Sultanates

Sultanates The Abbasid state became weaker from the ninth century because Baghdad’s control over the distant provinces declined, and because of conflict between pro-Arab and pro-Iranian factions in the army and bureaucracy. In , a civil war broke out between supporters of Amin and Mamun, sons of the caliph Harun al-Rashid, which deepened the factionalism and created a new power bloc of Turkish slave officers ( mamluk ). Shiism once again competed with Sunni orthodoxy for power. A number of minor dynasties arose, such as the Tahirids and Samanids in Khurasan and Transoxiana (Turan or lands beyond the Oxus), and the Tulunids in Egypt and Syria.

Abbasid power was soon limited to central Iraq and western Iran. That too was lost in when the Buyids, a Shiite clan from the Caspian region of Iran (Daylam), captured Baghdad. The Buyid rulers assumed various titles, including the ancient Iranian title shahanshah (king of kings), but not that of caliph. They kept the Abbasid caliph as the symbolic head of their Sunni subjects.

The decision not to abolish the caliphate was a shrewd one, because another Shiite dynasty, the Fatimids, had ambitions to rule the Islamic world. The Fatimids belonged to the Ismaili sub-sect of Shiism and claimed to be descended from the Prophet’s daughter, Fatima, and hence, the sole rightful rulers of Islam. From their base in North Africa, they conquered Egypt in and established the Fatimid caliphate. The old capital of Egypt, Fustat, was replaced by a new city, Qahira (Cairo), founded on the day of the rise of the planet Mars ( Mirrikh , also called al-Qahir ).

The two rival dynasties patronised Shiite administrators, poets and scholars. Between and , Islamic society was held together not by a single political order or a single language of culture (Arabic) but by common economic and cultural patterns. Unity in the face of political divisions was maintained by the separation between state and society, the development of Persian as a language of Islamic high culture, and the maturity of the dialogue between intellectual traditions. Scholars, artists and merchants moved freely within the central Islamic lands and assured the circulation of ideas and manners.

Some of these also percolated down to the level of villages due to conversion. The Muslim population, less than per cent in the Umayyad and early Abbasid periods, increased enormously. The identity of Islam as a religion and a cultural system separate from other religions became much sharper, which made conversion possible and meaningful. A third ethnic group was added to the Arabs and Iranians, with the rise of the Turkish sultanates in the tenth and eleventh centuries.

The Turks were nomadic tribes from the Central Asian steppes (grasslands) of Turkistan (north-east of the Aral Sea up to the borders of China) who gradually converted to Islam (see Theme ). They were skilled riders and warriors and entered the Abbasid, Samanid and Buyid ACTIVITY Identify the changing locations of the caliphate’s capital. Which would you say was most centrally situated? administrations as slaves and soldiers, rising to high positions on account of their loyalty and military abilities.

The Ghaznavid sultanate was established by Alptegin ( ) and consolidated by Mahmud of Ghazni ( - ). Like the Buyids, the Ghaznavids were a military dynasty with a professional army of Turks and Indians (one of the generals of Mahmud was an Indian named Tilak). But their centre of power was in Khurasan and Afghanistan and for them, the Abbasid caliphs were not rivals but a source of legitimacy. Mahmud was conscious of being the son of a slave and was especially eager to receive the title of Sultan from the caliph.

The caliph was willing to support the Sunni Ghaznavid as a counterweight to Shiite power. The Saljuq Turks entered Turan as soldiers in the armies of the Samanids and Qarakhanids (non-Muslim Turks from further east). They later established themselves as a powerful group under the leadership of two brothers, Tughril and Chaghri Beg. Taking advantage of the chaos following the death of Mahmud of Ghazni, the Saljuqs conquered Khurasan in and made Nishapur* their first capital.

The Saljuqs next turned their attention to western Persia and Iraq (ruled by the Buyids) and in , restored Baghdad to Sunni rule. The caliph, al-Qaim, conferred on Tughril Beg the title of Sultan in a move that marked the separation of religious and political authority. The two Saljuq brothers ruled together in accordance with the tribal notion of rule by the family as a whole. Tughril (d.

) was succeeded by his nephew, Alp Arsalan. During Alp Arsalan’s reign, the Saljuq empire expanded to Anatolia (modern Turkey). From the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries, there was a series of conflicts between European Christians and the Arab states. This is discussed below.

Then, at the start of the thirteenth century, the Muslim world found itself on the verge of a great disaster. This was the threat from the Mongols, the last but most decisive of all nomadic assaults on settled civilisations (see Theme ).