Hárún's orthodoxy, his liberality, his victories over the Byzantine Emperor Nicephorus, and last but not least the literary brilliance of his reign have raised him in popular estimation far above all the other Caliphs: he is the Charlemagne of the East, while the entrancing pages of the Thousand and One Nights have made his name a household word in every country of Europe. Students of Moslem history will soon discover that "the good Haroun Alraschid" was Hárún al-Rashíd (786-809 a.d.). in fact a perfidious and irascible tyrant, whose fitful amiability and real taste for music and letters hardly entitle him to be described either as a great monarch or a good man. We must grant, however, that he thoroughly understood the noble art of patronage. The poets Abú Nuwás, Abu ’l-‘Atáhiya, Di‘bil, Muslim b. Walíd, and ‘Abbás b. Aḥnaf; the musician Ibráhím of Mosul and his son Isḥáq; the philologists Abú ‘Ubayda, Aṣma‘í, and Kisá’í; the preacher Ibnu ’l-Sammák; and the historian Wáqidí—these are but a few names in the galaxy of talent which he gathered around him at Baghdád.
The fall of the Barmecides revived the spirit of racial antagonism which they had done their best to lay, and an Amín and Ma’mún (809-833 a.d.). open rupture was rendered inevitable by the short-sighted policy of Hárún with regard to the succession. He had two grown-up sons, Amín, by his wife and cousin Zubayda, and Ma’mún, whose mother was a Persian slave. It was arranged that the Caliphate should pass to Amín and after him to his brother, but that the Empire should be divided between them. Amín was to receive ‘Iráq and Syria, Ma’mún the eastern provinces, where the people would gladly welcome a ruler of their own blood. The struggle for supremacy which began almost immediately on the death of Hárún was in the main one of Persians against Arabs, and by Ma’mún's triumph the Barmecides were amply avenged.
The new Caliph was anything but orthodox. He favoured the Shí‘ite party to such an extent that he even nominated the ‘Alid, ‘Alí b. Músá b. Ja‘far al-Riḍá, as heir-apparent—a step which alienated the members of Ma’mún's heresies. his own family and led to his being temporarily deposed. He also adopted the opinions of the Mu‘tazilite sect and established an Inquisition to enforce them. Hence the Sunnite historian, Abu ’l-Maḥásin, enumerates three principal heresies of which Ma’mún was guilty: (1) His wearing of the Green (labsu ’l-Khuḍra)[495] and courting the ‘Alids and repulsing the ‘Abbásids; (2) his affirming that the Koran was created (al-qawl bi-Khalqi ’l-Qur’án); and (3) his legalisation of the mut‘a, a loose form of marriage prevailing amongst the Shí‘ites.[496] We shall see in due course how keenly and with what fruitful results Ma’mún interested himself in literature and science. Nevertheless, it cannot escape our attention that in this splendid reign there appear ominous signs of political decay. In 822 a.d. Ṭáhir, one of Ma’mún's generals, who had been appointed governor of Khurásán, omitted the customary mention of the Caliph's name from the Friday sermon (khuṭba), thus founding the Ṭahirid Rise of independent dynasties. dynasty, which, though professing allegiance to the Caliphs, was practically independent. Ṭáhir was only the first of a long series of ambitious governors and bold adventurers who profited by the weakening authority of the Caliphs to carve out kingdoms for themselves. Moreover, the Moslems of ‘Iráq had lost their old warlike spirit: they were fine scholars and merchants, but poor soldiers. So it came about that Ma’mún's successor, the Caliph Mu‘taṣim (833-842 a.d.), took the fatal step of surrounding himself with a Prætorian Guard chiefly Turkish mercenaries introduced. composed of Turkish recruits from Transoxania. At the same time he removed his court from Baghdád sixty miles further up the Tigris to Sámarrá, which suddenly grew into a superb city of palaces and barracks—an Oriental Versailles.[497] Here we may close our brief review of the first and flourishing period of the ‘Abbásid Caliphate. During the next four centuries the Caliphs come and go faster than ever, but for the most part their authority is precarious, if not purely nominal. Meanwhile, in the provinces of the Empire petty dynasties arise, only to eke out Decline of the Caliphate. an obscure and troubled existence, or powerful states are formed, which carry on the traditions of Muḥammadan culture, it may be through many generations, and in some measure restore the blessings of peace and settled government to an age surfeited with anarchy and bloodshed. Of these provincial empires we have now principally to speak, confining our view, for the most part, to the political outlines, and reserving the literary and religious aspects of the period for fuller consideration elsewhere.
