CHAPTER III
THE COMING OF THE `ABBASIDS
The rule of the `Umayyads had been a period of tyrannical oppression on the part of the Arab rulers upon their non-Arab subjects and especially upon the mawali or converts drawn from the native population of the conquered provinces who not only were not admitted to equality, as was the professed principle of the religion of Islam, but were treated simply as serfs. This was in no sense due to religious persecution, for it was the converts who were the most aggrieved, nor was it due to a racial antipathy as between a Semitic and an Aryan people, nor yet to anything that could be described as a “national” feeling on the part of the Persians and other conquered races, but simply a species of “class” feeling due to the contempt felt by the Arabs for those whom they had conquered and hatred on the part of the conquered towards their arrogant masters, a hatred intensified by disgust at their misgovernment and ignorance of the traditions of civilization. There were other causes also which helped to intensify this feeling of hatred especially in the case of the Persians. Amongst these was a semi-religious feeling, even amongst those who had become converts to Islam. It had been the old usage of the Persians to regard the Sasanid kings, the descendants of the legendary kayani dynasty of heroes who had first established a settled community in Persia, as bagh not quite perhaps what we should understand as “gods,” but rather as incarnations of deity, the divine spirit passing on by transmigration from one ruler to another, and so they ascribed to the king miraculous powers and worshipped him as the shrine of a divine presence. At the Muslim conquest the Sasanid kings had not only ceased to rule, but the dynasty had become extinct. Many of the Persians who, in spite of adopting Islam, still clung to their old ideas, were quite ready to treat the Khalif with the same adoration as their kings, but felt a distinct distaste for the theory of the Khalifate according to which the Khalif was no more than a chieftain elected in the democratic fashion of the desert tribes, a thing which seemed to them like reversion to primitive barbarism. Our own experience in dealing with oriental races has shown us that there is a great deal which must be taken seriously in ideas of this kind. Of course those who had been subjects of the Roman Empire had no inclination towards deifying their rulers, unless perhaps some who had been only recently incorporated from more oriental elements: but those who had been under Persian rule craved a deified prince. In A.H. 141-142 this took the form of an attempt to deify the Khalif by a fanatical sect of Persian origin known as the Rawandiyya which broke out into open revolt when the Khalif refused to be treated as a god and cast their leaders into prison: the members of the sect, and many other of their fellow-countrymen, considered that a Khalif was no valid sovereign who refused to be recognised as a deity. From the second century of the Hijra down to modern times there has been a continuous stream of pseudo-prophets who have claimed to be gods, or successful leaders who have been deified by their followers. The latest of these appears in the earlier phases of the Babi movement, A.D. 1844-1852, though the doctrines of re-incarnation and of the presence of the divine spirit in the leader seem to be less emphasized in present day Babism, at least in this country and America.
The most prevalent form of these ideas occurs in the essentially Persian movement known as the Shi`a or “schismatics.” These are divided into two types, both alike holding that the succession of the Prophet is confined to the hereditary descendants of `Ali the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet to whom alone was given the divine right of the Imamate or leadership. The two types differ in the meaning of this Imamate, the one group contenting itself with maintaining that `Ali and his descendants have a divine authority whereby the Imams are the only legitimate rulers of Islam and its infallible guides; of this moderate type of Shi`a is the religion of Morocco and the form prevalent about San´a in South Arabia. The other group presses the claim that the Imam is the incarnation of a divine spirit, sometimes asserting that it was only by fraud that the prophet Muhammad interposed and acted as spokesman for the divine Imam `Ali. Of this type is the Shi`a which forms the state religion of modern Persia, spreading westwards into Mesopotamia and eastwards into India. The commonest belief, prevalent in the modern Shi`a, is that there were twelve Imams of whom `Ali was the first, and Muhammad al-Muntazar, who succeeded at the death of his father the eleventh Imam al-Hasan al-Askari in 260 A.H. (= A.D. 873) was the last. Soon after his accession Muhammad Al-Muntazar “vanished” at Samárrá, the town which served as the `Abbasid capital from A.H. 222 to 279. The mosque at Samárrá is said to cover an underground vault into which he disappeared and from which he will emerge again to resume his office when the propitious time has arrived, and the place whence he is to issue forth is one of the sacred spots visited by Shi`ite pilgrims. Meanwhile the Shahs and princes are ruling the faithful only as deputies of the concealed Imam. The disappearance of Muhammad al-Muntazar took place more than a century after the fall of the `Umayyads but we have anticipated in order to show the general tendency of the Shi`ite ideas which were prevalent even in `Umayyad times, especially in Northern Persia, and did much to promote the revolt against the secularised `Umayyad rule.
