Hārūn al-Rashīd

Persian caliph (r. 786-809)

• Born: February, 763/766
• Birthplace: Rayy, Persia (now in Iran)
• Died: March 24, 0809
• Place of death: Probably Khorāsān (now in Iran)

Hārūn al-Rashīd counts among the most famous holders of the office of caliph in the ՙAbbāsid Dynasty in Baghdad (eighth to thirteenth century). His most notable accomplishments were quelling revolts, establishing peace, and promoting intellectual activity, industry, and trade.

Early Life

Hārūn al-Rashīd (hah-RUH-nahl-rahsh-EED), who was to become the fifth Islamic caliph in the line of the ՙAbbāsid family, was born in 766 in north-central Iran. He was the third son of Caliph al-Mahdī and the second child of al-Mahdī's wife al-Khayzurān, a former slave of the fourth ՙAbbāsid caliph. Had it not been for the influence of al-Khayzurān and others close to the seat of power in Baghdad, Hārūn might never have ascended the throne. His older brother al-Hādī, who was the initial successor to al-Mahdī, reigned only a year (785-786) following the death of their father. Al-Hādī's death was said to have been the result of a court conspiracy, and Hārūn's claim to succession at the very young age of twenty required the concentrated action of supporters who could intervene on his behalf. His chief supporter was Yaḥyā the Barmakid (d. 805), who had been the prince's secretarial aide and instructor during his early youth. Yaḥyā's loyalty to the claimant probably stemmed from the circumstances of Hārūn's earliest appointments to key positions appropriate to an ՙAbbāsid prince. During a period of renewed warfare between the Arab caliphate and the Byzantine Greek Empire (779-780 and 781-782), Hārūn had been named commander of two expeditions, one of which penetrated as far as the shores of the Bosporus opposite the Byzantine capital at Constantinople. Despite the fact that the real commanders of these military campaigns were accomplished soldiers and officials, the prince received several honorific governorships for his service in the field. These included posts in Ifriqiyah (now Tunisia), Egypt, Syria, Armenia, and Azerbaijan Province in Iran. On each occasion, the real man in control seems to have been Yaḥyā, Hārūn's adviser.

The fruit of Hārūn's close dependence on his former tutor was to be seen in Yaḥyā's intervention, with the assistance of the prince's mother, al-Khayzurān, to secure Hārūn's selection as second heir to the throne. This became very critical when intrigues broke out over al-Mahdī's apparent last-minute decision to bypass al-Hādī in favor of Yaḥyā's protégé. As soon as Hārūn succeeded to the throne following al-Hādī's murder, he recognized Yaḥyā and his two sons as his official viziers, or primary ministers. This ascendancy of a small group of caliphal advisers lasted until the Barmakids themselves fell victim to court intrigues nearly two decades later (in 803).

This pattern in Hārūn al-Rashīd's early life might seem to suggest that, as caliph, it would be his nature to bend to the will of others. His accomplishments as ruler of the ՙAbbāsid Empire until 809, however, left a very different legacy.

Life's Work

Apparently, Hārūn al-Rashīd's early experiences as prince-commander of the caliphal armies sent against the Byzantine emperor left a strong mark. Throughout his reign, he placed great emphasis on defending the Islamic-Christian border. He would even create a special military province, called Al-Awasim, in the zone separating the two empires. Particular care went into the strengthening of the fortifications of Tarsus, which would serve as a military deployment zone. The state of the caliph's military preparedness was tested at the very outset of his reign, when Constantine VI, son of the Byzantine empress Irene, came of age and denounced his mother's generally peaceful relations with the caliph of Baghdad. Border fighting surged between 795 and 797. In the latter year, the empress overthrew her young successor, blinded him, and restored general terms of peace with caliph Hārūn.

Conditions deteriorated dramatically later in Hārūn's reign when Irene was overthrown by Nicephorus, a rebellious Byzantine aristocrat, in 802. Nicephorus broke relations with Baghdad and attacked in 804, only to be vigorously repulsed by an army led by Caliph Hārūn. This force advanced well into Asia Minor and menaced the city of Constantinople itself. Hārūn laid down new terms of peace in 806, including a humiliating clause requiring the Byzantine emperor to pay annual tribute to Baghdad. A few years earlier, Arab naval forces temporarily recaptured the island of Cyprus, which had returned to Christian hands shortly after the earliest years of Arab Muslim campaigns against Constantinople in the mid-seventh century.