The reigns of Mutawakkil (847-861 a.d.) and his immediate successors exhibit all the well-known features of Prætorian rule. The Second ‘Abbásid Period (847-1258 a.d.). Enormous sums were lavished on the Turkish soldiery, who elected and deposed the Caliph just as they pleased, and enforced their insatiable demands by mutiny and assassination. For a short time (869-907 a.d.) matters improved under the able and energetic Muhtadí and the four Caliphs who followed him; but the Turks soon regained the upper hand. From this date every vestige of real power is centred in the Generalissimo (Amíru ’l-Umará) who stands at the head of the army, while the once omnipotent Caliph must needs be satisfied with the empty honour of having his name stamped on the coinage and celebrated in the public prayers. The terrorism of the Turkish bodyguard was broken by the Buwayhids, a Persian dynasty, who ruled in Baghdád from 945 to 1055 a.d. Then the Seljúq supremacy began with Ṭughril Beg's entry into the capital and lasted a full century until the death of Sanjar (1157 a.d.). The Mongols who captured Baghdád in 1258 a.d. brought the pitiable farce of the Caliphate to an end.
"The empire of the Caliphs at its widest," as Stanley Lane-Poole observes in his excellent account of the Muḥammadan dynasties, Dynasties of the early ‘Abbásid Age. "extended from the Atlantic to the Indus, and from the Caspian to the cataracts of the Nile. So vast a dominion could not long be held together. The first step towards its disintegration began in Spain, where ‘Abdu ’l-Raḥmán, a member of the suppressed Umayyad family, was acknowledged as an independent sovereign in a.d. 755, and the ‘Abbásid Caliphate was renounced for ever. Thirty years later Idrís, a great-grandson of the Caliph ‘Alí, and therefore equally at variance with ‘Abbásids and Umayyads, founded an ‘Alid dynasty in Morocco. The rest of the North African coast was practically lost to the Caliphate when the Aghlabid governor established his authority at Qayrawán in a.d. 800."
Amongst the innumerable kingdoms which supplanted the decaying Caliphate only a few of the most important can be singled out for special notice on account of their literary or religious interest.[498] To begin with Persia: in Dynasties of the Second Period. 872 a.d. Khurásán, which was then held by the Ṭáhirids, fell into the hands of Ya‘qúb b. Layth the Coppersmith (al-Ṣaffár), founder of the Ṣaffárids, who for thirty years stretched their sway over a great part of Persia, until they were dispossessed by the Sámánids. The latter dynasty had the seat of its power in Transoxania, but during the first half of theThe Sámánids (874-999 a.d.). tenth century practically the whole of Persia submitted to the authority of Ismá‘íl and his famous successors, Naṣr II and Núḥ I. Not only did these princes warmly encourage and foster the development, which had already begun, of a national literature in the Persian language—it is enough to recall here the names of Rúdagí, the blind minstrel and poet; Daqíqí, whose fragment of a Persian Epic was afterwards incorporated by Firdawsí in his Sháhnáma; and Bal‘amí, the Vizier of Manṣúr I, who composed an abridgment of Ṭabarí's great history, which is one of the oldest prose works in Persian that have come down to us—but they extended the same favour to poets and men of learning who (though, for the most part, of Persian extraction) preferred to use the Arabic language. Thus the celebrated Rhazes (Abú Bakr al-Rází) dedicated to the Sámánid prince Abú Ṣáliḥ Manṣúr b. Isháq a treatise on medicine, which he entitled al-Kitáb al-Manṣúrí (the Book of Manṣúr) in honour of his patron. The great physician and philosopher, Abú ‘Alí b. Síná (Avicenna) relates that, having been summoned to Bukhárá by King Núḥ, the second of that name (976-997 a.d.), he obtained permission to visit the royal library. "I found there," he says, "many rooms filled with books which were arranged in cases row upon row. One room was allotted to works on Arabic philology and poetry; another to jurisprudence, and so forth, the books on each particular science having a room to themselves. I inspected the catalogue of ancient Greek authors and looked for the books which I required: I saw in this collection books of which few people have heard even the names, and which I myself have never seen either before or since."[499]
