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  • When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World: the Rise and Fall of Islam’s Greatest Dynasty
  • Russ Rodgers
When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World: the Rise and Fall of Islam’s Greatest Dynasty. By Hugh Kennedy . Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2005. ISBN 0-306-81435-8. Photographs. Charts. Maps. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. vi, 326. $26.00.

Hugh Kennedy's When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World fills a large gap in our knowledge and understanding of early Islamic history. Kennedy has put together a comprehensive history of the Abbasid Caliphate, the Islamic empire which ruled the Middle East and northern Africa from 750 to 940 AD after having overthrown its predecessor, the Umayyad dynasty, centered on Damascus and seen by many at the time as having usurped the succession to the Prophet Muhammad. Even such well-regarded works as Guy Le Strange's Baghdad during the Abbasid Caliphate (Greenwood Press, 1983 [1900]) focus only on select corners of the empire.

This is a timely work. Today the West desperately needs a better understanding of the evolution of the Islamic world, and yet by and large there is still a dearth of good studies on the subject. Research on the ancient and classical Arabic and Persian worlds is made complicated to begin with by the difficult languages and dialects scholars are obliged to work in, along with the initial reliance of these peoples on oral history. This problem is compounded by the inability of most scholars studying this subject, save for the most ambitious and perhaps even lucky, to penetrate the homelands of the early Muslim dynasties to examine the terrain and archeological sites for themselves. Thus, the region continues to exude the aura of the mysterious, harking back to images from The Arabian Nights. Kennedy had a chance to tour many of the key sites of the Abbasid Caliphate, including the important cities of Merv in present-day Turkmenistan and Samarra north of Baghdad, and this intimate knowledge is apparent as he describes the rise and fall of this great Islamic dynasty.

The author's approach is largely chronological, but within the broader work he inserts sections to explain the more intricate issues involved in Abbasid rule, such as the nature of palaces and fortifications, along with the intrigues of harem and court life. And while the work is not a military history per se, it contains plenty of descriptions of military coups, court plots, and general mayhem. Kennedy's examination of the Abbasid collapse in the late 800s reads more like a novel of intrigue, duplicity, and heroism than what many might wrongly anticipate as another round of dull history.

Kennedy offers us interesting, and often surprising, glimpses into this mysterious world. The author demonstrates that while the women of the commoners might be little more than powerless compared to their men, the harem was anything but the realm of weak women. Wealth, property, and even a little intrigue, flowed from the hidden world of the women of the Caliph. Moreover, contrary to the claims of many modern writers, the author tells us that the Abbasid Empire had an insatiable appetite for foreign, especially Greek, scientific and technical texts, in an effort to profit from the advances of other cultures. [End Page 226]

Still, the Abbasid Caliphate tended to be an inward looking dynasty, unlike its predecessor. While engaging in modest expeditions against their old antagonists the Byzantines, the Abbasids were more concerned with internal affairs, especially those concerning the military. Kennedy demonstrates that the importation of Turkish slaves, who then became the famous ghulam (originally servants, later slave soldiers) of the Abbasid military, set the empire on a course for eventual collapse. These foreigners, despised by the indigenous elite yet thirsting for what they saw as their rightful place in the scheme of history, were at the heart of the court intrigues that sent the empire spiraling into chaos. Hugh Kennedy's When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World provides a readable and intimate look into the greatness and tragedy of what was arguably the greatest Islamic empire in history.

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