Perhaps the reason that Hārūn's victories against the Christian Byzantines were not carried further at this time is to be found in the many signs of internal division that had appeared within the Islamic Empire. These divisions had both a geographic and a religio-cultural schismatic side to them. On the one hand, there is no doubt that, by the time of Hārūn's reign, the central caliphate showed signs of being unable to control its most distant provinces. Both along the southern coasts of the Mediterranean (the Maghrib, or western provinces of what is now Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia) and in the east (primarily the province of Khorāsān, in eastern Iran, but also in the core provinces of Arabia and Iraq), revolts and independence movements troubled Hārūn's reign on many occasions. These weakened his capacity to impose not only political but also important economic bonds of caliphal control.

In addition, one must take into consideration the fact that Islamic schismatic movements most under the banner of the ՙAlīds, Shia followers of the imamate descending from the Prophet's son-in-law ՙAlī had weakened the cultural and religious authority of the Baghdad caliphate. Hārūn's methods of dealing with ՙAlīd threats were sometimes preemptive, bordering on outright persecution. Members of families descending from ՙAlī were warned against establishing themselves in distant retreats and teaching ՙAlīd doctrines that might be turned against the caliph. Some, including Yaḥyā ibn Abdullah, brother of the defeated ՙAlīd pretender Muḥammad al-Nafs al-Zakiyya, were brought to Baghdad under a promise of security, only to be imprisoned for life. Such treacherous policies undoubtedly alienated many others whose loyalty to the Islamic realm, irrespective of questions of religious doctrines, was wearing thin by the time of Hārūn's death in 809.

The circumstances surrounding Hārūn's succession bear witness to growing divisions that were weakening the political ascendancy of the ՙAbbāsid caliphate. Several years before his death, at a time when his ruling strength seemed to be at its zenith, Hārūn revealed what came to be known as the Covenant of the Kaaba. This document designated his firstborn son, Muḥammad al-Amīn, as Hārūn's successor to the caliphate. Al-Amīn's younger brothers, al-Ma՚mūn (Hārūn's son by a Persian slave) and al-Muՙtaṣim, were assigned full powers as governors of the eastern (Iranian) provinces and Mesopotamia (Iraq), respectively. Hārūn's intention was that, while al-Amīn would assume the office and functions of caliph, his other heirs would have a nearly equal share in the responsibilities of imperial rule. Al-Amīn's almost immediate redefinition of the extent of al-Muՙtaṣim's authority in Iraq and his attempts to exclude al-Ma՚mūn from his assumed eventual right to succeed to the caliphate, however, deteriorated into a situation of civil war by 810. Although al-Ma՚mūn succeeded in overcoming the forces of Hārūn's first-chosen successor, he managed this only with the aid of Iranian forces under the command of Tāhir ibn al-Ḥusayn, victor in an important battle at Rayy. Later, Tahir proceeded to Baghdad, where, in 813, his forces killed Caliph al-Amīn and proclaimed the succession of Hārūn's second son, al-Ma՚mūn (r. 813-833). The fact that the new caliph remained behind for some time in the capital of the province of Khorāsān before assuming the responsibilities of his office in Baghdad itself is significant. It underlined the determination of his Iranian “protectors” to make certain that no caliph after Hārūn al-Rashīd would assume that the eastern provinces could be ruled from Baghdad. Thus, Hārūn's mistake in trying to arrange his own succession cost the institution of the caliphate a high price. This price involved the emergence, in a few years’ time, of the first autonomous dynasty of non-Arab governors over Iran. Its founder was Tāhir ibn al-Ḥusayn himself. Its main cities, especially Nishapur and Samarqand, would soon attract as many eminent representatives of medieval Islamic civilization and culture as had Hārūn al-Rashīd's capital city of Baghdad.

Significance

Too frequently the name Hārūn al-Rashīd has been associated with a romantic, if not even mythological, vision of the Islamic world in the time of the Baghdad caliphs. This tendency to glorify and romanticize has not been limited to accounts of his reign in the Western world. The themes of the famous undated and anonymously written collection of legends of Alf layla wa-layla (fifteenth century; The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, 1706-1708; also known as The Thousand and One Nights) are products of the literary and cultural imagination of the Islamic world in which he lived; inevitably, therefore, they contributed to subsequent romantic images in European accounts.

On a political level, the temptation has been strong to compare Hārūn al-Rashīd to his equally famous Catholic contemporary, the emperor Charlemagne. Traditional but undocumented accounts tell of diplomatic contacts between the two and even of exchanges to support mutual recognition of respective imperial spheres at the expense of their shared rival on the throne of the Byzantine Empire at Constantinople. Probably more important than such comparisons, however, is the challenge to study indices of economic exchanges, which, at the height of the caliphs’ ascendancy over all Islamic provinces east and west, had come to represent an interregional network that was capable of deciding the future material fate of the Byzantine Empire. Hence, Hārūn's dealings with the Byzantines and, even more, his dealings with distant eastern zones (the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the eastern provinces of Iran bordering on Turkistan) that tied the Islamic Empire to sources of trade in the Far East had to do with much more than mere political ascendancy. These contacts would determine which of the two empires, Islamic or Greek Byzantine, would hold sway over world trade.

