The Umayyad Caliphate is well known for discriminating against people who weren't Arab practitioners of Sunni Islam. What if the Umayyads were more inclusive?
WI: Less discriminatory Umayyad Caliphate
- Thread starter Night Gaul
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This might change a lot the whole caliphate, as there would be more push to integrated all Non-Muslim via Conversion, Ummayd legitimacy come their sucess and wanting to be seen as Uthman(RANJ) sucessors, so that would be the way, long term would means they keep more Anatolia peninsula and having more berbers to push into europe...so an alternate Tourls might see the end of the Peppiniands
What do we mean by more inclusive? It should be noted, that the Umayyad suffered less internal non-Muslim derived rebellions than the Abbasid. Perhaps precisely due to their more appeasing time to Dhimmi and non-Muslims.
The issue was with converts, Ummayd just for money put double accounting with both Jyzia and Zakat to early converts and first gen muslim that weren't arabic, that is why berber revolted to begin with, that is the point, Umayyad more open to both non and newly converted/returned muslims
This is a somewhat reductionist take on the Umayyads. The bigger issue with them in regards to non-Arabs was that they slowed down the assimilation of the muwalladun into the ranks of the Caliphate Army Register.
This was a significant problem, because seniority was the basis on which salaries were paid out, and as a result, the garrison towns in Iraq and Syria disproportionately benefitted from the system. The distinction between Arabs and non-Arabs was a financial one, first and foremost. They slowed down assimilation because they did not want to pay out into a larger pie, during a time period in which the loot and riches of conquest was drying up. This was somewhat inevitable; if they managed to keep up the conquests, or if the Rashidun Caliphs had left them with a better and more equitable system for paying out the salaries of the army register, or they reformed this during the time of Marwan I (who did essentially as he liked and to a large degree remade the Caliphal system entirely), than perhaps this tension could have been averted.
The Umayyads were less an Arab Supremacist bigoted dynasty than one akin to the Canadian Family Compact, in that they gave financially preferential treatment to successors and heirs of the founding generation and generated resentment. Conquest societies making the transition into non-conquest societies always have this problem. The Umayyads also had to deal with horrific internal tribal feuding between the Qaysis and Yemenis that internally divided their stronghold in Syria.
This was a significant problem, because seniority was the basis on which salaries were paid out, and as a result, the garrison towns in Iraq and Syria disproportionately benefitted from the system. The distinction between Arabs and non-Arabs was a financial one, first and foremost. They slowed down assimilation because they did not want to pay out into a larger pie, during a time period in which the loot and riches of conquest was drying up. This was somewhat inevitable; if they managed to keep up the conquests, or if the Rashidun Caliphs had left them with a better and more equitable system for paying out the salaries of the army register, or they reformed this during the time of Marwan I (who did essentially as he liked and to a large degree remade the Caliphal system entirely), than perhaps this tension could have been averted.
The Umayyads were less an Arab Supremacist bigoted dynasty than one akin to the Canadian Family Compact, in that they gave financially preferential treatment to successors and heirs of the founding generation and generated resentment. Conquest societies making the transition into non-conquest societies always have this problem. The Umayyads also had to deal with horrific internal tribal feuding between the Qaysis and Yemenis that internally divided their stronghold in Syria.
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I think the lack of pressure of conversion was a stronger factor in this, however. I don't have a ton of background on the Abbasid era, but I know that in Spain, Christian revolts were very rare early on, and only started up once a critical mass of people started converting and provoked an identity crisis among the population of non-Muslims. The 9th and early 10th centuries were chock full of rebellions, while the 8th saw mostly infighting between Muslims.
I would also imagine that the Abbasid's reliance on slave soldiers and later subservience to the Buyids provoked significant internal unrest among Muslims, with the decadence accusation used widely, not to mention the intense conflict among religious scholars over questions of authority, so it is not as if only non-Muslims rose against their rule.
I would disagree. The Berbers rebelled not due to the fact that they were being taxed after a 'conversion' (which is disputed, they were not Muslim according to the standards of the time). They rebelled as part of a commandment from their religious opinion and a willingness to overturn Arab Umayyad rule. It was an inherently Kharijite rebellion through and through. Al-Tabari, I believe, among others, mention the Kharijite movements within the region and their use of the kitman to acquire certain governmental positions in the region and then mass convert the populace into a revolutionary arm of sorts for the destruction of Umayyad power in Northern Africa. From its beginning it was an inner-Muslim conflict, not among new converts but one wherein the Kharijites, with their rebellious instincts and revolutionary mentality, sought the downfall of the Umayyad state in general and the rise of a more revolutionary caliphate with different systems of rule entirely.
