accruing the benefits and widened scope for trading through commercial outlets…. If you reject this offer… I shall penetrate into the innermost recesses of your land.
Al-Ma’mun responded in kind. He told Theophilus that he would not be fooled by a letter that combined honeyed words with threats. Instead, he would send his own armies forth. “They are more eager to go forward to the watering-places of death than you are to preserve your self from the fearful threat of their onslaught…. They have the promise of one of the two best things: a speedy victory or a glorious return” to God as martyrs in battle. He offered the emperor a choice: pay a tribute, or be made to understand Islam by watching the caliph’s armies eradicate his. 13 Not surprisingly, neither man was swayed, but al-Ma’mun died before he could carry out his retaliation.
These battles continued on and off for the next few centuries, but soon enough, both empires were more absorbed in fending off the Turks than in fighting each other. The Abbasids, by the end of the ninth century, had only nominal control over North Africa, and by the middle of the tenth century had lost Egypt. Powerful generals, backed by Turkish soldiers recruited or enslaved from Central Asian steppes and the regions surrounding the Caspian Sea, swore allegiance to the caliph but functioned as autonomous viceroys in distant provinces. Turkish tribes also began to pose a serious problem for the Byzantines, but like the Germanic tribes that had slowly sapped the energies of the Roman Empire, the Turks were anything but unified, and shared little in common except common linguistic roots. Their lack of cohesiveness made life even more difficult for the Abbasids and the Byzantines. Even when one tribe was defeated, others sprang up. And both empires tried, sometimes successfully but usually not, to use the Turks as a weapon against the other.
The Abbasids sank more quickly. Although the caliphate remained intact in Baghdad until the thirteenth century, after the mid-tenth century, the caliph’s reach did not extend much beyond Iraq. At times, the irrelevancy of Iraq and the caliphate meant that the region was calm and stable. Central and southern Iraq were often the only places of peace ina thousand-mile radius. As a result, Baghdad remained a cultural hub where philosophy, science, and art survived. Throughout much of the tenth century, Baghdad was a center for inquiry, where Arab scholars probed ever more deeply into metaphysical questions that had once been the purview of the Greeks. Philosophers built on the work of al-Kindi and fused mysticism and rationalism. Yet, in relative terms, Baghdad did decline, and the creative flame relocated far to the west, to al-Andalus.
It is true that the glory of Baghdad was never quite as glorious as it looked through the misty eyes of later generations. By modern standards, it was hardly a model of law and order. The caliphs were men of their age, and that age did not know from the legal and moral niceties that the modern world demands. But during the height of the Abbasids, there was an eruption of intellectual and philosophical creativity that has rarely been exceeded. Wealth certainly played a part, but many societies have generated wealth without fostering thought. Simple curiosity was also a factor. One thing, however, is undeniable: this flowering of inquiry, this preservation of the knowledge of ancient Greece and the advancement of math, science, and philosophy took place in an environment where Muslim rulers welcomed and invited interaction with the People of the Book. They used Christian scholars and administrators as foils to hone their own arguments about Islam, and the interaction between the faiths—sometimes friendly, often competitive, occasionally contemptuous, and now and then violent—ignited a cultural renaissance.
The heated, passionate embrace of coexistence was central to a golden age whose prerequisite was a
Al-Ma’mun responded in kind. He told Theophilus that he would not be fooled by a letter that combined honeyed words with threats. Instead, he would send his own armies forth. “They are more eager to go forward to the watering-places of death than you are to preserve your self from the fearful threat of their onslaught…. They have the promise of one of the two best things: a speedy victory or a glorious return” to God as martyrs in battle. He offered the emperor a choice: pay a tribute, or be made to understand Islam by watching the caliph’s armies eradicate his. 13 Not surprisingly, neither man was swayed, but al-Ma’mun died before he could carry out his retaliation.
These battles continued on and off for the next few centuries, but soon enough, both empires were more absorbed in fending off the Turks than in fighting each other. The Abbasids, by the end of the ninth century, had only nominal control over North Africa, and by the middle of the tenth century had lost Egypt. Powerful generals, backed by Turkish soldiers recruited or enslaved from Central Asian steppes and the regions surrounding the Caspian Sea, swore allegiance to the caliph but functioned as autonomous viceroys in distant provinces. Turkish tribes also began to pose a serious problem for the Byzantines, but like the Germanic tribes that had slowly sapped the energies of the Roman Empire, the Turks were anything but unified, and shared little in common except common linguistic roots. Their lack of cohesiveness made life even more difficult for the Abbasids and the Byzantines. Even when one tribe was defeated, others sprang up. And both empires tried, sometimes successfully but usually not, to use the Turks as a weapon against the other.
The Abbasids sank more quickly. Although the caliphate remained intact in Baghdad until the thirteenth century, after the mid-tenth century, the caliph’s reach did not extend much beyond Iraq. At times, the irrelevancy of Iraq and the caliphate meant that the region was calm and stable. Central and southern Iraq were often the only places of peace ina thousand-mile radius. As a result, Baghdad remained a cultural hub where philosophy, science, and art survived. Throughout much of the tenth century, Baghdad was a center for inquiry, where Arab scholars probed ever more deeply into metaphysical questions that had once been the purview of the Greeks. Philosophers built on the work of al-Kindi and fused mysticism and rationalism. Yet, in relative terms, Baghdad did decline, and the creative flame relocated far to the west, to al-Andalus.
It is true that the glory of Baghdad was never quite as glorious as it looked through the misty eyes of later generations. By modern standards, it was hardly a model of law and order. The caliphs were men of their age, and that age did not know from the legal and moral niceties that the modern world demands. But during the height of the Abbasids, there was an eruption of intellectual and philosophical creativity that has rarely been exceeded. Wealth certainly played a part, but many societies have generated wealth without fostering thought. Simple curiosity was also a factor. One thing, however, is undeniable: this flowering of inquiry, this preservation of the knowledge of ancient Greece and the advancement of math, science, and philosophy took place in an environment where Muslim rulers welcomed and invited interaction with the People of the Book. They used Christian scholars and administrators as foils to hone their own arguments about Islam, and the interaction between the faiths—sometimes friendly, often competitive, occasionally contemptuous, and now and then violent—ignited a cultural renaissance.
The heated, passionate embrace of coexistence was central to a golden age whose prerequisite was a
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