In such a geopolitical framework, the relatively recent phenomenon of a restored “Roman” Empire in the West must have been considered of very peripheral importance. An objective approach to Hārūn al-Rashīd's reign, therefore, would study interlinking political, economic, social, and cultural factors that either helped the caliphs of his era to retain the greatness of Baghdad as a world capital or presaged its decline. The caliphs’ religious policy, as well as attitudes toward provincial autonomy from Baghdad's direct control, were factors that had, by the time of Hārūn's reign, become issues reflecting future dilemmas, and the eventual decline, of the ՙAbbāsid caliphate.

The ՙAbbāsid Caliphs, 750-1256

Reign

• Caliph

750-754

• Abū al-ՙAbbās al-Saffāḥ

754-775

• al-Manṣūr

775-785

• al-Mahdī

785-786

• al-Hādī

786-809

• Hārūn al-Rashīd

809-813

• al-Amīn

813-833

• al-Ma՚mūn (Ma՚mūn the Great)

833-842

• al-Muՙtaṣim

842-847

• al-Wathīq

847-861

• al-Mutawakkil

861-862

• al-Muntaṣir

862-866

• al-Mustaՙin

866-869

• al-Muՙtazz

869-870

• al-Muqtadī

870-892

• al-Muՙtamid

892-902

• al-Muՙtaḍid

902-908

• al-Muktafī

908-932

• al-Muqtadir

932-934

• al-Qāhir

934-940

• al-Rāḍī

940-944

• al-Mustaqfī

946-974

• al-Mutī

974-991

• al-Tā՚iՙ

991-1031

• al-Qadir

1031-1075

• al-Qā՚im

1075-1094

• al-Muqtadī

1094-1118

• al-Mustazhir

1118-1135

• al-Mustarshid

1135-1136

• al-Rashīd

1136-1160

• al-Muqtafī

1160-1170

• al-Mustanjid

1170-1180

• al-Mustadī

1180-1225

• al-Nāṣir

1225-1226

• al-Zāhir

1226-1242

• al-Mustanṣir

1242-1256

• al-Mustaՙṣim

Bibliography

Bishai, Wilson B. Islamic History of the Middle East: Backgrounds, Development, and Fall of the Arab Empire. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1968. This survey of Islamic history is less detailed than Brockelmann’s 1939 synthesis of Middle Eastern developments from the rise of Muḥammad into the twentieth century (see below). It tends, however, to be somewhat freer in interpretative analysis than are more traditional histories; this makes the work more readable, if less precisely documented. A full section is devoted to the career of Hārūn, based mainly on al-Ṭabarī’s History. Maps, bibliography.

Brockelmann, Carl. History of the Islamic Peoples. Translated by Joel Carmichael and Moshe Perlmann. New York: Routledge, 2000. This volume is still the classic work on Islamic history and civilization and its main dynasties, including the ՙAbbāsid period. The synopsis on Hārūn is among the most developed and useful case studies in the book. Maps, bibliography, index.

Gabrieli, Francesco. The Arabs: A Compact History. New York: Hawthorn Books, 1963. This book is less detailed than Bishai’s and Brockelmann’s works, but the coverage of the reign of Hārūn nevertheless covers several subjects that merit more attention than many more complete political histories offer. These include tax policies and attitudes of the caliph toward “loyal” critics among Sunni jurisprudents responsible for the elaboration of Islamic law.

Glubb, John Bagot. Haroon al Rasheed and the Great ՙAbbāsids. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1976. This monograph was written by “Glubb Pasha,” British commanding officer of the Arab Legion in Jordan until his retirement in 1956. A very readable book, especially for its picturesque accounts of the social and cultural milieu of Baghdad during the reign of Hārūn. Bibliography, index.

Hibri, Tayeb el-. Reinterpreting Islamic Historiography: Hārūn al-Rashīd and the Narrative of the ՙAbbāsid Caliphate. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Argues that past historical accounts of the eighth and ninth century caliphate were not written as portraits of the time, but instead as a means to convey the religious, political, and social issues that were then prominent. Bibliography, index.

Sourdel, Dominique. “The ՙAbbāsid Caliphate.” In The Cambridge History of Islam, edited by Peter M. Holt, Ann K. Lambton, and Bernard Lewis. Vol. 1. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1977. A brief but scholarly account of the Baghdad caliphate. Covers the main aspects of military and religious history, including the key question of civil war following Hārūn’s death. Extensive bibliography, glossary.