The same sort of rebellion occurred in the Abbasid period in five different incidents. Until the arrival of the Saljuq authority, the early Umayyad and Abbasid realms were always in danger of this sectarian and revolutionary conflict.
Ah yes those guys, there reason why few liked them, thanks for some points help a lot to clear some myths about the era, again maybe more assimilationist Ummayd would strangle Khajarite power in their cradle and peg down for good or a long time?. that is other things would help them with the POD idea
The Kharijites were interesting in that they seemed, much like the Gunpowder Plot crew in England, to be both a group that was routinely blamed for all that was under the sun sometimes hyperbolically but also a genuine threat to Caliphal authority for hundreds of years afterwards, with a revolutionary ideology that rejected the authority of contemporary Caliphs and would try to appeal to any and all who had grievances with the status quo. The Berbers were one such group, but by no means the only. Because so much of what we know about Islamic history was written by religious scholars, the Kharijites tend to be talked about usually polemically.
However, as far as strangling the Kharijites in the cradle, the best chance for that would have been for them to have been killed in the First Fitna in some kind of last stand that left no survivors and prevented martyrdom legends from taking hold, as which happened in OTL. And by this, I mean that the Kharijites do not spread far and wide, so this would not be a Karbala type incident.
That does not however lead to the extinguishment of rebellion in the Islamic World. The Kharijites were just convenient lightning rods for rebellious anti-establishment sentiment.
In a scenario where the Kharijites are all killed off, likely future rebellions will be made in the name of someone like Ibn al-Zubayr (asserting an anti-inheritance model of succession; likely ignoring his Qurashi focus, but using him as a symbol of desire for an empowered council), or some other figure or movement I haven't thought of.
On a somewhat less related note, I think it is also possible that revolts against heterodox practices could have attracted even more support than in OTL. Muhammad ibn al-Wahhab did not emerge until the 18th century, but disgust against nature worship and tomb veneration, for example, was palpable for centuries beforehand, and could have emerged as a popular movement long before.
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Agreed. The Umayyads looked out upon the Caliphate and saw millions of people who hadn't yet been converted or Arabized, and all they had to deal with it was the Arab federate tribes they came up with. Meanwhile the Abbasids hear "ajam" and think "oh, the guys who helped us win Khorasan from an Arab governor appointed through the Umayyad system of competing nepotisms?" Their perspectives on non-Arabs were molded by very different circumstances.
Also the practical appeal of Khawarij seems to have come down to "the Caliphate is illegitimate because it's always going to be used for horse-trading by powerful people; put your trust in your neighborhood Imam instead." That kind of particularism/skepticism isn't going to go away just because the government is nicer; if Ibadism can't be the basis for "local/accountable" Islam then Shi'ism just might. Fatimid Ismailism and Mzab Ibadism were born of the same mountains.
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Generally, we can say that in the Abbasid period there was three or four types of internal conflict.
1. Non-Muslim rebellions. These were of different types, but generally were split into those seeking an end to Islamic or Arab rule or they were short term localized resistance to certain policy decisions. The former was typified by rebellions such as the Khurramiyya who rebelled with the supposed intent of overthrowing local Arab rule or by the Qazinvand dynasty conspiracy movement in Mazandran. The latter is by say the Coptic revolt, which was against certain un-Islamic taxes implemented by local authorities. Coptic Christians in essence, sought to remind their Islamic rulers of the contract between them regarding taxation.
2. Disputes of authority. These are rebellions or conflicts borne simply from the governors of a particular region. Technically, the Caliphate operated under a system of governance that combined Roman feudalism with that of state centralism. Technically, the Caliph was the liege who appointed governors and could control these as he saw fit. However, the Caliph did not possess a centralized army due to Islamic restrictions upon conscription, as such all armies were private affairs. Families would raise an army through their ties of kinship (like in traditional Arab society) and expand it by offering loot to the people around them and hence would gather a large force of soldiery without any conscription. However, the Islamic rulings were that men could go to the fringes of the Caliphate if permitted by the Caliph and join local governate armies and wage war upon the fringes, both for a religious duty and for a living earning made in loot. Due to the fact that the Caliph is going to typically be seated in the centre of the Islamic world and not facing any exterior foe directly, the majority of private soldiers flock to non-Caliphal forces.
