Episode 89: Al Muttaqi, al Mustakfi, and al Muti’

The Abbasid fall from grace was long and messy. It’s been a while since the dynasty produced a powerful caliph, the last one being the almighty restorer al Mu’tadid who reigned until the opening years of the 10th century. The subsequent decades saw a sustained and accelerating erosion of the state’s wealth, prestige, and authority. Whenever things looked like they couldn’t get any worse, what was thought to be rock-bottom gave way to reveal a deeper abyss. The ruling clan’s enfeeblement crescendoed in the 940’s, until it became a simple matter for another dynasty to swoop in and take all that the Abbasids had inherited. 

Glossary

• Al Muttaqi: Ibrahim ibn al Muqtadir was raised to power by Bajkam’s secretary in late 940, and ruled for almost 4 years. He tried and failed to restore real authority to the office of the caliph. He was blinded and deposed by Tuzun upon his return to Baghdad.
• Al Mustakfi: Abdallah ibn al Muktafi was selected to replace his cousin in September 944. He reigned for the remainder of Tuzun’s lifetime, a little over a year in total. He was the first Abbasid to welcome the Buwayhids to his capital and bestow upon them the role of supreme commander. For this he was blinded and deposed within a month of their arrival, and he died in his – or their – dungeons a few short years later.
• Al Muti’: Fadl ibn il Muqtadir was the first caliph to be appointed by the Buwayhids. He would go on to reign for almost 30 years, shattering the record held by the legendary Harun al Rashid. Most historians consider his time in charge to be the lowest ebb of Abbasid power. 
• Tuzun: not much is known about this Turkic commander, especially when it comes to personal details like where and when he was born. He was one of Bajkam’s top lieutenants, and he sort of inherited his boss’ career path after he passed away. The similarities are almost too many to recount here: they relied on the same troops, they served ibn Ra’iq, they became supreme commanders, they allied with the Baridis and married into their family, they went to war with their in-laws, they kept their respective caliphs in check, etc. Due to the caliphate’s poverty Tuzun’s military power only declined with time, and upon his death there was nothing left to stop the Buwayhids from rolling into town and taking the capital with no conflict.
• Hasan ibn Hamdan: the leader of the Hamdanids is better known in history books by an honorific bestowed upon him by al Muttaqi, Nasir al Dawla, which translates as ‘champion of the state’. I avoided getting into his story in details because – as the founder of his own dynasty – there’s a lot to go through. I didn’t even distinguish between him and his brother Ali, another prominent Hamdanid commander who was granted the title Saif al Dawla, or sword of the state. The two worked closely together, and they tried to wrest Baghdad from the Buwayhids when they first took it over. While they did not succeed, the Hamdanid dynasty flourished in upper Iraq and eastern Syria. Their dynasty is often romanticized as a reincarnation of classic Arab rule, but the reality was a lot more cut-throat unfortunately. While the Hamdanids were patrons to some of the greatest Arab poets, their economic policy consisted of little more than brutal taxation and wanton abuse of coercive might. 
• Abu Abdallah al Baridi: despite its patriarch’s world-sized ambitions, the Baridi family is a tiny little footnote in Abbasid history. The Buwayhids targeted Basra as soon as they secured control of Baghdad. There was little the rich family could do by then as the Buwayhids already surrounded them on all sides. 
• The sons of Buya: the new masters of the caliphate all adopted honorifics bestowed upon them by the caliph. The eldest was Imad al Dawla, pillar of the state. Then came Rukn al Dawla, cornerstone of the state. Finally, there was Mu’izz al Dawla, restorer of the state, the Buwayhid who first rolled into Baghdad in late 945. The fact that they went by these titles shows how much they needed the legitimacy granted by the Abbasids. Ultimately the Buwayhids had come to power the way warlords do. It’s true that they held real military power, but if a dynasty was to endure it needed to ground itself in something more tenuous than military advantage. At the height of their dynasty, their leader adopted the title of shahenshah, but his weaker successors could not afford to alienate islamic sentiment with such pretensions, and they reverted to stressing their roles as sustainers of the caliphate.