Transcript Abbasid Decline

Abbasid Decline
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Shift (sudden) from Umayyad to Abbasid
leadership.
Increased bureaucratic expansion, absolutism
and luxurious living.
Extended absolute power over their subjects.
Both Arabs and others were integrated into the
Muslim Community.
Most conversions were very peaceful.
Like the Umayyads, the Abbasids used religious
legitimacy to govern their empires.
Abbasid Decline
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Disintegrated between the ninth and thirteen
centuries. Peasant revolts and slavery
increased.
Caliph al-Mahdi failed to reconcile moderate
Shi’i to Abbasid rule. He also surrounded his
court with luxury and failed to establish
succession.
Civil Violence drained the imperial treasury.
Abbasid Decline
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Caliphs increased the strain by
constructing costly new imperial centers.
Peasants had imposing tax burdens and
agricultural villages were abandoned and
irrigation works fell into disrepair.
Peasant rebellions.
Arab Women
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The freedom and influence possessed during
the first centuries of Islam severely declined.
Male-dominated Abbasid society decided that
men needed to be segregated from all but the
women of their family.
The harem and the veil symbolized subjugation
to males.
The seclusion of elite women, wives and
concubines continued and veiling spread to all.
Arab Women
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Abbasid wealth generated a large demand for
concubines and male slaves.
Most came from non-Muslim neighboring lands.
Poor women remained economically active, but
the rich were kept home.
They married at puberty and spent their lives in
domestic management and childbearing.
At higher political levels women lobbied for the
advancement of their sons’ careers.
Nomadic Incursions
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By the mid-tenth century breakaway former
provinces began to challenge Abbasid rule.
When the Buyids of Persia captured Baghdad in
945.
Caliphs became powerless puppets controlled
by sultans, the actual rulers.
The Seljuk Turks defeated the Buyids in 1055
and ruled the remnants of the Abbasid Empire
for two centuries.
Nomadic Incursions
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The Seljuks (Turks) were Sunnis who tried
to eliminate the Shi’a (genocide).
Seljuk (Turks) military power restored the
diminished caliphate.
Egyptians and Byzantines were defeated,
which opened Anatolia (Turkey), the
center of the later Ottoman Empire, to
settlement by Turkic nomads.
Crusades
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The West European Christian knights in 1096
invaded Muslim territory to capture the biblical
Holy Land.
They established small, rival kingdoms that were
not a threat to the more powerful surrounding
Muslim leaders.
Muslims reunited under Saladin recaptured most
near the close of the 12th century. The last fell
in 1291.
Crusades
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The Crusades had an important impact
upon the Christian world through
intensifying the existing European
borrowing from the more sophisticated
technology, architecture, medicine,
mathematics, science, and general
culture of Muslim civilization
Europeans recovered much Greek
learning lost after the fall of Rome.
Crusades
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Italian merchants remained in Islamic
centers after the Crusader defeat and
were far more important carriers of Islamic
advanced knowledge than the Christian
warriors. Muslim peoples were little
interested in aspects of European
civilization.
Sufi Mystics
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Sufis developed vibrant mysticism, but
ulama (religious scholars) became more
conservative and suspicious of nonMuslim influence and scientific thought.
Sufis created the most traditions, but
often was opposed by Orthodox
scholars.
Sufi Mystics
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Sufis created the most innovative religious
movement. They reacted against the teachings
of the ulama and sought personal union with
Allah through asceticism, medication, songs,
dancing, or drugs
Had reputations as healers and miracle workers;
other continued the expansion of Islam
Nomadic Invasions
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In the early 13th century, central Asian nomadic
invaders, the Mongols, threatened Islamic lands
Chinggis Khan destroyed the Turkic-Persian
kingdoms east of Baghdad.
His grandson, continued the assault
The last Abbasid ruler was killed when Baghdad
fell in 1258. The once great Abbasid capital
became an unimportant backwater in the Muslim
world.