THE GENERAL PHENOMENA OF THE FIRST PERIOD OF THE DECLINE OF THE CALIPHATE (A.D. 847-1000), FROM THE ACCESSION OF AL-MUTAWAKKIL TO THE ACCESSION OF MAḤMÚD OF GHAZNA.

THE period which we have now to consider is one which, though politically far less brilliant than the last, is in many General characteristics. respects quite as interesting. The sudden rever­sion from the broad and tolerant spirit of al-Ma'mún and his successors to a narrow and bigoted ortho­doxy seems to have encouraged rather than repressed the development of several most remarkable religious and philo­sophical movements, notably amongst the former the Car-mathian or Isma'ílí propaganda which culminated in the establishment of the Fáṭimide Anti-Caliphate of North Africa and Egypt, and amongst the latter the philosophical fraternity known as the Ikhwánu'ṣ Ṣafá or “Brethren of Purity.” The growing paralysis of the Court of Baghdad, primarily caused by the ever-increasing lawlessness and tyranny of the Turkish “Prætorian Guard,” wherewith, in an evil moment, the Caliphs had surrounded themselves, led directly to the formation in most parts of the Muhammadan Empire, notably in Persia, of practically independent or semi-independent dynasties, whose courts often became foci for learning and literature, more apt in many ways to discover and stimulate local talent than a distant and unsympathetic metropolis. And withal the disadvantages of the greater decentralisation which characterises later epochs were not yet apparent: Arabic still remained the language of diplomacy, science, and culture throughout the vast domains of which Baghdad was still the intellectual, and, to a large extent, the political centre; and communications, both material and spiritual, were sufficiently unimpeded to allow of the free interchange of ideas, so that men of learning passed readily from one centre of culture to another, and theories propounded in Spain and Morocco were soon discussed in Khurásán and Transoxiana.

From our special point of view, moreover, this period is of particular interest, since it gave birth to what we ordinarily Rise of Persian literature during this period. understand by Persian literature, that is the post-Muhammadan literature of Persia. We have already spoken in an earlier chapter (pp. 11-18 supra) of the slender evidences which can be adduced of the existence of neo-Persian (as opposed to Pahlawí) writings of an earlier date, and have seen that while it is likely enough that occasional memoranda, or even small manuals, may have existed before the middle of the ninth century, it is very doubtful if we possess the text of even a line of Persian which was composed before the middle of the ninth century; since the Persian poem alleged by 'Awfí to have been composed in A.D. 809 by a certain 'Abbás of Merv* on the occasion of the visit paid by al-Ma'mún to that city is, as Kazimirski has pointed out,* of very suspicious authenticity. Yet no sooner had Khurásán, the province of Persia most remote from Baghdad, begun to shake itself free from the direct control of the Caliphs, than Persian poetry began to flourish, at first sporadically under the Ṭáhirid (A.D. 820-872) and Ṣaffárid (A.D. 868-903) dynasties, and then copiously under the dynasty, at once more national than the former and more noble than the latter, of the Sámánids (A.D. 874-999), while in the Ghaznawí epoch, which immediately follows that which we are about to discuss, it may be said to have attained its full development, if not its zenith.

To this subject we shall return in another chapter, but it will be well first of all to treat more broadly of the general history of this period of the Caliphate, alike in its political, its religious, and its literary aspects. We shall therefore divide this Book, like the preceding ones, into three chapters, in the first of which we shall endeavour to present the reader with a conspectus of the whole period with which we are now dealing, while in the second we shall discuss more fully certain aspects of the religious and philosophical move­ments of the time, reserving for the last an account of the earliest period of Persian literature. And should the reader be tempted to complain of so much space being still devoted to phenomena which centre round Baghdad and appear more closely connected with Arabic than with Persian literature, he must remember that this is an essential part of the scheme on which this history is constructed, it being the author's pro­found conviction that the study of Persian, to prove fruitful, cannot be divorced from that of Arabic, even in its purely literary aspects, still less in the domains of religion and philosophy into which anything beyond the most superficial reading of the belles lettres of Persia must inevitably lead us. To those whose horizon of Persian literature is bounded by the Gulistán, the Bustán, the Anwár-i-Suhaylí, the Díwán of Ḥáfidh, and the Quatrains of 'Umar Khayyám, this book is not addressed.

Our period opens with the comparatively long and wholly deplorable reign of the Caliph al-Mutawakkil (A.D. 847-861), which is characterised politically by the ascendancy of the Turkish party and the repression of the Arabs, and, to a less extent, of the Persians; and intellectually by the reaction against Caliphate of al-Mutawakkil. the liberal Mu'tazilite doctrines and philosophical tendencies of the previous Caliphs, and a fanatical hatred of 'Alí and his Shí'a or faction. The place of the Barmecides and other noble Persians is taken by Turkish soldiers of fortune (originally, as a rule, slaves captured in the religious wars waged on the frontiers of Khurásán against heathen Turkish tribes), whose barbarous names well accord with their savage acts. The pages of the chronicles are filled with such: Boghá (“the Bull”), an older and a younger; Bághir, Utámish (who became Prime Minister two or three years after al-Mutawakkil's murder), Báyabák, Kalbatakín, and the like. The names of these Turkish mer­cenaries, even when they are in Arabic, denote their origin; Waṣíf, for instance, one of the chief regicides who compassed al-Mutawakkil's death, stands revealed by his name as originally a slave.* It was an evil day for the Caliphs when, ceasing to trust or sympathise with their own people, they surrounded themselves with these savage and self-seeking men of violence, and transferred their residence from Baghdad to Surra-man-ra'a (or Sámarra), which, being interpreted, means “gladdened is he who hath beheld it,” “from the beauty of its site,” as Muir observes,* “or, as was wittily said, ‘Whoever saw it with the Turks settled there, rejoiced at Baghdad being well rid of them.’” And though this had happened already in the reign of al-Mu'taṣim, the bitter fruits thereof first matured in the days of al-Mutawakkil.

The latter, it is true, had thought in the latter part of his Bigotry of al­Mutawakkil. reign (A.D. 858) of moving his capital, but it is characteristic of his admiration for the Umayyads and his anti-Shí'ite prejudices that it was Damascus, not Baghdad, which he had in mind. His religious bigotry, which was especially directed against the Shí'a, but which also found its expression in vexatious enactments directed against the Jews and Christians, was, indeed, in complete keeping with his Turkish proclivities, and makes us liken him rather to a gloomy and fanatical Ottoman sultan than to the heir of al-Manṣúr and al-Ma'mún. As regards his attitude towards the Shí'a, it was not enough that he should on occasions shed their blood, as he did in the case of the tutor of his sons, Ibnu's-Sikkít, the celebrated grammarian* (A.D. 857), and, for more reason, of 'Ísá b. Ja'far, who was, by his command, beaten to death in A.D. 855 for speaking ill of Abú Bakr, 'Umar, 'Á'isha, and Ḥafṣa, and his body refused burial and cast into the Tigris “as a warning to every heretic in the Faith who dissented from the body of believers”;* his hatred extended itself to the great Imáms of the Shí'a, 'Alí and al-Ḥusayn, whom all good Muslims, be they of the Sunna or the Shí'a, revere. Thus in A.D. 851 he caused the holy shrine of Kerbelá, built to com­memorate the martyrdom of al-Ḥusayn, to be destroyed, and forbade men to visit the spot,* which was ploughed over and sown with crops; and he suffered, and apparently approved, a buffoon who, padded with pillows to give him an artificial paunch, used to hold up 'Alí to ridicule before him and his courtiers.