-
Mu’ayyid al-Din Ibn al-Alqami
- Syracuse University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Mu’ayyid al-Din Ibn al-Alqami the day finally came when Mu’ayyid al-Din had had enough of this state of affairs. Of what use were all his efforts when in the end they served neither himself nor the Empire? On this day he decided to remain at home and while away the morning on the terrace that gave out onto the Tigris and the wide panorama of al-Rusafa and Karkh. He had caused the structure to be built with this very view in mind. He dressed himself in a light cloak and turban, and having informed the servants that he was indisposed and must on no account be disturbed, he mounted to the second floor of his mansion. The terrace was furnished much like an intimate reception room. It was spread with carpets and cushions, and boasted a number of board-games for those of his guests who wished to amuse themselves. He sat down next to a chess-board that rested on a large cushion. The game of chess was widely favored in Baghdad in those days amongst men who enjoyed vigorous mental exercise, or whose interest in politics made them appreciate the intellectual brinksmanship that the practice of chess inevitably sharpens. He toyed restlessly with the pieces ranged on the board and moved them about in strategic combinations, but this idle play failed to soothe his troubled spirit. He put the pieces aside and rose to take a seat on a high chair whose position commanded an uninterrupted view of Baghdad. The weather was fine and his eyes ranged unimpeded over the historic city intersected by the blessed Tigris, on whose banks stood the palaces and schools, hospitals and mosques, public baths and gardens famed throughout the Empire. His mind wandered and his thoughts turned to the history of the city’s founding five and a half centuries earlier. The Caliphs who had ruled over it succeeded one another in his mind’s eye, and he recalled their changing fortunes and the days of its great glory under Al-Rashid, when it was the indisputable capital of the entire Muslim world and the wealth of | tree of pearls, queen of egypt most of the civilized lands from Turkistan to the Atlantic Ocean poured into its overflowing coffers. In those days, the kings of the earth had humbly sought the favor of its great Sultan on bended knee. Catastrophe then befell the Barakmids, the true founders of Abbasid glory, and their magnificence gave way to depravity. The great dissension between AlAmin and Al-Ma’mun followed, and many souls perished in consequence. These and other political upheavals had taken place in quick succession, shaking the very foundations of the Abbasid State. Petty princelings now imposed their conditions upon the Empire and began to claim their independence. Fortune hunters hungered after its riches and, growing bold, they dared to invade the great city. These were the days of the upstart Buwayhids and the Seljuks. The influence of the Caliphs began to wane, their dominion was confined to Baghdad and its immediate environs, and they became mere instruments in the hands of their own administrations. Their dreams of glory faded away and their ambitions were increasingly confined to wine, song, and the pleasures of the flesh. This sorrowful rumination turned Mu’ayyid al-Din’s thoughts once more to the present Caliph. His gaze fell upon the Palace of the Crown across the river on the left bank of the Tigris. Lush gardens and great flowering trees circled its perimeter, and it boasted a fine marble pier along which a number of sturdy vessels were moored. He tried to imagine what this palace must have looked like a century earlier. Its façade had been built upon five arches, each arch made up of ten slabs of marble five cubits long. A great fire had reduced it to a blackened shell, and the gorgeous slabs of marble were replaced with baked brick. The marble with which it had been built at the end of the ninth century by order of the newly invested Caliph Al-Muktafi Billah had come from the ruins of the White Palace of the Sassanian Khosraus, of which nothing now stood but the Great Hall. Some of this precious material had also been used to pave the pier. This architectural history struck Ibn al-Alqami as offering a lesson of sorts. “And so the...