Episode 85: Third time’s the charm

Considering the absurd levels of official mismanagement, it’s astounding how long the caliphate survived during al Muqtadir’s inept administration. Although it never collapsed, over the course of two dozen years the state’s power steadily declined in meaningful ways. It collected less taxes, had smaller armies, and lost territory to the Fatimids, the Byzantines, and the Qaramita. An assault on the capital province revealed how far Abbasid power had withered, prompting the military to assert itself over the civil bureaucracy. What started out as an attempt to address the root cause of the state’s weakness eventually devolved into violence, with terrible consequences for the caliph and his dynasty.

Glossary

• Al Muqtadir: this Abbasid’s claim to fame is that he was the last true caliph. His reign was so bad that he ruined it for everyone who followed him. During his time the Fatimids rose to power, the Qaramita ravaged Mecca and the hajj, and the Byzantine empire took lands it had lost to the caliphate centuries ago. The caliph barely reacted to any of these crises and busied himself with spending prodigious amounts of wealth instead, bankrupting the state. He got away with this irresponsible behavior for an incredible two decades, but it caught up with him in the last few years of his time in charge. 
• Shaghab: the caliph’s mother is roundly blamed for introducing and encouraging corruption during her son’s administration. She was arguably the most influential woman in early Arab history, and wielded enormous power for the entirety of al Muqtadir’s reign. Despite all that she was still bound by certain expectations, and I find it incredible that she never tried to break the restrictions on her freedom of movement or appearing in public. I suppose the veritable garden of eden she created for herself within her harem walls was preferable to her than the squalor that surrounded royal grounds. The inherent misogyny of ancient history probably plays a role in this, but I can’t find a single redeemable trait about her.
• Ali ibn Muqla: this was one of the wazirs that we just breezed through without naming last time, the one who made lots of money working for Shaghab and would send regular payments to Mu’nis. He’s not a trifling figure though, and after ibn il Jarrah and ibn il Furat, he is probably the only wazir who had the potential of holding down the job. Not only did he understand how the game was played in the corrupt age he served during, but he also appreciated the necessity of funding the military in order to keep everything humming along. He’s mostly remembered as a genius calligrapher though, and some of the most beautiful Arabic scripts in use today were developed by his skilled hand, including the one still preferred for copying or reproducing the Qur’an.
• Abu Tahir: the leader of the Qaramita was only 16 when he rose to power in 923, but unlike the Abbasid caliph he had spent his entire childhood preparing for the role. Under his leadership the Qaramita committed their worst transgressions against Islam and the umma, attacking pilgrims, invading Iraq, and worst of all desecrating the holy city of Mecca. In 932 he picked the savior they’d been waiting for, then backtracked after it went disastrously. While the Qaramita survived in Bahrain for decades to come, they never again presented an existential threat to the caliphate. 
• Mu’nis: the indefatigable general finally had enough of al Muqtadir’s incompetence and moved to take control from his court. I don’t think he ever wanted to replace al Muqtadir as he didn’t really have a preferred candidate to replace him, he just rightly worried about the direction things were headed and sought to right the ship of state himself. It didn’t go as planned, and ultimately the military ended up with a dead caliph and full control of the caliphate. The king is dead, all hail the king.
• Abdullah ibn Hamdan: the governor of Mesopotamia was a close ally of Mu’nis and the two worked together on a number of crucial campaigns. It speaks volumes about the relationship between them that Mu’nis chose him to help with the defense of Baghdad, and even more that he sought refuge in his lands when al Muqtadir banished him from the capital. This closeness kept the Hamdanids in power and enabled Abdullah’s two sons become towering figures in their own right a generation down the line.
• Yusuf ibn abi al Saj: the governor of Azerbaijan meant a sudden and undignified end. Our sources have no love for him anyway and most gleefully highlight how he was busy blowing his own horn when Abu Tahir descended on his entourage like a bolt of lightning. He’s a minor figure in history, but now that he was gone a couple different contenders rose up in the southwest Caspian mountains trying to establish themselves as the new power in the land. After a tumultuous period, one of them will succeed far beyond all expectations, ushering in a whole new era in Arab history.
• Mohammad ibn Yaqut: what’s most vexing to me is that this commander sort of came out of nowhere and then suddenly became the legendary Mu’nis’ rival. His father Yaqut was a loyal Turk whom Mu’nis put in charge of a Syrian city at some point early in al Muqtadir’s reign. When the second coup against the caliph was concluded in 931, Mu’nis chose Mohammad ibn Yaqut as the head of security in the capital or the palace, so Mu’nis must have trusted him quite a bit. Ultimately this trust proved to be misplaced because ibn Yaqut began to present himself to the caliph as someone who could replace the powerful general. Al Muqtadir believed and empowered him, but all that posturing proved to be little more than a daydream. Ibn Yaqut fled when Mu’nis showed up with an army, and he assumed leadership of whatever partisans of the old caliph who joined him. They remained just out of reach and simply waited for things to swing back in their favor.