A Better High Middle Ages for the Abode of Islam

[LSCatilina]

What makes you think that?

Mainly because, contrary to the feudal system that was forced to have some consideration for the king (to resume, because it was the legitimisation of the power of great nobles, overhtrowing him would have gave pretext to their own vassals to do the same with them), the islamic institutions didn't were forced to respect the amir/caliphe as their "lieges"'s land weren't given by him : it was their own, they gained themselves.

I think you are looking at things a bit optimistically here. This was a struggle for the throne of France which different parties viewed as property. That family members fought doesn't seem dispositive; this happened in Al-Andalus, or in the Ottoman Empire, too.

Maybe you think i'm opsimistic, but the concept of kingdom as the private poperty of the sovereign disappeared with the Post-Carolingian Reformation.
Let's say that between Hugues Capet and Philippe Le Bel, you had still this idea present but concurenceed. But after Philippe, the main concept was more "the king is the guardian of a state, he's not its owner but the garant of the respect of its liberties".

You're probably confusing the TITLE which was an inheritence, and the KINGDOM which was a proper thing.
In Al-Andalus, at the contrary, the lands were considered as propety and the titles as a moral persona.

So, like in Scotland, where there was tension between the Norman lords and the old elite?

Sort of yes. But it's the formation of feudality in England, and it couldn't be considered as a normal feudal situation.

I mean, John the Fearless in Burgundy was killed by his son in law. This isn't a warm and fuzzy society either.

Did i say that? No. What i said is western feudalism was more stable than the tribal structures of Arabo-Islamic world.
By the way...Yes this murder (not wanted by Charles VII, but the Armagnac party forced him to accept this) was mainly political, again in the struggle between Armagnac and Bourguignon parties. You can read the "Diairy of a Parisian bourgeois", it's really interesting about it.

I'm not sure why this is a downside here, even if we grant that it's true. (And the reign of the French monarchs during the 14th century makes one skeptical)..

Well, I am sure of it. Can you give me ONE occasion between 1000 and 1500 where the king was seriously threatened to be overthrow by someone that didn't have a serious pretext? Like, i don't know...A familial tie? I'll prevent you to loose your time : no.

It really looks to me like both Christians and Muslims united and divided. Almovarids, Umayyads, Almohads; Sanchez the Fat, and then his heirs.

Then i would suggest you to study more closely who's fighting during the steps of Reconquista.
You have almost all the times muslims under the authority of the amir or caliphe that join the Christian, when you have almost never Christian joining the islamic army against Christians. The only exemple of this that came in my memory is the sack of Santiago de Compostella, and even there, Christian tried to betray Almanzor to help the Leonese.

 

[Pachac]

T
Toward the later phase of the Caliphate before the Mongols sacked Baghdad the Caliphate was actually starting to regain temporal power, which actually fits in with how Japanese Cloistered Emperors could and did act but still indicates they weren't just paper tigers. The Muslim rulers were legally speaking vassals of the Caliphs, and because the Middle Eastern state system did not disintegrate like the Western one, but instead degenerated into a less direct system, the bonds of state still existed to a degree they did not in the West.

The simplest way to put it is that in the early Middle Eastern Islamic era the Caliphs still had a legal claim to power that no Western rulers ever achieved until the Early Modern era, and had capability to enforce it, though the effectiveness of the enforcement could be as ineffectual as Madrid-in-Peru. In the West there was no equivalent continuing legal authority, bar the ERE itself.

Eh, I wouldn't really agree with this; after 946 Caliphal Temporal power was irreversibly lost and although the Buyids still kept them around to proclaim them 'Great Amirs', and many of the various new emirates emerging from the disintegration of Caliphal authority still paid some homage to him, this was lost in the Seluk invasions. Between Byzantium, the Seljuks, and the Fatimids, the Abbasids lost their authority as real leaders in a decentralized caliphate, which they could at least claim in the era of their collapse. After their second rise and their battles with Khwarezm, they could claim themselves as powerful, but not in the way they had been before. the Ayyubids and the structures that the Seljuks imposed made it impossible to revert back to everyone calling themselves 'Amirs' and having a lovely time with the Caliph.

 

[MNP]

The Caliphs were regaining temporal power in some small ways in Iraq, but I don't think it was anywhere near the level of what Snake Featherston suggests.

 

[Pachac]

The Caliphs were regaining temporal power in some small ways in Iraq, but I don't think it was anywhere near the level of what Snake Featherston suggests.

They had considerable opposition from the Ayyubids, who the Atabeg of Mosul was under after Al-Kamil expanded into both there and Eastern Turkey as far as Ahlat. After the failure of their wars with Khwarezm Shah, they were hammed in on both sides by dangerous powers, especially after As-Salih took control of the Ayyubids.

 

[Elfwine]

They had considerable opposition from the Ayyubids, who the Atabeg of Mosul was under after Al-Kamil expanded into both there and Eastern Turkey as far as Ahlat. After the failure of their wars with Khwarezm Shah, they were hammed in on both sides by dangerous powers, especially after As-Salih took control of the Ayyubids.

Would a weaker Ayyubid "state" (confederation?) be enough for them to expand to the west of the Euphrates?

In the short run (up to the time the Mongols decided the Khwarezm-shahs needed to eaten up), that is.

 

[Snake Featherston]

Eh, I wouldn't really agree with this; after 946 Caliphal Temporal power was irreversibly lost and although the Buyids still kept them around to proclaim them 'Great Amirs', and many of the various new emirates emerging from the disintegration of Caliphal authority still paid some homage to him, this was lost in the Seluk invasions. Between Byzantium, the Seljuks, and the Fatimids, the Abbasids lost their authority as real leaders in a decentralized caliphate, which they could at least claim in the era of their collapse. After their second rise and their battles with Khwarezm, they could claim themselves as powerful, but not in the way they had been before. the Ayyubids and the structures that the Seljuks imposed made it impossible to revert back to everyone calling themselves 'Amirs' and having a lovely time with the Caliph.

Certainly, but this is because the institutions of state were losing their power to coerce in an uneven process. There was no clear legal break in this institutional tie until the Sacking of Baghdad. The institutions of empire degenerated in a fashion more like that of the ERE than in the former Western Empire, the state's institutions survived in a fashion that required something of the Sacking of Baghdad's scale to break.

The reality of the claims to power were something different, yes, but this just underscored the problems of those states that de facto were acting with a power they had no legal claim to.