Billeting, Cohabitation

Billeting soldiers or other men on official mission in private homes (nuzul, nuzula) was only one of the many extraordinary levies which the army (and other official persons) demanded as the need arose or was perceived to arise.

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In the following, the focus will be on billeting. Billeting was not approved of. Not only was it a burden on the inhabitants, but it forced them to change their everyday routines radically. There was always the danger that the soldiers would misbehave, steal foodstuffs or other things and, above all, molest or even rape the women in the house; this implied that male honour was impugned and therefore was a particularly sore point. It was therefore a rule of good government to avoid billeting whenever possible, and the intrusion of soldiers or other officials into private homes without order was a crime that a just sultan had to punish severely and immediately.

24 ‘Utbi, trans. Jurfadhaqani, Tarikh-i yamini, p. 338.

One story is about the foundation of the garrison city Shadyakh close to Nishapur in Khurasan. When the governor of Khurasan, ‘Abdallah b. Tahir (828-45), who was typically held up as a model of good rule, once rode through the city, he noticed a woman leading a horse to a watering place. This was out of the ordinary: working with horses was a male occupation. He had the husband of that woman brought to his presence. Interrogated, the man said that it was all the governor's fault: he had billeted soldiers in private homes. Consequently, if both wife and husband leave the home, the soldier can be expected to steal everything. If the man goes out alone, he cannot be sure about what will happen to his wife. Thus, the only solution is that the wife go out alone. And in order to remedy this, ‘Abdallah had the garrison city built.

A second story also concerns an exemplar of just rule, Mahmud the Ghaznavid, and it is equally legendary, being transmitted as an exemplum in a fourteenth-century decree forbidding billeting of soldiers and messengers in private homes. One night, Mahmud could not find sleep, and he wondered whether there might be an oppressed person whose complaint had not reached him. He decided to go out (in Harun al-Rashid fashion, alone and in modest apparel), and indeed he found a man in a mosque praying. The sultan overheard the prayer; it concerned a complaint that the man had been unable to bring to the sultan's ears. Interrogated, he said that one of Mahmud's followers used to come to his home at night drunk and molest his wife. The sultan disclosed his identity at this point and asked to be taken to the man's home. At the end, the sultan himself cut off the head of the wrongdoer as was his duty.^[109]

Baghdad is well covered in the sources, and therefore we get a number of reports from that city. In the very last period of the independent caliphate, billeting soldiers in private homes became the rule; it was introduced in 941.

When the Seljuq Turks came to Baghdad under Toghril Beg (1055), again, billeting is mentioned in the sources. When the Turks had stayed in the city for more than a year the situation became unbearable. ‘The people suffered greatly from the army, and their houses had become crowded, because the warriors had taken up residence with them, and had robbed their provisions, and committed all kinds of forbidden things.' Toghril Beg and the army then left for a campaign in northern Iraq. When they came back to Baghdad the following year (1057-8), ‘Toghril did not allow anybody to take up residence with the people.'^[111] In the reign of Malikshah (1072-92), one source says, the authority of the sultan was so great that no one dared occupy or enter the house of another man: we have to conclude that such orderly behaviour was the exception rather than the rule, and that in other times, when the sultan was not so strong, such behaviour was common enough. And of course, it is military men entering the houses of ‘civilians'. That the practice must have continued later is evident from the fact that the Seljuq sultan Mas‘ud (1134-52) abolished it again in 1138-9.

Billeting could trigger large-scale uprisings. When the Samanids con­quered Sistan (in 911), they had to raise the taxes and have the army take up residence in private homes. One of the local leaders went to complain. He stated: ‘It is not customary in Sistan to increase taxes. Moreover, the army should be confined to its camp because the people have wives and daughters to protect. Finally, people of honour should not be required to quarter strangers in their homes and villas.'^[113] This was the prelude to a general uprising of the Sistanis against Samanid rule.

In stories told in hagiographic style, it is not the people themselves but supernatural forces that fight the oppressors. Thus, in a story relating things from the early ninth century, the Khurasanian ruler Talha b. Tahir (822-8), on his return from a campaign in the region of Kabul, came to Balkh. He had his army take up residence in the homes of the people, and the owners of the houses were evacuated. The people appealed to an ascetic scholar who told Talha to stop this, and Talha promised to liberate the houses. But he did not keep his promise, and the scholar turned to his ultima ratio: fervent prayer. Talha died suddenly, within the day.^[114]

Excepting Baghdad, we do not hear much about billeting in the period between the coming of the Seljuq Turks and the Mongol invasion. That there must have been more than isolated cases is nevertheless clear enough, even if it perhaps was no longer military contingents but rather messengers and other officials who were thus accommodated. For instance, billeting contin­ued as part of the ‘extraordinary' taxes known under the catch-all term of ‘awaridat. Sometimes, billeting is mentioned separately. The sources for this are tax exemptions transmitted in samples for official documents, and the texts mention, among other duties, the housing of messengers from which the persons or institutions are now exempt.

A Kirmani source speaks to this shift in a story dating from 1085-6. The local ruler, a Seljuq, Turanshah b. Qavurt (1085-97) was a great patron of architecture. On one occasion, he noticed a carpenter's son who looked like a Turk and asked the father about him. ‘His mother claims that I sired him, the carpenter replied, but we had a Turkish soldier in the house at that time.' And the source adds (in summary): Back then, the army still lived in the city, and the suburb (rabad, here probably: military and government suburb) had not yet been built. When he heard the story of the carpenter, however, Turanshah gave orders to have a separate place built for the army (and the government officials in general).^[115]

Things did not get better in the Mongol period. Billeting of soldiers and officials in private homes was the rule rather than the exception. The some­times substantial retinues of ‘messengers', up to 500 or 1,000 persons, were a particular nuisance. Rashid al-Din claims to have put an end to that, but in another decree from a somewhat later period, the prohibition is reiterated, so that the practice may have gone on.^[116] The levying of extraordinary taxes as well as billeting continued into the Timurid period. To give just one example: arriving in Tabriz in December 1405, the Timurid prince Aba Bakr decided to have his troops spend the winter in the homes of the townspeople, and ‘complete ruin befell the subjects'.^[117]