Jawaharlal Nehru: Baghdad and Harun al-Rashid

Part III:
Baghdad
and Harun al-Rashid

Jawaharlal Nehru
May 27,1932

LET us continue the story of the Arabs before reverting to other countries.

For nearly 100 years, as I told you in my last letter, the Caliphs belonged to the Ommeyade branch of the Prophet Mohammad's family. They ruled from Damascus, and during their rule the Muslim Arabs carried the standard of Islam far and wide. While the Arabs conquered in distant lands, they quarrelled at home and there was frequent civil war. Ultimately the Ommeyades were overthrown by another branch of Mohammad's family, descended from his uncle Abbas, and hence called the Abbasides. The Abbasides came as avengers of the cruelties of the Ommeyades, but they excelled them in cruelty and massacre after their victory was won. They hunted out all the Ommeyades they could find and killed them in a barbarous way.

This was the beginning in 750 A.C. of the long reign of the Abbaside Caliphs. It was not a very happy or auspicious beginning, and yet the Abbaside period is a bright enough period in Arab history. But there were great changes now from the days of the Ommeyades. The civil war in Arabia shook up the whole of the Arab Empire. The Abbasides won at home, but in far Spain the Arab Governor was an Ommeyade, and he refused to recognize the Abbaside Caliph. North Africa, or the viceroyalty of Ifrikia as it was called, also became more or less independent soon afterwards. And Egypt did likewise, and indeed went so far to proclaim another Caliph. Egypt was near enough to be threatened and forced to submit, and this was done from time to time. But Ifrikia was not interfered with, and as for Spain, it was much too far away for any action. So we see that the Arab Empire split up on the accession of the Abbasides. The Caliph was no longer the head of the whole Muslim world, he was not now the Commander of all the faithful. Islam was no longer united, and the Arabs in Spain and the Abbasides disliked each other so much that each often welcomed the misfortunes of the other.

In spite of all this, the Abbaside Caliphs were great sovereigns and their empire was a great empire, as empires go. The old faith and energy which conquered mountains and spread like a prairie fire were no more evidence. There was no simplicity and little of democracy left, and the Commander of the Faithful was little different from the Persian King of kings, who had been defeated by the earlier Arabs, or the Emperor at Constantinople. In the Arabs of the time of Mohammad the Prophet, there was a strange life and strength which were very different from the strength of kings' armies. They stood out in the world of their time, and armies and princes crumpled up before their irresistible march. The masses were weary of these princes, and the Arabs seemed to bring to them the promise of change for the better and of social revolution.

All this was changed now. The men of the desert lived in palaces now, and instead of dates had the most gorgeous foods. They were comfortable enough, so why should they bother about change and social revolution? They tried to rival the old empires in splendour and they adopted many an evil custom of theirs. One of these, as I told you, was the seclusion of women.

The capital now went from Damascus to Baghdad in Iraq. This change of capital itself was significant, for Baghdad used to be the Bummer retreat of the Persian kings. And as Baghdad was farther away from Europe than Damascus, henceforth the Abbasides looked more towards Asia than to Europe. There were to be still many attempts to capture Constantinople, and there were many wars with European nations, but most of these wars were defensive. The days of conquest seem to have ended, and the Abbaside Caliphs tried to consolidate such of the empire as was left to them. This was great enough even without Spain and Africa.

Baghdad! Do you not remember it? And Harun al-Rashid and Shaherazade and the wonderful stories contained in the Arabian Night? The city that now grew up under the Abbaside Caliphs was the city of the Arabian Nights. It was a vast city of palaces and public offices and schools and colleges, and great shops, and parks and gardens. The merchants carried on a vast trade with the East and West. Crowds of Government officials kept in continuous touch with the distant parts of the Empire, and the government, becoming more and more complicated, was divided up into many departments. An efficient postal system connected all the comers of the Empire to the capital. HospitaIs abounded. Visitors came to Baghdad from all over the world, especially learned men and students and artists, for it was known that the Caliph welcomed all who were learned or who were skilful in the arts.

The Caliph himself lived in great luxury surrounded by slaves, and his women-folk had taken to the harem. The Abbaside Empire was at the height of its outward glory during the reign of Haruna al-Rashid from 786 to 809 A.C. Embassies came to Harun from the Emperor of China and Emperor Charlemagne in the West. Baghdad and the Abbaside dominions were far in advance of the Europe of those days, except for Arab Spain, in all the arts of government, in trade, and in the development of learning.

