Coercive Power
If the history of administration is in many ways one of continuity, in which the structures of the former empires were assimilated and Islamized, then the history of the empire's coercive power is one of disruptive discontinuity.
Each major civil war created a new military elite at the imperial center, which displaced but did not eradicate the old one.61 The first four of these violent transformations were caused by interactions between the factions in Quraysh, competing for the caliphate itself, and groups on the frontiers, ambitious for greater power within the empire: Syrian and Khurasanian armies each won two civil wars, promoting their own candidates for the caliphate in the process (in 661 and 692, and in 750 and 819, respectively).The dynamic in the mid-ninth and early tenth centuries was different. As direct control of the provinces fell away, imperial politics became palace politics: in 833 a senior member of the Abbasid family used his personal military following, recruited from slaves bought in Transoxiana and Central Asia, to seize power—an event that was followed within five years by a violent purge of the former military elite.62 The “Samarran anarchy” of861-870 saw various Central Asian commanders promoting their puppet Abbasids. Finally, a brief renaissance in Abbasid power in the early tenth century was snuffed out by financial collapse and consequent transfer of military power to the amir al-umara (“commander of the commanders”).
An important consequence of these sporadic evolutions in the relations between the caliphs and their military support was the detachment of (male) Muslim identity from the obligation to participate in violence.63 In the seventh century there was no significant distinction between a male member of the new Arabian monotheist federation and an imperial soldier, just as there was no distinction between a tribesman and potential warrior: military expansion was a religious duty, and proof of God's support for the faithful emigrants.
Likewise, most of the Syrian tribesmen who supported the early Umayyads were both nomads and soldiers. The60 Gutas 1998; Saliba 2007.
61 This is the framework within which Crone 1980 presents the early history of the Caliphate, and it is a point developed in a number of the chapters of Crone 2008.
62 Marsham 2009, 266-267.
63 For a discussion of what follows, with further references, see Robinson 2009, 223-225. wider military elite was the newly migrated male monotheist Arabian population, with the addition of certain elements formerly loyal to the Roman and Sasanian empires; the taxes gathered by the provincial governors in the provinces were then redistributed to this conquering elite in stipends (ata’).
However, already by the early eighth century, members of this new elite who claimed their stipend but did not serve in the armies were a problem for provincial governors; a distinction between civilians and professional soldiers had emerged among what was still essentially a colonial Arabian elite, albeit one that had already drawn into it a significant minority of the conquered population. With the recruitment of specialists in violence from the frontiers by rulers eager to shore up or seize power came further dislocation between civilians and the military. The corollary was that the doctrine of jihad as a merely collective obligation gradually became dominant; by the ninth century, the average male Muslim was now a tax-paying urban civilian, with little or nothing in common ethnically, linguistically, or culturally with the Central Asian soldiery he supported.
Beyond the imperial center, there was more continuity. Provincial governors depended upon troops recruited locally to maintain order, and imperial forces were only called in to suppress dissent or to augment local resources.[1055] Furthermore, as in any pre-modern empire, there were also many independent violent actors. Where they fought non-Muslims in frontier regions beyond the state's control, they were tolerated and were at least notionally supported; indeed, the “voluntary jihad warrior” (al-mutatawwi1) gained a formal status in Islamic thought that reflects this.[1056] However, when autonomous men of violence challenged the state in regions where it claimed to maintain order, they were suppressed as brigands or robbers and, when they overtly challenged the legitimacy of the state itself, as rebels or heretics.[1057]
Highlands and deserts were often terres d’insolence.
In the Umayyad period, the mountains of Anatolia and Lebanon harbored the Mardaite Christians (al-Jarajima), often supported by the Romans; in the seventh century, parts of Iraq were centers of Kharijite resistance—renegade Arabian tribal groups, but dependent upon forms of local support, which ranged from acquiescence to active participation; from the 680s, similar Kharijite movements spread to southern and eastern Iran, the Jazira, and the Arabian Peninsula itself. Indigenous resistance from Berber nomad tribesmen was recurrent in North Africa, where Kharijism was eventually adopted as an ideology of resistance to the imperial center. The highlands of the Caucasus and Afghanistan (and the lowlands adjoining them) also proved very difficult to dominate, making these hills a favored destination for rebels seeking refuge.[1058]After two decades of turmoil following the Abbasid Revolution, campaigns continued to penetrate highland regions. Many began as local initiatives by Arab (or Arabized) Muslim actors: Sistan (southeastern Iran and western Afghanistan) was the scene of fighting between various armed groups throughout the Abbasid period; the highlands of Armenia and Azerbaijan were another such frontier zone. When these regions threw up threats of potentially greater than local significance, imperial resources were deployed against them: in the campaigns against Hamza ibn Adharak (d. 828), in Sistan, and Babak (d. 838), in Azerbaijan, provincial unrest was met by prolonged and ultimately effective campaigns by Abbasid field armies.[1059]
The balance of coercive power in the empire tipped decisively after the 860s, when weakness at the center created opportunities for autonomous military actors. After 868 Egypt was ruled by Ahmad ibn Tulun (r. 868-884) who, while notionally loyal to the Abbasids, rarely returned revenues to Iraq. At the same time, the Tahirid governors of Khurasan rapidly lost ground to Saffarid military adventurers from Sistan.
The rebellion among agricultural slaves in the Sawad was only suppressed by the Abbasid field army after 14 years of fighting.[1060] Factional conflict within the same field army eventually facilitated dominance of Iraq itself by the Buyid dynasty, who were Daylami soldiers formerly in the entourage of an independent north Iranian warlord, Mardavij ibn Ziyar (d. 935).It is worth noting that external competition from rival imperial powers was never a serious existential threat to the Caliphate. Soon after the initial Arabian victories, the Iranian empire collapsed. Although Rome survived, her initial efforts to respond were weak; the failure of the Arab siege of Constantinople, in 717-718, marks the beginning of an approximate equilibrium between the two powers. On other frontiers, there were opponents who proved to be a significant military challenge to the Muslims, notably the Khazars and Turgesh, but none posed a threat to the existence of the empire. Rather, it was internal conflict that brought about collapse. What saved the caliph from the wreckage was the tremendous success of the ideology that he represented, and for many of whose adherents he remained a legitimating figurehead.