The Abbasid caliphate: al-Nasir's Iraq and Khuzistan

Who rules

Name

Abu'l-Abbas Ahmad al-Nasir li-Din Allah, son of the caliph al-Mustadi

Title

Caliph, Commander of the Faithful (amir al-mu'minin)

Since

2 Dhu'l-Qa'da 575 (30 March 1180)

Born

553 (6 August 1158 in the usual reckoning); aged 41 on 1 January 1200

Family

Abbasid house; mother Zumurrud Khatun, a Turkish concubine of al-Mustadi, alive (dies in 599, about January 1203)

Confidence

high

Accession and birth from TDV and Wikipedia; mother's death from Wikipedia (December 1202 or early 1203).

Overlord

none; the caliph is the head of Sunni Islam and the source of legitimacy for the sultans, atabegs and khans who read his name in their Friday sermon

What the realm holds

• Baghdad: the caliph's palace city (Dar al-Khilafa) on the east bank and the old west-bank quarters
• the Sawad: the irrigated plain of the Tigris, the Euphrates and their canals (the Nahrawan, the Dujayl, the Nahr Isa, the Nahr Malik, the Nahr Sarsar), with Ba'quba, Baradan and the Nahrawan district
• Takrit and Samarra on the Tigris
• Anbar, Hit, Haditha (Hadithat al-Nura) and Ana on the Euphrates
• Daquqa on the Khurasan road toward Irbil (holder not pinned)
• Hilla, Kufa, the shrines of Najaf and Karbala, and the Middle Euphrates
• Wasit with the marshes (al-Bata'ih)
• Basra, Ubulla and Abbadan at the head of the Gulf
• Hulwan, Bandanijin and al-Lihf: the Iraqi foot of the Zagros on the Khurasan road
• Khuzistan: Tustar, Ahwaz, Askar Mukram, Dezful, Susa, Ramhormuz, Dawraq and their districts, since 591 (1195)

How it was acquired

Iraq is the caliph's ancestral land; al-Nasir's grandfather al-Muqtafi (1136-1160) first freed Baghdad and the Sawad from Seljuk control after 1152. Hilla passed to the caliph after the Mazyadid house fell (1150s-1160s); Takrit was taken by al-Nasir about 585-587 (1189-1191) according to TDV; the Euphrates towns came under him in the 1180s and 1190s (dates not pinned in the sources read); Khuzistan was taken from the quarrelling sons of the Turkmen lord Ibn Shumla (of the Turkmen house of Shumla, which had ruled it since the mid-twelfth century) by the vizier Ibn al-Qassab in 590-591 (1194-1195): he set out in Ramadan 590, took Tustar and the castles in Muharram 591, and sent Ibn Shumla's sons and the notables of Khuzistan to Baghdad, where they arrived in Rabi I 591.

Allies and rivals

Rival: Tekish, Khwarazmshah, who after killing the last Seljuk sultan demanded the sultan's place in Baghdad and the khutba in his own name; al-Nasir refused, lost the Jibal to him in 592/1196 and accepted a cold settlement with robes and a diploma in Rabi I 595 (January 1199). Friends of convenience: the Ghurid sultans Ghiyath al-Din and Mu'izz al-Din, whom he encourages against Tekish (envoys in 1198 according to Wikipedia's account); the Pahlavanid mamluk emirs of the Jibal, who shift between Khwarazm and Baghdad (their dealings with the caliph in the winter of 1199-1200 are not pinned); the Uyunid emir Muhammad ibn Ahmad at Qatif, who receives an annual grant and guards the desert roads for him. Neighbours: the Zengid atabeg of Mosul and Gokbori of Irbil to the north (no war in force); the Ayyubids, who read his name and seek his diplomas; the Nizari Ismailis, his enemies in doctrine (their turn toward Baghdad is 1210, later).

At home the caliph's rivals are his own officials and mamluks, whom he makes and breaks at will.

The realm that morning

The caliph holds Iraq and Khuzistan directly through governors and grants of land revenue for service (iqta'). East of the Zagros his men hold no Jibal town that the sources read can show on 1 January 1200: Isfahan, taken for him in 591/1195 by the mamluk Saif al-Din Tughril with the help of the Shafi'i leader Sadr al-Din al-Khujandi, and Hamadan, lost in 592/1196, are not shown in his hands after 592, and the 595 diploma confirmed Tekish in the lands he held (the Jibal researcher's records decide who holds each Jibal town). His frontier toward Persia therefore runs along the Zagros passes: Hulwan and the pass of Taq-i Girra on the Khurasan road, al-Lihf below the Pusht-i Kuh, and Khuzistan's border with the Lurs at Idhaj (the Hazaraspid atabeg) and with Fars at Arrajan.

The heir named in the khutba and on the coins after the caliph is his elder son Abu Nasr Muhammad (designated in 585/1189; set aside only in 601/1204-1205). The chief minister is Nasir al-Din Nasir ibn Mahdi al-Alawi (dismissed in 604/1207-1208). The great Hanbali preacher Ibn al-Jawzi, exiled to Wasit in 590, was freed in 595 and is back in Baghdad.

