The Caliphate

The center of the world

Around the turn of the first millennium CE, Baghdad was at the center of the world. Or so its writers would tell you. People like al-Khatib al-Baghdadi and Ibn al-Jawzi, writing from Baghdad, felt they were at the heart of it all, in the pulsing epicenter of the known world. That’s not surprising; at the time, Baghdad was one of the greatest cities on the planet, boasting around a million residents—in proportion to today’s population that would look like 26 million. It was cosmopolitan and wealthy, with flourishing trade, sciences, and arts. Baghdad was a dazzling city rivaled only by Hangzhou in Song China.

The city rose to such heights as the seat of the Abbasid Caliphate (750-1258] CE), a powerful and massive Muslim empire. Starting around the eighth century, Muslim empires spread out across Afro-Eurasia. But it all started in the middle of the seventh century with a new political structure: the caliphate.

The institution of the caliphate

After the death of the Muslim prophet Muhammad in 632 CE, the Muslim community of Arabia was led by a caliph.¹ The caliph was to be a spiritual and political leader, elected by his fellow Muslims. From 632-661, under the Rashidun Caliphate, the Muslim community elected caliphs who were close associates and extended family members of Muhammad.

Under the Rashidun, the state expanded rapidly out of Arabia. The neighboring Byzantines and Persians were vulnerable. Weakened by plague, wars, and encroaching Central Asian groups, these empires weren’t able to put up much of a fight.

The Arab soldiers, mostly nomadic, were more resistant to plague. Many had served in Byzantine and Persian militaries, and knew just how to exploit these weaknesses to conquer a lot of new land really fast.

But the state itself was still a confederation of Arab tribes settled in garrison cities.² It was under the Umayyads (661-750) that the caliphate developed a more sophisticated state structure to rule over its vast territory. With the empire now stretching from Spain to Central Asia, state officials were busy... translating. In particular, Persian sources on statecraft (managing a state) were being translated into Arabic, as were sources from the Byzantine Empire.

Partly because of these efforts, Persian and Byzantine political structures influenced the emerging caliphates. One example is the diwan, an administrative system used to register and pay soldiers, collect taxes, and pay for public works like mosques and irrigation systems. Muslim rulers also appointed provincial governors, called emirs, to help manage each region, with indigenous officials supporting the emirs. This was similar to the Byzantine system. The caliph became an absolute, dynastic (hereditary) monarch ruling over subjects, much like a Persian king, and less like an elected deputy leading a community of fellow Muslims. Caliphs used religious ideas to justify their rule, but they were often challenged by devout Muslims and the class of religious scholars, called ulema.

From an Arab empire to a Muslim empire

Soon, the caliphs were focused more on ruling than on safeguarding the religion. We often think of the political expansion of the Islamic state and the spread of the Islamic religion as the same thing. In fact, caliphs usually didn’t encourage conquered people to convert to Islam. Non-Muslims could often retain their own religions. They were required to pay a special tax, called a jizya, a source of income for the state. Many of those who did convert were not immediately accepted into the community. As the historian Patricia Crone claims, “the Arabs were not always willing to share their God with gentile converts.”

Nor were they willing to share their power. Arabs remained the ruling class. Many resented the Umayyads and questioned their authority. After all, they were neither elected nor members of Muhammad’s family. To make matters worse, people thought they acted unjustly and violated Islamic ideals, including equality for all Muslims, Arab or not.

One revolution later, and the Umayyads were out. They were replaced by the Abbasids (750-1258), who were related to Muhammad through his uncle. Though the Abbasids were Arab, the empire became a lot less Arab-centered under their rule. They moved the caliphate closer to their support base, quite literally, from Damascus to Baghdad—much closer to Persia.

The Abbasids were powerful monarchs, just like the Umayyads, though they sometimes shared control with powerful officials called viziers and high-level bureaucrats. And they weren’t fairer or more Islamic, either. They did, however, create more space for non-Arabs, and many Turks and Persians held sway at the Abbasid court. More non-Arabs joined military ranks. Also, there was an influx of Central Asian people, as the Abbasids used enslaved soldiers, called mamluks, to ensure a loyal military.

