Arabs by Tim Mackintosh-Smith

Author:Tim Mackintosh-Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9780300180282
Publisher: Yale University Press

IRANIAN INTERMEZZO

The three Buwayhid brothers who took over swathes of western Iran, Iraq and, from 945, the caliphal capital of Baghdad, came from the mountains of Daylam, south of the Caspian. Politically, however, they seemed to come from nowhere. Stories arose to explain their sudden appearance. The most usual account said that they came from humble origins – their father, Buwayh or Buyah, who gave them their dynastic name, was a fisherman – but that their fortunes had changed when one of them found a hoard of buried treasure. Whatever the truth of the legends, the brothers were recent converts who used their Islamic label as a ticket to rule, first serving in the armies of rising local powers in Iran, and then manoeuvring their way to even greater power themselves.

That their Islam was of the Shi’i sort was to be expected. Precipitous Daylam and the damp, squelchy Caspian coast skirting it were fertile ground for Shi’i missionaries, prevented from propagating their beliefs in more congenial parts. In any case, the Shi’i affiliation made little difference. Some of the Buwayhids’ bitterest enemies were the Hamdanids, an Arab dynasty in northern Iraq and Syria, who were themselves generally pro-Shi’ah. Besides, the Buwayhids did not try to impose their sectarian beliefs – probably woolly at best – on Baghdad, which was always a second city to them; their main capital was Shiraz in south-western Iran. In fact, as heterodox bosses of the Sunni centre, they were in a perfect position: they could let the caliph enjoy his pretence of holding sway over the world of orthodox Sunni Islam and, as Shi’is, feel no moral onus to respect his authority – an authority that, in any case, was by now purely theoretical. Ultimately, sectarian labels mattered little. Religion, as so often, was a bloated red herring that hid a lean and power-hungry shark.

In their policy towards the last great symbol of Arab rule, the Abbasid caliph, the Buwayhids carried on where the Turks had left off. Their first tame caliph was another brother of al-Radi, aptly entitled al-Muti’, ‘the Obedient’ – nominally to Allah, but in reality to whomever Allah placed in charge over him. In this case it was Fanakhusraw ibn Buwayh, to whom the caliph gave the title Mu’izz al-Dawlah, ‘Strengthener of the State’. In fact, the caliph did not have the option not to grant the title: the fount of honour issued titles and offices, but others controlled the flow. ‘Al-Muti’,’ wrote al-Mas’udi in a late post-scriptum to his history, ‘was in Mu’izz al-Dawlah’s hand, with no power to command or forbid.’

Like most of the Turkish amirs before him, Mu’izz al-Dawlah the Daylamite spoke no Arabic. But, as their -id suffix shows, the Buwayhids managed to found a dynasty and to become, as one scholar has put it, part of an ‘Iranian intermezzo’ between the Turkic warlords and the Turkic dynasts to come. They were thus around long enough to be conquered, like so many others, by the Arabic language:

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