Having taken all precautions, Mamun now made his solemn entry into Bagdad, but, to show that he came as a master, he still displayed for several days the green colours, though at last, at the request of Tāhir, he consented to resume the black. From this time, A.H. 204 (August 819), the real reign of Mamun began, freed as he now was from the tutelage of Faḍl.
When welcoming Tāhir, Mamun bade him ask for any reward he might desire. Tāhir, fearing lest the caliph, not being able to endure the sight of the murderer of his brother, should change his mind towards him, contrived to get himself appointed governor of Khorasan. Like most of the great Moslem generals, Tāhir, it is said, had conceived the project of creating an independent kingdom for himself. His death, A.H. 207 (A.D. 822), prevented its realization; but as his descendants succeeded him one after the other in the post of governor, he may be said in reality to have founded a dynasty in Khorasan. His son Abdallah b. Tāhir was a special favourite of Mamun, He brought Naṣr b. Shabath to subjection in Mesopotamia, and overcame by great ability a very dangerous rebellion in Egypt. When he returned thence, the caliph gave him the choice between the government of Khorasan and that of the northern provinces, where he would have to combat Babak the Khorramite. Abdallah chose the former (see below, § 8).
The pseudo-caliph, Ibrāhim, who, since Mamun’s entry into Bagdad, had led a wandering life, was eventually arrested. But Mamun generously pardoned him, as well as Faḍl b. Rabiʽ, the chief promoter of the terrible civil war which had so lately shaken the empire. After that time, Ibrahim lived peacefully at the court, cultivating the arts of singing and music.
Tranquillity being now everywhere re-established, Mamun gave himself up to science and literature. He caused works on mathematics, astronomy, medicine and philosophy to be translated from the Greek, and founded in Bagdad a kind of academy, called the “House of Science,” with a library and an observatory. It was also by his orders that two learned mathematicians undertook the measurement of a degree of the earth’s circumference. Mamun interested himself too in questions of religious dogma. He had embraced the Motazilite doctrine about free will and predestination, and was in particular shocked at the opinion which had spread among the Moslem doctors that the Koran was the uncreated word of God. In the year 212 (A.D. 827) he published an edict by which the Motazilite (Muʽtazilite) doctrine was declared to be the religion of the state, the orthodox faith condemned as heretical. At the same time he ordered all his subjects to honour Ali as the best creature of God after the Prophet, and forbade the praise of Moawiya. In A.H. 218 (A.D. 833) a new edict appeared by which all judges and doctors were summoned to renounce the error of the uncreated word of God. Several distinguished doctors, and, among others, the celebrated Ahmad b. Ḥanbal (q.v.), founder of one of the four orthodox Moslem schools, were obliged to appear before an inquisitorial tribunal; and as they persisted in their belief respecting the Koran, they were thrown into prison. Mamun, being at Tarsus, received from the governor of Bagdad the report of the tribunal, and ordered that the culprits should be sent off to him. Happily for these unfortunate doctors, they had scarcely reached Adana, when news of the caliph’s death arrived and they were brought back to Bagdad. The two successors of Mamun maintained the edicts—Ahmad b. Ḥanbal, who obstinately refused to yield, was flogged in the year 834—but it seems that Motasim did not himself take much interest in the question, which perhaps he hardly understood, and that the prosecution of the inquisition by him was due in great part to the charge which was left him in Mamun’s will. In the reign of Motawakkil the orthodox faith was restored, never to be assailed again.[1]
In spite of these manifold activities Mamun did not forget the hereditary enemy of Islam. In the years 830, 831 and 832 he made expeditions into Asia Minor with such success that Theophilus, the Greek emperor, sued for peace, which Mamun haughtily refused to grant. Accordingly, he decided on marching in the following year against Amorium, and thence to Constantinople itself. Having sent before him his son Abbas to make Tyana a strong fortress, he set out for Asia Minor to put himself at the head of the army, but died of a fever brought on by bathing in the chill river, Pedendon, 40 m. from Tarsus, in Rajab 218 (A.D. August 833), at the age of forty-eight.
Mamun was a man of rare qualities, and one of the best rulers of the whole dynasty after Mansur. By him the ascendancy of the Persian element over the Arabian was completed. Moreover, he began to attract young Turkish noblemen to his court, an example which was followed on a much larger scale by his successor and led to the supremacy of the Turks at a later period.
8. Reign of Motasim.—Abu Isḥāk al-Moʽtaṣim had for a long time been preparing himself for the succession. Every year he had bought Turkish slaves, and had with him in the last expedition of Mamun a bodyguard of 3000. Backed by this force he seems to have persuaded the ailing caliph to designate him as his successor. The chroniclers content themselves with recording that he himself wrote in the name of the caliph to the chief authorities in Bagdad and elsewhere that he was to be the successor. His accession, however, met at first with active opposition in the army, where a powerful party demanded that Abbas should take the place of his father. Abbas, however, publicly renounced all pretension to the Caliphate, and the whole army accepted Motasim, who immediately had the fortifications of Tyana demolished and hastened back to Bagdad, where he made his public entry on the 20th of September 833.
Motasim wanted officers for his bodyguard. Immediately after his coming to Bagdad, he bought all the Turkish slaves living there who had distinguished themselves. Among them were Ashnās, Itākh, Wasīf, Sīmā, all of whom later became men of great influence. The guard was composed of an undisciplined body of soldiers, who, moreover, held in open contempt the religious precepts of Islam. Tired of the excesses committed by these Turks, the people of Bagdad beat or killed as many of them as they could lay hands on, and Motasim, not daring to act with severity against either his guard or the citizens, took the course of quitting the city. Having bought in 834 territories at Sāmarrā, a small place situated a few leagues above Bagdad, he caused a new residence to be built there, whose name, which could be interpreted “Unhappy is he who sees it,” was changed by him into Sorra-man-raʽā, “Rejoiced is he who sees it.” Leaving the government of the capital in the hands of his son Hārūn al-Wāthiq, he established himself at Sāmarrā in 836. This resolution of Motasim was destined to prove fatal to his dynasty; for it placed the caliphs at the mercy of their praetorians. In fact, from the time of Wāthiq, the Caliphate became the plaything of the Turkish guard, and its decline was continuous.
In the time of the civil war the marshlands in Irak between Basra and Wāsit had been occupied by a large population of Indians, called yat, or, according to the Arabic pronunciation, Zoṭṭ, who infested the roads and levied a heavy tribute from the ships ascending and descending the Tigris. From the year 821 onwards Mamun had tried in vain to bring them to submission. When Motasim came back to Bagdad, after the death of his brother, he found the people in great distress, their supply of dates from Basra having been cut off by the Zoṭṭ, and resolved to put them down with all means. After seven months of vigorous resistance, they at last yielded on condition of safety of life and property. In January 835 the Zoṭṭ in their national costume and with their own music were conducted on a great number of boats through Bagdad. Thence they were transported to Ainzarba (Anazarba) on the frontier of the Greek empire. Twenty years later they entered Asia Minor, whence in a later period they came into Europe, under the name of Athinganoi (Ziganes) and Egyptians (gipsies).[2]
A far more difficult task lay before Motasim, the subjection of Bābak al-Khorramī in Azerbaijan. Though the name Khorramī is often employed by the Moslem writers to designate such
- ↑ Cf. W. M. Patton, Ahmed ibn Hanbal and the Mihna (Leiden, 1897); and article Mahommedan Religion.
- ↑ See M. J. de Goeje, Memoire sur les migrations des Ziganes travers l’Asie (Leiden, 1903); also Gipsies.
