During his reign, literature and scholarly work in the Islamic world began to emerge in full force, supported by new Abbasid tolerances for Persians and other groups suppressed by the Umayyads. Although the Umayyad caliph Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik had adopted Persian court practices, it was not until al-Mansur’s reign that Persian literature and scholarship were truly appreciated in the Islamic world. Shu’ubiya was a literary movement among Persians expressing their belief that Persian art and culture was superior to that of the Arabs; the movement served to catalyze the emergence of Arab-Persian dialogues in the eighth century.
Perhaps more importantly than the emergence of Persian scholarship was the conversion of many non-Arabs to Islam. The Umayyads actively tried to discourage conversion in order to continue the collection of the jizya, or the tax on non-Muslims. The inclusiveness of the Abbasid regime, and that of al-Mansur, saw the expansion of Islam among its territory; in 750, roughly 8% of residents in the Caliphate were Muslims. This would double to 15% by the end of al-Mansur’s reign.
In 756, Al-Mansur sent over 4,000 Arab mercenaries to assist the Chinese in the An Shi Rebellion against An Lushan. After the war, they remained in China. Al-Mansur was referred to as “A-p’u-ch’a-fo” in the Chinese T’ang Annals.
Al-Mansur died in 775 on his way to Mecca to make hajj. He was buried somewhere along the way in one of the hundreds of graves that had been dug in order to hide his body from the Umayyads. He was succeeded by his son, al-Mahdi.
According to a number of sources, the Imam Abu Hanifah an-Nu’man was imprisoned by al-Mansur. Imam Malik ibn Anas, the founder of another school of law, was also flogged during his rule, but al-Mansur himself did not condone this – in fact, it was his cousin, who was the governor of Madinah at the time, who did so. Al-Mansur, in turn, punished his cousin, and reattributed Imam Malik.
Character:
Al-Masudi in Meadows of Gold recounts a number of anecdotes that present aspects of this caliph’s character.
A very impressive aspect of this caliph’s character is that when he died he left in the treasury six hundred thousand Dirhams and fourteen million dinars.
Al-Mansur : Abbasid
Sunni Islam titles
Preceded by Caliph of Islam Succeeded by As-Saffah754 – 775 Al-Mahdi
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Al-Ma’mun (786-833): (Abu al-Abbas Abd Allah al- Ma’mun), Abbasid caliph (813-33); son of Harun al-Rashid. He succeeded he brother al-Amin after a bitter civil war, but was unable to enter Baghdad until 819. He was himself one of the Mu’tazilites, holding that the Qur’an was created in time, i.e., that it was not an uncreated eternal existent. He persecuted the orthodox bitterly, Al-Ma’mun’s reign was one of great cultural achievement, and he was especially interested in the work of scientists, particularly of those who knew Greek. He established (830) in Baghdad the House of Wisdom, an institution that translated Greek works into Arabic.
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Al-Mutanabbi (915-968): Like Aramaic and Hebrew, Arabic is a Semitic language. However, unlike the other Semitic languages, Arabic is today a global language. As the lingua franca of the Arab world, Arabic is the official language of almost all the Middle Eastern and North African countries. Although the Abbasid era is generally considered to be the Golden Ago of Islamic science, philosophy and literature, it was during the reign of Harun al-Rashi and his son, al-Ma’mun, that Baghdad became the world’s foremost center of philosophical, scientific and literary activities. The Arabs soon became the messengers of knowledge, wisdom and literature. Widely considered to be the greatest of all Arabic poets, al-Mutanabbi lived and thrived during this Golden Age of Arabic literature and poetry.
Abul Tayyib Ahmad ibn Hussain al-Jufi, better known as al-Mutanabbi (the ‘would-be prophet’), was born in the southern Iraqi city of Kufah. He experienced considerable social and economic hardship as a child. His family was forced to leave their home and stay away for about two years on the outskirts of Samawa due to the Qarmatian insurrection.
When al-Mutanabbi was about twelve, his family returned to Kufah where he began to compose poetry. He was a voracious reader of Arabic poetry and became thoroughly familiar with the works of his illustrious predecessors like Hasan ibn Hani (better known as Abu Nuwas), Habib ibn Aws (also known as Abu Tammam), and Walid ibn Ubayd al-Buhturi. These celebrated Arabic poets lived and thrived in and around Baghdad during the early Abbasid period.
Al-Mutanabbi began his poetic career in Kufah where he became popular after composing his early poems. After leaving Kufah, he moved to Baghdad in 928. Lack of response from the locals forced him to leave Baghdad and go to Syria, where he stayed for about two years. Here he earned his livelihood working as a freelance singer and entertainer, but his failure to attain instant success had a profoundly negative psychological impact on him.
Al-Mutanabbi began to sympathize with the plight of this religious sect. Like the latter, he was a passionate activist and a pessimistic thinker whose philosophy of life was gloomier than even the Qarmatians. He eventually became a fully-fledged member of this group.
Later, when the Syrian authorities arrested a group of Qarmatians and threw them into prison, al-Mutanabbi happened to be one of them. It was Badr al-Kashani, the incumbent governor of Damascus, who recognized al-Mutanabbi’s poetic talent and recruited him into his court. Soon his fame reached the Hamdanid ruler Sayf al-Dawlah, who recruited him to his famous court in Aleppo.
The Hamdanid dynasty was established during the early part of the tenth century by Abu al-Haji Abdullah and their rule extended all the way from northern Iraq and Syria, to Armenia in the north. Al-Mutanabbi stayed with the Hamdanid ruler for nearly a decade and during this period he regularly accompanied him on his military campaigns.
As a master of the Arabic language, al-Mutanabbi composed poetry for all occasions and to suit all tastes. His way with words, emotional spontaneity and, especially, his ability to capture the mood of the moment has remained unrivalled in the history of Arabic poetry. And although it is true that outstanding classical Arabic poets like Zuhayl ibn Abi Sulma, Tirimmah ibn Hakim, Bashshar ibn Burd, Abu Nuwas and Abu Tammam laid the foundations of early Arabic poetry, it was in the works of al-Mutanabbi that Arabic poetry reached its peak and greatest glory. As a Muslim and proud Arab, he was very fond of the history and symbolism of pre-Islamic Arabia, its culture and heritage. His poetry reflected nationalistic, philosophical, mystical, romantic as well as cultural themes.
After a decade at Sayf al-Dawlah’s court in Aleppo, al-Mutanabbi moved to Egypt for a period, before returning to his native Kufah. From Kufah he went to Baghdad and eventually settled in the Persian city of Shiraz, where he graced the court of the Buwayhid (or Buyid) ruler Adud al-Dawlah for a long time. Ambushed by a group of desert bandits, al-Mutanabbi died at the age of fifty-three while he was on his way to Baghdad.
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Al-Mu’tasim, Abu Ishaq Abbas (794-842): Abu Ishaq ‘Abbas al-Mu’tasim ibn Harun (Arabic: Is
Early life:
Abu Ishaq was born to a Turkic slave mother. His father was then caliph Harun al-Rashid, Abu Ishaq led the pilgrimage in A.H.