When Baghdad Ruled the World
by Hugh Kennedy
Summary
The ancient land of Mesopotamia—modern day Iraq—has given rise to many empires: Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian. But none surpassed the power and influence of the Abbasid caliphs who ruled from Baghdad.
In this deftly woven narrative, Hugh Kennedy introduces us to the rich history and flourishing culture of the period, to the men and women of the lavish palaces at Baghdad and Samarra—the caliphs, viziers, eunuchs, and women of the harem who populated the glorious days of the Arabian Nights. It unveils an unforgettable portrait of a time and a place featuring larger-than-life rulers, exotic slave girls, inventive tortures, and enough court intrigue to frighten a Borgia.
Excerpt
In about the year 720, a wandering perfume seller was doing the rounds of the small villages in the semi=-desert areas of southern Jordan. It was an out-of-the-way area, a land of small farming villages and Bedouin encampments, far from the centres of power in Damascus 400 kilometers to the north or Medina 640 kilometers to the south-east. There was nothing unusual about his appearance and he became accepted as a feature of local life. This is just what he intended, for Bukayr ibn Mahan was a man with a mission that went far beyond scraping a living as a wandering pedlar in this remote part of the Muslim world. To begin with he was a man of some wealth in his native Kufa in southern Iraq. He had traveled widely, serving as a volunteer in the Muslim armies conquering the mountainous area of Jurjan at the southern end of the Caspian Sea and visiting Khurasan, the vast wild province of north-east Iran which marked the limits of the Muslim world in central Asia. Just before he left home, he heard that his brother had died in distant Sind (southern Pakistan), leaving a considerable fortune, and he was urged to go there to secure his inheritance. He refused, having more important things on his mind.
Travel does not seem to have been difficult for a man in his position. The Muslim empire, which had been ruled by the Umayyad dynasty since 661, had few internal frontiers. While Coptic Christians bound to their native Egyptian soil were obliged to wear lead seals around their necks and carry written passports if they wished to move from one town to another, Bukayr was a Muslim, a member, if only a humble one, of the new Muslim ruling class, and no one looked askance when he crossed from Iraq to the Syrian capital at Damascus, bought a donkey, loaded it up with perfumes and set off south.
When he had spent enough time in the area to be accepted as a simple salesman, Bukayr came to the settlement at Humayma. He asked where he could stay and was directed to the guest house. Here he took off his disguise and his traveling clothes and began his real business. Humayma today is a sand-blown ruin in the scorching plains of southern Jordan, known as the Hisma. It is only a day’s journey from the palm-fringed Red Sea and Aqaba, but no se breezes reach this far inland. The surrounding mountains are stony and barren, while in the distance, on the south-eastern horizon, through the shimmering heat haze, the sudden and dramatic peaks of the Mountains of Rum appear, startlingly spiky at the end of the flat, sandy plain.
Nowadays Humayma is uninhabited, but in ancient times it looked very different. The Nabataeans, builders of Petra, had created a settlement here. Using the careful techniques of water harvesting, gathering the run-off from the winter rains in cisterns, they had made agriculture possible. Under Roman rule the settlement had flourished, churches were built and a bath house established, in itself a minor miracle of hydraulic engineering in this wasteland.
Reprinted with permission of DaCapo Press http://www.dacapopress.com
Reviews
"A beautifully written and definitive history of Baghdad...opening the doors to the old city and letting its secrets spill out”—Library Journal
"Superb...this is compelling reading for anyone concerned with the perils of power, the medieval Islamic legacy and the images that Baghdad continues to conjure in the modern imagination”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Rich in detail and most timely"—Kirkus Reviews
Author's Biography
Hugh Kennedy is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and Professor of Middle Eastern History at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. He is the author of the acclaimed Mongols, Huns and Vikings.