Wealth

The irrigated Sawad (grain, dates, sesame, cotton) and its canal tolls; the Tigris and Euphrates river traffic and the bridge of boats at Baghdad; Baghdad's markets, paper, glass, silk and cotton cloth, and its book trade; Basra's dates and its share of the Gulf trade (much of the Indian Ocean shipping now goes to the island of Kish rather than up to Basra); Khuzistan's sugar cane, rice, silk and brocade of Tustar and Susa; the pilgrim road from Kufa to Mecca; the revenues of the shrines and pious endowments (waqf), administered by the caliph's officers. The caliph's mint at Madinat al-Salam (Baghdad) strikes gold dinars in his name with his heir's.

Military

The caliph's own army: Turkish slave soldiers (mamluks) of his household under great mamluk emirs (in the early 1200s the leading names are Sunqur al-Nasiri called Wajh al-Sab' and Qashtimur), free Turkish, Kurdish and Turkmen horsemen paid by iqta', the Baghdad infantry and townsmen, and Arab tribal horse (Khafaja, Ubada, the Muntafiq) hired or called out for campaigns. Fortified places: the walls of Baghdad's east side with their gates, the citadel of Takrit, Haditha and Ana on their Euphrates islands and bluffs, Wasit, Basra, Tustar and its castle, the Khuzistan castles taken in 591. Record: victories in Khuzistan (591) and the Jibal (591-592); a heavy defeat by Tekish near Hamadan (592/1196, after Ibn al-Qassab's death); the earlier rout of the vizier Ibn Yunus by Tughril III at Daymarg (584/1188).

No troop numbers for 1200 in the sources read.

Threats

• Tekish of Khwarazm, master of the Jibal, who wants the sultanate of Baghdad and has never accepted the caliph's independence
• Bedouin raids on the pilgrim road and the Euphrates villages (Khafaja and others)
• rivalry among the caliph's own mamluk emirs and officials, which can break into flight and revolt (as in 601-604, later)
• Hanbali and Shi'i quarrels in Baghdad's quarters

What the year holds

What happened next, if nothing in play changes it. Each event carries what it depends on and what would stop it.

In 1200

1. 19 Ramadan 596 (3 July 1200)Tekish dies on the road from Khwarazm into Khurasan; his son Ala al-Din Muhammad (Qutb al-Din) succeeds him. The Khwarazmian threat to Baghdad lifts for some years while Muhammad fights the Ghurids in Khurasan (1200-1206).Depends on: Tekish's illness; date as given in the sources (Ramadan 596); the Khwarazm researcher's record decides Stopped by: nothing in Iraq; a change only if play keeps Tekish alive
2. after July 1200, not pinnedWith Tekish dead and his son busy in Khurasan, the Khwarazmian hold on the Jibal weakens and the Pahlavanid mamluk emirs (Kokche among them) take over its towns; how and when, and on what terms with Baghdad, belongs to the Jibal researcher's records. Baghdad gains room east of the Zagros without a war of its own.Depends on: Tekish's death and the recall or weakness of the Khwarazmian governors Stopped by: a strong Khwarazmian governor holding the Jibal; a caliphal army entering the Jibal itself

Later, on the likely course

1. 12 Ramadan 597 (16 June 1201)Death of Abu'l-Faraj Ibn al-Jawzi, the great Hanbali preacher and historian of Baghdad (natural death, after 1200).Depends on: natural course Stopped by: none

Places of note

• Dar al-Khilafa, the caliph's palace city: walled palace precinct on the east bank, seat of the caliph and his household
• Mashhad of Musa al-Kazim (Kazimayn): shrine of the seventh and ninth imams north of west Baghdad, a centre of the Shi'a
• Shrine of Ali at Najaf: Mashhad Amir al-Mu'minin, the tomb of the caliph Ali
• Shrine of al-Husayn at Karbala: Mashhad al-Husayn
• Shrine of the two imams at Samarra: tombs of the tenth and eleventh imams and the cellar of the twelfth

Where the sources disagree

• Dossier line 'The caliph al-Nasir holds Iraq and Khuzistan': confirmed. The research adds that on 1 January 1200 he holds no Jibal town that the sources read can show (the 1195-1196 gains east of the Zagros were lost after Ibn al-Qassab's death; the 595/1199 diploma confirmed Tekish there).
• The heir: al-Zahir (Abu Nasr Muhammad) is still heir on 1 January 1200. His designation was in 585 (1189) with khutba and coin; al-Nasir deposed him in 601 (1204-1205) and restored him only in Shawwal 618 (1221) after his brother Ali's death in 612 (al-Durar al-Saniyya's summary of the chronicles). Accounts that put the setting aside in the 1190s back-project.
• Wikipedia's Tekish article dates are internally confused (for example Mayajuq 'about to take Hamadan' on 8 June 1196, before the 15 July battle); the narrative here follows Ibn al-Athir's order of events as summarised in al-Durar al-Saniyya.