As such, the Caliphate would often be filled with governors having large armies and were heading regions that became in essence feudal holdings. These governors upon the weakening of Abbasid legitimacy in the Mihna and the declines in the 850s onward, began to drift from Abbasid control. These led to large conflicts between the Abbasid central government in Iraq against the varied arrayed governors, such as the Saffarid, Tulunid and for a time, the Buyyid.
3. Sectarian conflict. This was the famous and near constant revolts based upon religion within the Caliphate. Typically from various Shi'a or Khawarij-Shurha, these rebels advocated a revolutionary caliphate of sorts or sought a millenial view of reality, believing in the imminent end-times and the necessity to destroy the unrighteous Caliphate to hasten the return of the Imams or the coming new age. The most destructive wars during the Abbasid and Umayyad caliphate were of this variety, with:
The Najdat Revolt (682-693 CE Kahrijite), The First and Second Azariq Revolt (685-698 CE Kharijite), The Peacock Army Mutiny (696-698 CE Kharijite and Shi'a)The Great Berber Revolt (739-743 CE Kharijite), The Revolt of Zayd ibn Ali (740 CE Shi'a), The Great Ibadi Revolt of Arabia (745-747 CE Kharijite), The Shumayt Millenial Rebellion (815 CE Shi'a), The Rebellion of Yahya ibn Umar (864-865 CE Shi'a), Kharijite Rebellion of Jazira (866-896 CE Kharijite), The Zanj Rebellion (868-883 CE Shi'a and Kharijite) and the Qarmatian Wars (896-909 CE Shi'a). There were others too, that combined itself with the following below.
4. General banditry rebellions. These were rebellions made by pirates, bandits, dispossessed, peasants and slaves. Often, it was the byproduct of earlier religious rebellions, when the rebellion failed, often the people remained in revolt but without a clear objective aside from establishing a small localized republic that attacked wealthy inhabitants, took slaves, looted, pillaged, battled the central government and made trade deals with the Bedouin and others who moved below the radar so to speak. The Great Batihah state of the Sawad is the best example of this, drawn from refugees and veterans of the Zanj and Qarmatian wars, they formed a small republic in Iraq that battled the Abbasid and Buyyid authorities in the swamplands and on the rivers. They originally likely had some sort of religious leaders, most likely Kharijite, but diverged into simply a bandit and pirate republic. Another example is the Kharijite rebels of Balochistan, which were derived from the earlier first and second Azariq Khawarij revolutions. These rebels in Balochistan had seemingly no objective aside from banditry and acting as highwaymen with the veil of religious revolution.
One can certainly read the accounts of al-Tabari regarding Muhammad ibn Ali al-Dibaj the so-called 'Sahib al-Zanj' and see the modus operandi for the rise of Khawarij-based revolts in the Islamic world without any polemic (which in the Arabic text only begins around 870, when he begins to be called 'the disgusting one'). It is quite an interesting read, for al-Dibaj (this was the nickname that he supposedly referred to himself by, in imitation of the Shumaytiyya Shi'a millennial sect) was extremely sophisticated in his revolutionary methods. If one is familiar with say the ideas of a vanguard party, this is what al-Dibja seemed to have gathered in Baghdad and then in Arabia, gathering a crew of select radicals and loyalists. With this group, he utilized a hiyyal (deceit technique) that is forbidden in Islam, called kitman wherein one lies outright with the intention of offensive political gains. He would send his people into the villages to spread misinformation and into the cities to work for competing politcal factions with the intent to turn parties and tribes against one another. While he sent his underlings to do this, himself and a few others stationed themselves in an abandoned fortress and began to speak to slaves in the area. One slave after another was indoctrinated as they walked the passes for around a year until a critical mass was made and he made his move and began using his slaves and underlings to attack Arab estates and massacre the inhabitants.
This tactic of revolutionary action, I do not believe al-Dibaj developed himself. But it was the accumulation of varied tactics and knowledge from many sects of Khawarij of the region that was made resound by the usage of kitman, a select party of strong believers (a vanguard) and the acquisition or the targeting of a possibly disaffected populace who could be used to initiate the rebellion and be the foot soldiers of the movement.
This is why the Khawarij were feared, it was no boogeyman as one might say.
Interesting enquire, make some questions if Umayyad did increse his power base as the Op wanted that would reduce the Khawarij influece for good and nice to clean some myths about the era too