Episode 83: War of the wazirs

For the very first time in Arab history, a child became the umma’s caliph. The 13 year old had not yet left his royal harem and was totally under his mother’s control. She used her influence over al Muqtadir to to extend her personal wealth and authority. It was a fundamentally corrupt setup that encouraged the worst types of administrative abuses. This cancer at the very top of official power lasted so long it devastated the caliphate far more than any war with a foreign enemy; it was a fall the Abbasids never recovered from.

Glossary

• Ibn il Furat: Ali ibn Mohammad ibn il Furat is unfairly regarded as the “bad wazir” in modern commentaries on this period. I’m not accusing them of making anything up: he comes off quite negatively in our sources who accuse him with all sorts of wrongs. What bothers me is that the bias in this early material is clear and a sober assessment of ibn il Furat’s contributions shows that he was nothing like the rest of the unremarkable men who held office. As the scion of a wealthy Baghdadi family, he was both highly educated and cared a great deal about his city. He patronized poets and kept an exceptional personal library. He was somewhat obsessed with holding the office of wazir, but he did a good job while he held the position. Until the last time, that is. 
• Ibn il Jarrah: the “good wazir” does sort of deserve the title, but he too could never hold on to the slippery position. Ibn il Jarrah always had his hands full fighting or correcting corruption, his position on the Qaramita kind of gets lost in the mix. It was a critical part of his policy: by paying them off he kept the peace while allowing the armies to focus on more manageable threat than the nomadic Arab Qaramita. It’s probably the main reason why general Mu’nis liked having ibn il Jarrah in power, and the wazir’s removal caused tensions between the armies and the court on multiple occasions. 
• Shaghab: the queen mother is aptly named – in Arabic, shaghab means trouble or mischief. The Abbasids had started this weird custom of renaming concubines the day they gave birth to their sons. They intentionally used names with negative connotations and the only way I can make sense of that is by assuming it was a superstitious practice to keep away the evil eye. Anyway, Shaghab was indeed trouble. She abused her son’s reliance on her to empower herself, normalizing some downright empire-ending corruption. It’s crazy to think that she could do all that damage while confined to the royal palace.