When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World: The Rise and Fall of Islam's Greatest Dynasty

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 376 pages
• Published by: Da Capo Press March 13, 2006
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0306814803
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0306814808
• Book Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Weighs: 1.1 pounds

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. These days Baghdad is associated with violence and insurgency. But more than a thousand years ago, during the Abbasid caliphate, Baghdad was a center of the arts and sciences, a city of dreams and limitless opportunities. This eminently entertaining book by respected British historian Kennedy focuses on these glory days of Baghdad in the eighth and ninth centuries, and the city's eventual downfall. Firmly grounded in the original Arabic literary sources of the era, Kennedy (Mongols, Huns and Vikings) emphasizes the amazing personalities of the period, such as Caliph Harun al-Rashid (mythologized in TheArabian Nights) and his powerful queen Zubayda. Kennedy's account is not a dry political chronicle but rather full of stories of love, sex, power, corruption, sibling rivalry and political intrigue—for which he makes no apology. Kennedy does a superb job resurrecting the human dimension of the period, as in apt descriptions of life in Harun al-Rashid's harem or the various caliphs' decisions whether or not to wage war. He also provides a sophisticated account of the general cultural and political climate based on recent scholarship. Combining academic rigor and accessibility, this is compelling reading for anyone concerned with the perils of power, the medieval Islamic legacy and the images that Baghdad continues to conjure in the modern imagination. 24 pages of illus., 3 maps. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist
Baghdad was founded in 762 by the Abbasid caliphate, which, claiming its legitimacy from lineage to the family of the prophet Muhammad, had overthrown the Umayyad caliphate. Chronicling the first two of the Abbasids' five centuries of rule, historian Kennedy acquaints nonspecialists with an important segment of Islamic history, perhaps best known to Westerners as the period setting for Arabian Nights. Sensitive to the biases of available sources, Kennedy picks through their panegyrics to political winners or condemnations of losers to present a narrative that realistically outlines the motivations and characters of caliphs, viziers, and even court attendants. He recounts contested successions to the caliphate, with detail on the immediate political tensions and their usually gruesome release. Weakened by these struggles for the throne and essentially a powerless pawn of generals by the time Kennedy leaves off in 935, the Abbasid caliphate nevertheless produced a munificent court culture. Reveling in its richness of ritual, poetry, song, and architecture, Kennedy accessibly presents his expertise on the Abbasids in this insightful history of the dynasty. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Reader Reviews
This review is from: When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World: The Rise and Fall of Islam's Greatest Dynasty (Hardcover) The Prophet Muhammad died in 632 CE, and a universal caliphate was begun, the greatest political power ever in the Islamic world. The Abbasid Caliphate held sway afterwards for almost two hundred years. It included the reign of Harun al-Rashid, who became famous within the legends of the Arabian Nights. In _When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World: The Rise and Fall of Islam's Greatest Dynasty_ (Da Capo Press), Hugh Kennedy has described his share of eunuchs, harems, slave girls, viziers (both sycophantic and traitorous), and lavish palaces, so although those knowing the legends will find few djinns or flying carpets, there is plenty of Arabic exoticism. There is also, as Kennedy says, a "fair share of, to put it bluntly, booze and sex." Kennedy, who has superb academic credentials in Arabic Studies, almost apologizes to pious Muslims, who may find this an irreverent account of glorious years of their history, and to his colleagues, who may think the book frivolous. He has deliberately concentrated on "dramatic events, striking personalities, and the trivia of everyday life." He says that he can do so because "... the writers of the ninth and tenth centuries knew that their rulers had their fair share of human frailties and they were quite happy to describe them." Besides booze and sex, there is plenty of blood here, shed in sometimes imaginative and cruel ways. The account of conflicts largely concerns the transfer of power from one caliph to another. Although some caliphs were more patrons of the arts than others, the period was rich in historic writing (from which Kennedy has directly drawn) and in poetry. Poems might be sung on intimate evenings between the caliph and his musicians, but there was no means of musical notation, so while we have the poems, we can never know what the music sounded like. Similarly, we have lost the architecture of the time. There are no ancient temples like those at Karnak: "The remains of Ur and Babylon are little more than piles of mud, comprehensible only to the specialists." The problem is that the region around Baghdad was terrific for agricultural production (and resultant wealth) but there was no good building stone. Nonetheless, the palaces were gargantuan, sprawling structures, encompassing gardens, courtyards, baths, mosques, and more. The women were not all slaves, and being taken into the harem was a blessing for many, a career choice for girls with few other options. There were moralists at the time that complained about the activities of the harem, and its expense, and they have blamed it for the eventual fall of the caliphate. Kennedy shows, however, that the harem was a politically stabilizing influence, with mistresses helping viziers who had fallen from grace; there was financial stabilizing, too, from the richness of the harem as a source of stock valuables which could be cashed in, useful in a society where borrowing was impossible. The number of major and minor players within these pages is daunting, and battle scenes are often confusing. Kennedy relates that in the heat of one battle, a defender "... became confused about which caliph he was supposed to be supporting, and called out for Muctazz rather than Mustacin by mistake." He lost his head figuratively, and then lost it literally because of his mistake, killed on the spot with his head turned into a trophy. Kennedy jokes that this poor man's confusion is something with which readers of this book may well sympathize. However, as confusing as the battles may be, there is a richness to the descriptions of the culture and atmosphere that is quite valuable. After all, readers will find here lively and even aggressive disputants about such things that seemed vital to them as whether the Koran was created or had existed since the beginning of time; heresies involving both positions were passionately denounced. Here, too, are the beginnings of the fight between the Sunnis and the Shiites, a conflict which still affects the world. The legacy of the Abbasid court, Kennedy maintains, remains enormously powerful, even so many centuries ago. Its celebrated power and unity provide not only nostalgia, but inspiration, and it deserves to be understood. After all, it inspires Osama bin Laden, who aims to re-establish the caliphate.