The rule of empires : those who built them, those who endured them, and why they always fall (16 page)

and the hope of manumission, but only the most pious owners made

this a viable option.

Still, the Umayyads were no more exploitive than their imperial

predecessors or contemporaries, and their demise came at the hands

of fellow Muslims rather than rebellious non-Muslim subjects. Ruling for less than a century, they were comparatively poor empire

builders. The early caliphate was not set up to manage a sprawling

intercontinental empire, nor were the Umayyads equipped to divide

the enormous spoils of empire or govern large numbers of alien subjects. In this sense, the Umayyad imperial state simply grew too large

and too fast to be stable.

Most of the Umayyad caliphs failed to grasp the inherent risks of

empire and gave their generals and governors a free hand to acquire

new territories. Umar II was one of the few rulers to understand the

implications of subjugating so many non-Muslims and had grave

doubts about the sustainability of the Umayyad expansion. Ruling

from only 718 to 720, he concluded that the caliphate was too reliant

on plunder. The enormous sums that his predecessors spent on public

works, mosques, palaces, and military operations were not sustainable

without constant fl ows of loot. The conquest of Sind may have netted the caliphate 120 million dirhams, but it took at least 60 million

dirhams per year to pay the stipends of the three hundred thousand

soldiers in the Umayyad armies.9 Moreover, looting was not a sustainable revenue source; a conquered community could only be plundered so many times. The
jizya
(poll tax on non-Muslims) provided

some relief, but this obligation theoretically ended with conversion.

Fiscal necessity worked against this, and perceptive caliphal offi cials

warned that the continued imposition of the
jizya
on
mawali
converts undermined the regime’s legitimacy.

80 THE RULE OF EMPIRES

Umar therefore tried to keep the caliphate solvent by taking a

break from empire building. Cognizant of the underlying costs of

imperial expansion, he demobilized surplus military units and seriously considered withdrawing from recently conquered territories in

Sind, Transoxiana, and Spain. He also reduced princely allowances

and imposed the
kharaj
(land tax) on Muslims who purchased land

from non-Muslims. Umar recognized that discrimination against the

mawali
was dangerous and moved to exempt them from the
jizya
.

Seeking to offset the resulting loss of revenue, he tried to introduce

more regular and effi cient taxation policies.

Although Umar’s reforms made considerable sense, he did not live

to see them through. Caliph Hisham, who ruled from 724 to 743,

did not share his predecessor’s concerns about the costs of empire.

He broke an implicit truce with the Byzantines and launched new

expansionist campaigns in Central Asia, North Africa, and France.

Although his forces initially won a few victories, internal revolts

and stiffening resistance on the frontiers soon led to disaster. The

Umayyad military fortunes turned in the late 720s when Turkish

invaders wiped out entire armies in Khurasan, while widespread popular resistance forced them to retreat from India. In the west, Frankish forces under Charles Martel turned back an invading Muslim

army at Poitiers in 732.

The cost of Hisham’s futile campaigning alienated the soldiery

and fanned popular dissatisfaction with Umayyad rule. This was particularly true in Khurasan, where Umayyad governors reimposed the

jizya
on converts, but there was also signifi cant unrest among the

Berbers in North Africa. Angered by the
jizya
and abusive Arab governors who seized conscripts and slaves as tribute, Muslim Berbers

launched a massive revolt in 739 that forced Hisham to send an army

of one hundred thousand men to Tunisia. When the Berbers won a

decisive victory by exploiting tensions between local Arabs and Syrian units in the expeditionary force, the caliph had to rush even more

troops to North Africa. The overextended Umayyad generals fi nally

defeated the Berbers in 742, but the toll of almost ten years of continuous campaigning meant that Hisham’s imperial adventures were

no longer sustainable.

Exhaustion, mounting losses, and economic retrenchment resulting from military reverses opened deep divides among the Arab

Muslim

Spain 81

military elite. The Syrian fi eld army’s signifi cant reverses in India,

Central Asia, Asia Minor, North Africa, and France meant that it

could no longer prop up the Umayyad regime. More seriously, tensions between the Yaman and Qays tribal cliques became so bitter

under Hisham that incoming governors routinely removed offi cials

from rival factions and imprisoned and tortured their predecessors

under the guise of recovering embezzled funds. The demise of the

Syrian fi eld army, which consisted primarily of Yamanis, through

overuse and military defeat created a dangerous power vacuum in

Syria. The resulting civil war in 744 cost the Umayyads the caliphate. The dispersion of the surviving Syrian units throughout the

provinces opened the way for rival Umayyad princes, backed by

ambitious generals, to lay claim to power.

Their fratricidal infi ghting distracted the Umayyads from an

emerging threat in the east where a rival dynastic power organized

Persian
mawali
and surviving elements of the Khurasan fi eld army

into a powerful anti-Umayyad force. Angered by hypocritical tax

policies, the Central Asian converts found common cause with disgruntled Arab soldiers who had married into local families. Abu alAbbas Abdullah ibn Muhammad, the founder of the Abbasid dynasty,

assumed control of this popular revolt by virtue of his descent from

Muhammad’s paternal uncle and his adopted ties to Ali’s son. This

pedigree appealed to Muslims who still believed that the
umma
should

be led by a descendant of Muhammad through Ali, but the Abbasids

drew their largest following by championing a universalistic nonethnic version of Islam that recognized non-Arab converts as Muslims in good standing. Through this, they espoused an anti-imperial

ideology that promised a complete and conclusive escape from subjecthood to the
mawali
who still chafed under Umayyad discrimination. Fighting under black banners that suggested that a messiah or

mahdi
from Ali’s line would return to usher in a golden age of justice, the Abbasid forces swept westward out of Khurasan and defeated

the last Umayyad caliph, Marwan II, in 750. They slaughtered all the

Umayyad nobles they could fi nd and desecrated the tombs of every

Umayyad caliph except for that of the pious Umar II.

