The Sparring of the Pen and the Sword: Arguing Political Legitimacy in the Umayyad and Early 'Abbasid Periods
Panel 010, 2015 Annual Meeting
On Saturday, November 21 at 5:30 pm
Panel Description
Muslim dynasts (both caliphs and amīrs) sought to legitimize their political rule by establishing a religious basis for their authority and garnering the support of the secular and religious elites of the domains that they governed. An important element of this process was their attempt to bolster their authority by winning over Muslim scholars (‘ulamā’, fuqahā’, udabā’, akhbāriyyūn, kuttāb, and muḥaddithūn), who would espouse and propagate their cause in writing and preaching, or by co-opting the ideas promulgated by scholars. However, scholars themselves could be detractors and opponents of these same rulers, and they could formulate criticisms of the dynasties to destabilize their authority and undermine their claims to legitimacy.
The four papers in the proposed panel will shed new light on the political interactions between Muslim rulers and Muslim scholars during the Umayyad and early ‘Abbāsid periods (1st-5th/7th-11th centuries) and on the arguments which each group used to validate their own political positions. The paper “Al-Ḥarra and the Formation of ‘ulamā’ Views toward the Umayyads” analyzes how Muslim scholars presented the seminal battle of al-Ḥarra (63/683) by controlling the historical narrative and sometimes suppressing or altering information thereby affecting the portrayal of the political actors involved in it. Related to this event of the second fitna, “‘Abdallāh b. al-Zubayr and the Precedent of Place: The Locality of ahl al-ḥall wa-l-‘aqd” argues that Ibn al-Zubayr’s (d. 73/692) establishment of his headquarters in Mecca was done in an attempt to secure the allegiance of the political and religious elite of the holy city in his bid to become Muslim sovereign. The next paper, “Dynastic Power as Messianic Promise: Forms of Monotheistic Messianism in the ‘Abbāsid Caliphate,” examines how the early ‘Abbāsids sought to consolidate their messianic promise by conceiving the collective body of the ‘Abbāsid family as the embodiment of the messiah. The fourth paper, “The Body of the Muslim Sovereign as Impediment to Legitimate Rule,” shows how the directives of fuqahā’ with regards to the physical attributes required in a Muslim sovereign were abused in the 4th/10th century in order to depose caliphs and amīrs.
The papers of the proposed panel offer insight into continuities and innovations in political ideas during the period under consideration. It is hoped that the methodologies utilized in the research presented here can be adapted to the study of the political thought of other regions and time periods as well.
From around the end of the 1st/7th century onwards, Muslim scholars composed works praising the qualities of the earliest Muslim sovereigns and lauding their merits. The virtues of these rulers were enumerated and considered as proof of the legitimacy of their reigns. In later centuries, Muslim scholars, in particular the fuqahā’, came to describe in great detail the characteristics required in an individual to be considered a legitimate candidate for political office. Some of the requirements were of a physical nature and specified that the sovereign should be a man in complete physical and mental health. As a corollary of this, any ruler who would lose certain aspects of his physical health, in particular his eyesight, was declared no longer suitable for rule. He was deposed and replaced. These stipulations had the ultimate goal of securing for the community a suitable and competent sovereign capable of meeting the demands of his position. However, beginning in the 4th/10th century, opponents to reigning sovereigns succeeded in deposing them by forcefully blinding them. The Muslim jurists could only concede to the fait accompli. Hence, a legal tenet which was meant to safeguard the well-being of the Muslim community was distorted by political adversaries to delegitimize a ruler and dethrone him. The first victims were three ‘Abbāsid caliphs, followed by Būyid and Sāmānid amīrs, all in the 4th/10th century. This type of mutilation for political purposes continued in the eastern Islamic lands until the 19th century.
This paper will first discuss the relevant directives regarding the eligibility and disqualification of candidates to political office as described in the two works by the renowned Muslim jurists al-Māwardī (d. 450/1058) and al-Farrā’ (d. 458/1066), both entitled al-Aḥkām al-Sulṭāniyya (The Ordinances of Government). Following the narratives found in historical chronicles, the paper will then provide historical examples from the 4th/10th century in which Muslim caliphs and amīrs were blinded so that they could be legally deposed. The paper then discusses the reasons why this particular type of mutilation was adopted and how successful it was at achieving its objectives. By looking at ḥadīth collections and books on the Sīra (life) of the Prophet Muḥammad, the paper shows that there was not total unanimity amongst jurists with regards to the legitimacy of the rule of a blind man. In rare cases, and when appropriate circumstances presented themselves, a blind man was allowed to govern.
Abbasid caliphs expressed, in a sustained manner, the charismatic quality of their authority and claimed divine mandate for their rule through announcing a personal link between themselves and the divinity guaranteeing their power. On the one hand, they projected their power through a set of familiar and culture-specific embodied practices and discourses such as theatrical displays (processions, ceremonies, royal entries, coronations, congregational prayers, pilgrimages, funerals, public hearings), literary and artistic work (art, literature, scholarship, architecture), charitable acts (pardons, patronage, donations, monetary or in kind bestowals), and theologies constructed and maintained by a range of specialists among the literate elite (ritual officiants, artists, poets, literati, religious scholars, etc.). They imagined themselves as rulers who inherited the right to world-rule (translatio imperii) as the final representatives of the royal lineage of Noah’s sons and the most recent followers and banner holders of the monotheistic tradition of Abraham. Based on historiographical as well as oft neglected “fitan” and “hadith” literature, this paper examines the messianic aspects of Abbasid imperial ideology from a new angle. I attempt to show how the Abbasids sought to consolidate the monotheistic messianic promise not in the person of a particular caliph as Mahdi who is promised to come in the imminent or distant future, but in the collective dynastic body of the Abbasid family as it acted in history. My suggestion requires a reconsideration of the Abbasid claims to divine mandate, of having a purified lineage, of lawfully inheriting rule, and of being the dynasty of the end times in a theoretical framework that allows an analysis of the concepts of rule and of messiah as authorized knowledge and practice embodied in the family. Acting in such a way that enabled the collective body of the “dynasty” to emerge as messiah, I argue, the Abbasids marked a remarkable shift in the ways empires related to messianic monotheism in late antique/early medieval Mediterranean.
This study revisits one of the most important historical events in the Umayyad state (40-132 A.H./661-750 C.E.) the battle of al-Ḥarra (63 A.H./683 C.E.).40-132 A.H./661-750 C.E.) Although the historians and narrators have long proven the historicity of the battle they have done so by controlling the narrative and suppressing the many reasons behind the battle.This study through the analysis of the various narratives tries to answer the following: Did the historians reproduce this event according to a different set of criteria than those governing the actual event? And were the historians successful in producing a cohesive narrative that kept close to the actual events while maintaining a neutral stance with regards to the people and the city of Medina? Or was their response to, i.e. their narratives of, the battle of al-Ḥarra a kind of intolerance by the Historians' Class that required the use of imaginary and false narratives?
This study has uncovered the historical treatment of this incident, which has the historians, when dealing with the contradictory narratives, add weight in favor of the Medinans over that of the Syrians. Thus allowing the multiple levels of interpretations of these narratives; some passionate, others imaginary, that shaped this incident into a tragic epic; politically and religiously.