A curious importance also is attached to the date. The disaffection of the mawali came to a head towards the end of the first century of the Muslim era. There was a general belief that the completion of the century would see the end of existing conditions, just as in Western Europe the year 1000 A.D. was expected to mark the dawn of a new world. Dissatisfaction was at its height, especially in Khurasan, and the disaffected for the most part rallied round the `Alids.
The `Alid claims which did so much to overthrow the `Umayyad dynasty and indirectly led to the bringing forward of the Persian element by which the transmission of Hellenistic culture was most furthered, are best understood by the help of a genealogical table.
| al-Hanafiya | + (1) `Ali + Fatima | |||||||||
| Muhammad | (2) Hasan | (3) Husayn | ||||||||
| Abu Hashim | (4) `Ali Zayn | |||||||||
| Zayd | (5) Muhammad al-Bakir | |||||||||
| (6) Ja`far as-Sadiq | ||||||||||
| Isma`il | (7) Musa al-Qazam | |||||||||
| Muhammad | (8) `Ali ar-Rida | |||||||||
| (9) Muham. al-Jawad | ||||||||||
| (10) `Ali al-Hadi | ||||||||||
| (11) Hasan al-Askari | ||||||||||
| (12) Muham. al-Muntazar | ||||||||||
`Ali had two wives, (i) al-Hanafiya, by whom he had a son Muhammad, and (ii) Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad, by whom he had two sons, Hasan and Husayn. All the `Alid party believed that `Ali should have succeeded the Prophet by divine right and regarded the first three Khalifs as usurpers. Already under the third Khalif Uthman the dissatisfied mawla element had begun to look to `Ali as their champion, and he in the true spirit of early Islam supported their claim to the rights of brotherhood as fellow Muslims. This partisanship received its extreme expression in the preaching of the Jewish convert `Abdu b. Saba, who declared the divine right of `Ali to the Khalifate as early as A.H. 32. `Ali himself apparently did not take so pronounced a view, but certainly regarded himself as in some degree injured by his exclusion. In 35 `Ali was appointed Khalif and Ibn Saba then declared that he was not only Khalif by divine right, but that a divine spirit had passed from the Prophet to him, so that he was raised to a supernatural level. This theory `Ali himself repudiated. When he was assassinated in 40 `Abdu declared that his martyred soul had passed to heaven and would in due course descend to earth again: his spirit was in the clouds, his voice was heard in the thunder, the lightning was his rod.
The Umayyad party led by Mu`awiya never submitted to `Ali, although they did not question the legitimacy of his appointment. At his death Mu`awiya became the fifth Khalif, but had to face the claims of al-Hasan, `Ali’s son. Al-Hasan made terms with Mu`awiya and died in 49, poisoned, it was commonly stated. The other son, al-Husayn, tried to enforce his claim, but met a tragic death at Kerbela. After al-Husayn’s death some of the `Alid partisans recognised Muhammad the son of `Ali and al-Hanafiya as the fourth Imam; he, it is true, disowned these supporters, but that was a detail to which they paid no attention. His supporters were known as Kaysanites, and owed their origin to Kaysan, a freedman of `Ali, who formed a society for the purpose of avenging the deaths of al-Hasan and al-Husayn. When this Muhammad died in 81 his followers divided into two sections, some accepting the fact of his death, others supposing that he had simply passed into concealment to appear again in due course. This idea of a “concealed” Imam was a heritage from the older religious theories of Persia and recurs again and again in Shi`a history. The important point is that both sections of this party continued to exist all through the `Umayyad period, steadily refusing to recognise the official Khalifa as more than usurpers, and looking forward to the day when they could avenge the martyrdom of `Ali and his sons.