Although the caliphate technically lasted until the Mongol invasion of 1258, the Abbasids transformed it substantially. They shifted

its capital from Damascus to Baghdad and drew more heavily on

82 THE RULE OF EMPIRES

Persian systems of imperial rule. The caliphate thus became fundamentally less Arab as easterners assumed greater roles in the

bureaucracy and court. Yet the Abbasids continued to struggle with

the complexities of imperial rule. There was no further institutional

discrimination against non-Arab Muslims, but the “Abbasid revolution” did not make the caliphate less imperial from the perspective

of its non-Muslim subjects. Indeed, Christians in Lebanon and Egypt

proved particularly restive under Abbasid rule.

Although their victory over the Umayyads was total and complete, the Abbasids failed to wipe out their rivals entirely. Fleeing the

carnage in Damascus, Prince Abd al-Rahman, a grandson of Caliph

Hisham and the son of a Berber concubine, sought refuge with his

mother’s people in North Africa before crossing into Iberia. Taking

control of Al-Andalus, Abd al-Rahman laid the groundwork for an

independent Muslim Iberian state that lasted for two hundred years.

Raised to a caliphate by his ambitious descendant Abd al-Rahman III,

this Umayyad outpost ruled a substantial Christian majority. These

Iberians were particularly vulnerable because they had been subjects of the Roman and Visigothic imperial states. By necessity, the

Muslim conquerors appropriated and adapted the imperial institutions of their predecessors to exploit the ancestors of the Spanish

conquistadors.

The people whom Tariq ibn Ziyad and Musa ibn Nusayr conquered

in 711 were not Spanish in the modern national sense. Roderic and

his nobles were the heirs of the “barbarians” who brought down the

Roman Empire. Chapter 1 has shown how an armed migration by the

Huns in the fourth century forced loosely organized bands of Goths

to seek refuge within the Roman frontiers. Although the Gothic

leader Alaric sacked Rome, the ancestors of the Visigoths eventually

became relatively reliable Roman allies. As
foederati
, they provided

military service in return for protection and a one-third share of the

revenue from large Roman estates in the region.10

Though technically barbarians, the Visigoths became an important prop of the later Roman Empire. Emperor Honorius, who had

allowed Roman Britain to slip away, granted them the right to settle in

Aquitania in recognition of their assistance during further barbarian

invasions. Pressure from the Franks early in the sixth century forced

them into Iberia, where they challenged an earlier group of Germanic

Muslim

Spain 83

invaders known as the Sueves. The Visigothic kings made Toledo the

royal capital, but they pragmatically kept Roman offi cials at their posts.

They did not consolidate their hold on the peninsula until the midsixth century, when King Leovigild defeated the Sueves and drove

the Byzantines from the southern regions of the peninsula.

Like many Roman successor states, Visigothic Iberia was unstable.

Political succession was a problem because the Visigothic monarchs

were, at least in theory, elected warrior kings. Most aspired to become

hereditary rulers, and their dynastic ambitions led to constant friction with the nobility. As a conquering elite that probably numbered

no more than two hundred thousand people, the Visigoths claimed

sovereignty over an indigenous population approximately eight

million strong.11 As foreigners and outsiders, they were an imperial

power, and their limited numbers forced them to rely on HispanoRoman landowners to rule the Iberian majority. Living apart and

lacking the means and sophistication to impose their own customs,

the Visigoths relied on administrative institutions inherited from

the Romans. In this sense, the Roman Empire did not fall in Iberia

so much as it was simply taken over by the Visigoths. Keeping the

Hispano-Roman imperial machinery running as well as it could, the

Visigothic state did not govern or collect taxes directly until the late

seventh century.

The Visigoths were far less successful in preserving the economic

foundations of Roman Spain. The fragmentation of the empire into

smaller political units, coupled with widespread banditry and outright

anarchy, destroyed the networks of commerce and fi nance that made

Roman Iberia so rich. Plagues and warfare appear to have reduced

the peninsula’s population from six million to four million people by

the end of the seventh century.12 The Visigoths could not keep the

roads open and safe or prevent warlords from building strong points

to prey on villages and travelers. Consequently, farming communities in the Guadalquivir Valley, the economic heartland of southern

Roman Spain, fl ed their lands for the comparative protection of the

hills.

As in Britain, many Roman cities fell into decline, and those that

survived often consisted of decrepit Visigothic structures built on

Roman ruins. The breakdown of long-distance trade and the demise of

the Roman military garrison meant that coinage no longer circulated,

84 THE RULE OF EMPIRES

disrupting the peninsula’s market economy severely. The Iberian

grain and olive oil that once were important cash crops lost their most

lucrative markets in Italy, Gaul, and Britain, thereby forcing many

producers to fall back on subsistence agriculture. As a result, Iberian

import markets also dried up. These developments coincided with the

Byzantine retreat and suggest that the peninsula became relatively

isolated from the commerce of the wider Mediterranean world under

the Visigoths.

This overall insecurity probably promoted localism and accelerated Spain’s shift to a feudal economy, a process that was already

under way in the late Roman imperial era. Faced with the anarchy

of the Roman collapse, large numbers of peasant farmers most likely

turned their lands over to powerful elites in exchange for protection. In doing so they joined the slave laborers who worked the vast

Hispano-Roman estates, or
latifundia
, in serfdom. Tied to the soil,

they surrendered a share of their crops as rent in addition to paying the Roman poll tax to the Visigothic state. These feudal systems

of production generated only a fraction of the revenues of the late

Roman era, and the Visigothic nobility made matters worse by confi scating former Roman imperial estates and shrinking the kingdom’s