When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World: The Rise and Fall of Islam's Greatest Dynasty

Summary

Hugh Kennedy's When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World is a narrative history of the Abbasid caliphate at the height of its power, from the revolution that brought the dynasty to the throne in 750 to the anarchy of the later ninth century at Samarra, after which effective power slipped away from the caliphs. It was first published in Britain in 2004 as The Court of the Caliphs and in the United States in 2005 under its present title. Kennedy, a specialist in early Abbasid politics, builds the book from the Arabic chronicles, poetry and anecdotal literature, above all the great history of al-Tabari, and retells many of their stories in his own words. The ten chapters move through the dynasty's rise and its court culture. The first describes the revolution organized in Khurasan in the name of the Prophet's family, Abu Muslim's armies, the defeat of the Umayyads on the Zab and the bloody consolidation of the new regime. The second treats al-Mansur, the austere and calculating caliph who removed rivals, including Abu Muslim, and founded Baghdad as his Round City in 762, and the institutions he left. The third is Harun al-Rashid's reign, the golden prime remembered in later legend, with the power of the Barmakid family of ministers and their sudden fall in 803. The fourth narrates the civil war between Harun's sons al-Amin and al-Ma'mun, culminating in the siege of Baghdad and al-Amin's death in 813. The next three chapters turn from politics to the court: the poets, such as Abu Nuwas, whose verse celebrated and shaped caliphal power; the palaces and gardens of Baghdad and its surroundings; and the harem, where royal mothers and wives such as al-Khayzuran and Zubayda wielded influence. The eighth chapter follows al-Ma'mun's reign and the inquisition (mihna) over the createdness of the Qur'an, al-Mu'tasim's recruitment of Turkish soldiers, and the move of the capital to Samarra. The ninth surveys court culture more broadly, including the patronage of learning and translation, food, music and the etiquette of the caliph's presence. The last describes Samarra at its height under al-Mutawakkil, his murder in 861 and the decade of turmoil in which the Turkish military made and unmade caliphs. The chapter list ends there, with the caliphs' political power already shrinking even as their court's cultural achievements endured. The book is under copyright; this record describes it in our own words, with no quotations.

Top Lessons

• Founders and consolidators

  The revolution was won by Abu Muslim's armies, but the dynasty was secured by al-Mansur, who eliminated rivals and built a capital and an administration. Kennedy shows how the work of keeping power differs from the work of seizing it.

• Succession as the weak point

  Harun's plan to share the succession between two sons led to a civil war that wrecked Baghdad. Again and again the book shows that the transfer of power was the dynasty's most dangerous moment.

• Culture and power together

  Poetry, palaces, music and learning were not decoration but instruments of rule, displaying the caliph's majesty and binding elites to the court. The court's culture outlived its political strength.

• The soldier problem

  Al-Mu'tasim's Turkish soldiers gave the caliph a loyal army independent of older factions, but within a generation they were deciding who would be caliph. Kennedy traces how a solution to one problem created a greater one.

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Medical Lens

The book is political and cultural history with little medical content. Its relevance to the history of medicine lies in the setting: the Abbasid court patronized physicians, including Christian families such as the Bukhtishu of Gundishapur, and supported the translation of Greek medical and philosophical works into Arabic, the movement that made Galen and Hippocrates available to later physicians such as al-Razi and Ibn Sina. Readers interested in medicine should treat Kennedy's account of court culture as background and turn to the medical texts themselves for detail.

• Chapter 9, Abbasid court culture

  The patronage of learning and translation at the caliphal court, the context for the Arabic reception of Greek medicine.