The power of the Sámánids quickly reached its zenith, and about the middle of the tenth century they were confined to The Buwayhids (932-1055 a.d.). Khurásán and Transoxania, while in Western Persia their place was taken by the Buwayhids. Abú Shujá‘ Buwayh, a chieftain of Daylam, the mountainous province lying along the southern shores of the Caspian Sea, was one of those soldiers of fortune whom we meet with so frequently in the history of this period. His three sons, ‘Alí, Aḥmad, and Ḥasan, embarked on the same adventurous career with such energy and success, that in the course of thirteen years they not only subdued the provinces of Fárs and Khúzistán, but in 945 a.d. entered Baghdád at the head of their Daylamite troops and assumed the supreme command, receiving from the Caliph Mustakfí the honorary titles of ‘Imádu ’l-Dawla, Mu‘izzu ’l-Dawla, and Ruknu ’l-Dawla. Among the princes of this House, who reigned over Persia and ‘Iráq during the next hundred years, the most eminent was ‘Aḍudu ’l-Dawla, of whom it is said by Ibn Khallikán that none of the Buwayhids, notwithstanding their great power and authority, possessed so extensive an empire and held sway over so many kings and kingdoms as he. The chief poets of the day, including Mutanabbí, visited his court at Shíráz and celebrated his praises in magnificent odes. He also built a great hospital in Baghdád, the Bímáristán al-‘Aḍudí, which was long famous as a school of medicine. The Viziers of the Buwayhid family contributed in a quite unusual degree to its literary renown. Ibnu ’l-‘Amíd, the Vizier of Ruknu ’l-Dawla, surpassed in philology and epistolary composition all his contemporaries; hence he was called 'the second Jáḥiẓ,' and it was a common saying that "the art of letter-writing began with ‘Abdu ’l-Ḥamíd and ended with Ibnu ’l-‘Amíd."[500] His friend, the Ṣáḥib Ismá‘íl b. ‘Abbád, Vizier to Mu’ayyidu ’l-Dawla and Fakhru ’l-Dawla, was a distinguished savant, whose learning was only eclipsed by the liberality of his patronage. In the latter respect Sábúr b. Ardashír, the prime minister of Abú Naṣr Bahá’u ’l-Dawla, vied with the illustrious Ṣáḥib. He had so many encomiasts that Tha‘álibí devotes to them a whole chapter of the Yatíma. The Academy which he founded at Baghdád, in the Karkh quarter, and generously endowed, was a favourite haunt of literary men, and its members seem to have enjoyed pretty much the same privileges as belong to the Fellows of an Oxford or Cambridge College.[501]
Like most of their countrymen, the Buwayhids were Shí‘ites in religion. We read in the Annals of Abu ’l-Maḥásin under the year 341 a.h. = 952 a.d.:—
"In this year the Vizier al-Muhallabí arrested some persons who held the doctrine of metempsychosis (tanásukh). Among Zeal of the Buwayhids for Shí‘ite principles. them were a youth who declared that the spirit of ‘Alí b. Abí Ṭálib had passed into his body, and a woman who claimed that the spirit of Fáṭima was dwelling in her; while another man pretended to be Gabriel. On being flogged, they excused themselves by alleging their relationship to the Family of the Prophet, whereupon Mu‘izzu ’l-Dawla ordered them to be set free. This he did because of his attachment to Shí‘ism. It is well known," says the author in conclusion, "that the Buwayhids were Shí‘ites and Ráfiḍites."[502]