culturally the muslims attained their zenith. Muslim geniuses stopped being mere imitators and parrotizers of classical Greek greats and began to produce original works exceeding anything before them. They put their signature to new discoveries in sciences and new depths in philosophy. Muslim lands was dotted with very many centres of learning as no other place before or since until modern times- say, as from 17th century West. We shall see these cultural achievements in greater detail later.
On the down side Ma’mun was too much carried away with the new philosophies some seemingly supporting while others subverting Islam’s standpoints. His mind was captured by the Mu’tazilites who began pontificating about Islamic creedal and legal matters supposedly applying human reason to the issues. Among their funny views were gems (!) like “Allah does only know the overall things and not the details about the universe and its doings” or that “the Qur’an is created and not uncreated by virtue of being called Allah’s word” or that pre-Destination could not be true or conversely it was true and barred human free-will etc etc. What is worse, al Ma’mun did not stop at speculation but took the Mutazilite claims dogmatically and attempted to impose them on all concerned ‘a la inquisition’, persecuting and punishing ‘heretics’ as the Catholic Church was doing in the west. Which showed that to a certain extent the Abbasid caliphate at its peak had become somewhat like a hybrid of Persian and Byzantine monarchies on the one hand and the Roman papal regime on the other.
With glories like great scientific advances and fabulous prosperity in good government throughout Islam and warts like many bad sides of Hellenizm (unbridled philosophical speculation breeding athesism and hedonism among the rich and educated) and Persianism (fantastic and often also silly exaggerations in everything, from pompous titles to outlandish spiritual claims) the Abbasid Era, its achievements attaining their apogee during al Mam’un’s time can be regarded the first as well as the greater Renaissance in history pre-dating the Western Renaissance by four centuries and in fact causing it by a delay as much.
Al Ma’mun died in 833, after disgracefully persecuting for their orthodoxy many great jurists including mazhab imams like Ahmad b. Hanbal for things like not bowing to silly Mutazilite inventions that the Qur’an was created and not eternal with Allah as His Word.
He was succeeded by his brother al Muttasim who was the first to rely entirely on Turkish troops and bodyguards he brought over from far afield. The benefits of the prowess of these troops however was gradually and inceasingly counterbalanced by their harm in that they were not slow in appreciating the possibilities of their increasing monopoly of armed power. As from al Muttasims’s time these Turks increasingly dominated and puppetized the Abbasid khalifas and provided almost all dynasties ruling the realms of Islam from