Society under the caliphate

With all this talk of caliphates, it’s easy to forget that most people living in the empires were not actually Muslims, at least not right away. Conquest didn’t mean conversion. Conversion is complicated, but let’s just say there weren’t many mass conversions. For the most part, people converted individually for different reasons. These included sincere belief, avoiding the jizya tax, or gaining rights and privileges. Forced conversion wasn’t really “a thing” in this period. Merchants, missionaries, and wandering holy people were the ones who really spread Islam, and it took centuries—but that’s another story.

Muslims ruled over many Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, and Hindus. They were generally considered protected peoples, called dhimmi, and were permitted to practice their religions in exchange for the jizya tax, although they were occasionally subjected to violence and discrimination. Many non-Muslim people moved into the empire as enslaved people, often as prisoners of war or through trade. Enslaved men and woman had many different roles, including as laborers or servants. Enslaved men were often soldiers. Enslaved women were often concubines,3 a practice that became more common during Abbasid rule and which affected the structure of family and the status of women. Slavery was not passed through generations, and people could gain freedom and eventually gain considerable power—but hold that thought.

Women’s lives were as diverse as the different societies Islam reached—which is pretty diverse. Islam gave women rights, like property, divorce, inheritance rights, and negotiable marriage contracts. But these rights were put into practice differently depending on region and social class. Over time, Islamic sources were often interpreted with a patriarchal spin, especially as they blended with different cultures. In former Byzantine and Persian areas, many upper-class women were secluded, a common Byzantine practice. Women who could afford to not work outside of the home didn’t appear in public. When in public, women covered their bodies in loose outer garments.

But public life wasn’t what it is now, and women had their own robust social and economic networks within their private spheres. Women could direct the building of mosques, monasteries, and schools using their own money. And though they didn’t attend public schools and universities, they had their own educational communities with other women, especially in Qur’anic and Islamic studies. They also could buy and sell products and services in their homes. Women worked as peddlers, hairstylists, midwives, and nursemaids. And we know women indeed spent time in public places like markets, because there are countless sources condemning them for it. In other places, like coastal East Africa or Southeast Asia, Muslim women were less restricted.

From one empire to many

Though on paper the Abbasids lasted until the thirteenth century when the Mongols sacked Baghdad, in reality, their power declined around the tenth century—for multiple reasons. For one, while more conversions were good for the religious community, they weren’t so good for the empire’s piggy banks; there were a lot fewer people paying the jizya. The empire also became so big—over 4,000 miles from end to end—that governors on the margins started doing their own thing, like pocketing taxes and revenues for themselves. It didn’t help that the Abbasids spent tons of money they didn’t really have on an extravagant court.

And remember those mamluks? Yeah, enslaved soldiers aren’t all that loyal. They eventually gained the power to influence who became caliph, a situation that repeated itself in later empires, like the Ottoman Empire. Mamluks became “kingmakers” and, eventually, they started their own dynasties in various regions of the caliphate, in particular Egypt.

Over time, much of the Abbasid territory was actually controlled by multiple independent Muslim dynasties, including mamluk-ruled ones. Many of these were devastated by Mongol invasions, while others survived. But the Mongol invasions didn’t end the era of Muslim empires. In fact, some Mongols converted to Islam and started their own Muslim dynasty. As Islam spread to other regions, Muslim states popped up all over Afro- Eurasia, from Mali to the Malacca Sultanate.

With so many different dynasties, you’d think the era of a unified Muslim community was entirely over, but that wasn’t really true. Though ideas about the Muslim community have changed historically, several things united Muslims across fragmented political communities. Trade networks crisscrossed the Muslim world, pulling them into shared systems of production and distribution. Islamic beliefs and institutions spanned dynasties and even continents, making people feel like they were part of a single community of religious practice. Whether in west Africa, north India, or Baghdad, many Muslims in this era lived in wealthy, advanced societies and continued to feel like they were at the center of the world.

1 Caliph, from the Arabic khalifa, basically means a deputy or successor.

2 A garrison city is one that is protected by troops.

3 A concubine is a live-in companion, usually sexual, in a polygamous relationship. Concubines are treated as having lower status than wives.