The Abbaside period is especially interesting for us because of the new interest in science which it started. Science, as you know, is a very big thing in the modern world, and we owe a great deal to it. Science does not simply sit down and pray for things to happen, but seeks to find out why things happen. It experiments and tries again and again, and sometimes fails and sometimes succeeds - and so bit by bit it adds to human knowledge. This modern world of ours is very different from the ancient world or the Middle Ages. This great difference is largely due to science, for the modem world has been made by science.

Among the ancients we do not find the scientific method in Egypt or China. or India. We find just a bit of it in old Greece. In Rome again it was absent. But the Arabs had this scientific spirit of inquiry, and so they may be considered the fathers of modern science. In some subjects, like medicine and mathematics, they learnt much from India. Indian scholars and mathematicians came in Iarge numbers to Baghdad. Many Arab students went to Takshashila in North India, which was still a great university, specializing in medicine. Sanskrit books on medical and other subjects were especially translated into Arabic. Many things - for example, paper-making - the Arabs learnt from China. But on the basis of the knowledge gained from others they made their own researches and made several important discoveries. They made the first telescope and the mariner's compass. In medicine, Arab physicians and surgeons were famous all over Europe.

Baghdad was, of course, the great centre of all these intellectual activities. In the West, Cordoba, the capital of Arab Spain, was another centre. There were many other university centres in the Arab world, where the life of the intellect flourished -there was Cairo or al-Qahira, "the Victorious", Basra and Kufa. But over all these famous cities towered Baghdad," the capital of Islam, the eye of Iraq, the seat of empire, the centre of beauty, culture and arts", as an Arab historian describes it. It had a population of over 2,000,000 and thus was far bigger than modern Calcutta or Bombay.

It may interest you to know that the habit of wearing socks and stocking. It is said to have begun in Baghdad among the rich. They were called "mozas", and the Hindustani word for them must be derived from this. So also the French "chemise", which comes from "kamis", a shirt. Both the kamis and the moza went from the Arabs to the Byzantines in Constantinople and from there to Europe.

The Arabs had always been great travellers. They continued their long journeys across the seas and established colonies in Africa, on the coasts of India, in Malaysia and even in China. One of their famous travellers was Alberuni, who came to India and left, like Hiuen Tsang, a record of his travels.

The Arabs were also historians, and we know a great deal about them from their own books and histories. And all of us know what fine stories and romances they could write. Thousands and thousands of people have never heard of the Abbaside Khalifas and of their empire, but they know of Baghdad of the Alf Laila wa Laila, the "Thousand and one Nights", the city of mystery and romance. The empire of the imagination is often more real and more lasting than the empire of fact.

Soon after the death of Harun al-Rashid trouble came to the Arab Empire. There were disorders, and different parts of the empire fell away, the provincial governors becoming hereditary rulers. The caliphs became more and more powerless, till a time came when a caliph ruled over the city of Baghdad only and a few villages around it. A caliph was even dragged out of his palace by his own soldiery and killed. Then for a while some strong men rose who ruled from Baghdad and made the caliph a dependant of theirs.

Meanwhile the unity of Islam was a thing of the distant past. Separate kingdoms arose everywhere from Egypt to Khorasan in Central Asia. And from farther east still the nomad tribes moved west. The old Turks of Central Asia became Muslims and came and took possession of Baghdad. They are known as the Seljuq Turks. They defeated the Byzantine army of Constantinople utterly, much to the surprise of Europe. For Europe had thought that the Arabs and Muslims had spent their strength and were getting weaker and weaker. It was true that the Arabs had declined greatly, but the Seljuq Turks now came on the scene to uphold the banner of Islam and to challenge Europe with it.

This challenge was soon taken up, as we shall see, and the Christian nations of Europe organized crusades to fight the Muslims and reconquer Jerusalem, their holy city. For over 100 years Christianity and Islam fought for mastery in Syria and Palestine and Asia Minor and exhausted each other, and soaked every inch of the soil almost of these countries with human blood. And the flourishing cities of these parts lost their trade and greatness, and the smiling fields were often converted into a wilderness.

So they fought each other. But even before their fighting was over, across Asia in Mongolia there arose Chengiz Khan, the Mongol Shaker of the Earth, as he was called, who was indeed going to shake Asia and Europe. He and his descendants finally put an end to Baghdad and its empire. By the time the Mongols had finished with the great and famous city of Baghdad, it was almost a heap of dust and ashes and most of its 2,000,000 inhabitants were dead. This was in 1258 A.C.

Baghdad is now again a flourishing city and is the capital of the State of Iraq. But it is only a shadow of its former self, for it never recovered from the death and desolation which the Mongols brought.

Courtesy: Jawaharlal Nehru, Glimpses of World History [Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989, Centennial Edition], pp. 149-153.

Part I

Part II

Part IV

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