Evidence: Ibn al-Athir and the Baghdad chroniclers (Ibn al-Sa'i, Sibt ibn al-Jawzi) are thick for the caliph, his wars and his ministers, but the names of the provincial governors in the winter of 1199-1200 are mostly not in the sources read: they are marked not pinned in the lord and town records.

On the map: Lordship here is over towns, canals, iqta' and tribes, not lines. The polygon follows the cultivated land and the Zagros foothills; the desert west of the Euphrates and south of the Basra road is drawn to the Bedouin provinces, which owe the caliph at most occasional service.

Primary sources for this realm

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

• The Chronography of Bar Hebraeus, Gregory Bar Hebraeus (Abu'l-Faraj) (about 1275 to 1286). A later compilation that for 1200 relies on Michael the Syrian and Ibn al-Athir, but adds the Jacobite church's own memory of the Jazira, Mosul, Melitene and the Artuqid and Zangid courts, and carries Michael's story past 1195: the Seljuk brothers' war in Rum, the Khwarazmian and Ghurid wars in the east, Mosul under Nur al-Din Arslan Shah, and the caliph al-Nasir. Read online
• The Complete History, Izz al-Din Ibn al-Athir (about 1200 to 1231, at Mosul). The widest Muslim narrative for the years 596 to 597 AH (1199 to 1201): al-Adil's entry into Cairo and his taking of the sultanate from his nephew al-Mansur Muhammad early in 1200, the quarrels of the Ayyubid princes at Damascus, Aleppo and Hama, the Nile failure and the great famine of Egypt, Mosul under Nur al-Din Arslan Shah and the Jazira under Gokbori and the Artuqids, Baghdad under the caliph al-Nasir, the Khwarazmshah Tekish's death in 1200 and Muhammad's accession, the Ghurid wars in Khurasan, the Eldiguzids and Georgia, the Almohads in the west, and the Seljuks of Rum in passing. Read online
• The Mirror of Time, on the History of Notables, Sibt ibn al-Jawzi (Shams al-Din Yusuf) (about 1240 to 1256, at Damascus). A Damascene preacher's year-by-year chronicle with obituaries, written by a grandson of the Baghdad scholar Ibn al-Jawzi, so it carries both the Baghdad view (the caliph al-Nasir and his court) and the Damascus view (al-Adil's court, the famine refugees of 1200, prices, the plague of 1201). Read online
• Comfort of Hearts and Sign of Joy: a History of the Seljuks, Muhammad ibn Ali al-Rawandi (Ravandi) (1203 to 1204, dedicated to Kaykhusraw I of Rum). A history of the Great Seljuks from their origins to the death of the last sultan Toghril III in 1194, begun at Hamadan and finished for Kaykhusraw of Rum when the author moved to Anatolia. Read online
• The Life of Sultan Jalal al-Din Mankubirti, Shihab al-Din Muhammad al-Nasawi (about 1241, at Aleppo). A Khwarazmian secretary's life of the last Khwarazmshah. Read online
• Dictionary of Countries, Yaqut al-Hamawi (1224 to 1228, at Aleppo). An alphabetical gazetteer of every place Yaqut had read of or seen: he travelled as a bookseller's agent through Syria, Iraq, Persia, Khurasan and Khwarazm (about 1213 to 1220) and settled in Aleppo. Read online
• Description of the Foreign Peoples (Chau Ju-kua), Zhao Rukuo (趙汝适) (about 1225, while superintendent of maritime trade at Quanzhou). The Song customs officer's survey of the overseas world, compiled from merchants and from Zhou Qufei, a generation after 1200 but describing trade routes that were the same in 1200. Read online
• The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela, Benjamin of Tudela (about 1173). A generation before 1200 but the only survey of its kind: the Jewish communities and their heads from Navarre through Provence, Italy, Constantinople and the Aegean, Antioch, Tyre, Jerusalem, Damascus, Mosul and Baghdad to the Persian Gulf, with notes on rulers, trades, the exilarch at Baghdad, the Assassins of Syria and Persia, and hearsay on India, Ceylon and China. Read online
• The Travels of Ibn Jubayr, Ibn Jubayr (Abu'l-Husayn Muhammad ibn Ahmad) (1185, from a diary kept 1183 to 1185). The best eyewitness of the Mediterranean world fifteen years before 1200, by a secretary of the Almohad governor of Granada: the Almohad port of Ceuta and its Genoese ships, Alexandria and Cairo under Saladin with their customs houses, the pilgrim traffic from the Maghreb, Mecca under its emir and Medina, Baghdad under the caliph al-Nasir, Damascus and Mosul, the Frankish ports of Acre and Tyre with Muslims living under Frankish rule, and Sicily under William II with its Muslim subjects and Arabic-speaking court. Read online