Content area
Full Text
The reign of the Abbasid caliph al-Muqtafī (r. 1136-1160) was one of great historical significance. Despite his having been chosen and elevated to the caliphate by the Seljuq sultans during the nadir of Abbasid power, after they had murdered one caliph and deposed another, it was al-Muqtafī who finally succeeded in reestablishing Abbasid political rule over Iraq. This article traces the course of al-Muqtafī's relations with the Seljuq sultans, analyzes how and why he succeeded in reviving Abbasid political rule, and considers the import of the events that transpired during his reign.
INTRODUCTION: THE SELJUQ CHALLENGE TO THE CALIPHATE
A new era in world history began with the Seljuq Turkmen invasion of the Islamic heartland in the eleventh century, which resulted in the almost millennium-long Turkic political and military domination of the central Islamic lands.1 The arrival of the Seljuqs in the central Islamic lands was also fraught with significance for Islamic civilization. Among many other milestones, the Seljuq dynasty was the first and only non-caliphal dynasty in the pre-Mongol period to conquer the entire Middle East, from Central Asia to Syria, and the only Sunni Persianate dynasty ever to conquer the caliphal heartlands in Iraq while the caliphate lasted. The Seljuq conquest of the Middle East therefore also marked a turning point in the history of the caliphate.
The caliphate itself was, of course, the formative, fundamental political institution of Islam, and until the coming of the Seljuqs, in Patricia Crone's words, "all legitimate power flowed from the [caliph], so that all public offices would be void in his absence [.. .]."2 Even after the political power of the caliphs had crumbled and local and regional rulers seized rule by force throughout the Islamic lands, these rulers, unless they were sectarian, had never claimed for themselves any special political authority independent of the caliph's; indeed, they called themselves by the traditional title used by caliphal governors from the beginning: amir, or commander.3 Although they did concurrently adopt additional, more grandiose titles of rule taken predominantly from pre-Islamic Iran,4 conceptually, in Islamic terms, they were still caliphal governors, even if in fact the caliphs had no control over their actions and rule.
This Islamic legal fiction of the caliphs' remaining the font of legitimate...