Abbasid Decline

Shift (sudden) from Umayyad to Abbasid leadership.

Increased bureaucratic expansion, absolutism and luxurious living.

Extended absolute power over their subjects. Both Arabs and others were integrated into the

Muslim Community. Most conversions were very peaceful. Like the Umayyads, the Abbasids used religious

legitimacy to govern their empires.

Abbasid Decline

Disintegrated between the ninth and thirteen centuries. Peasant revolts and slavery increased.

Caliph al-Mahdi failed to reconcile moderate Shi’i to Abbasid rule. He also surrounded his court with luxury and failed to establish succession.

Civil Violence drained the imperial treasury.

Abbasid Decline

Caliphs increased the strain by constructing costly new imperial centers.

Peasants had imposing tax burdens and agricultural villages were abandoned and irrigation works fell into disrepair.

Peasant rebellions.

Arab Women

The freedom and influence possessed during the first centuries of Islam severely declined.

Male-dominated Abbasid society decided that men needed to be segregated from all but the women of their family.

The harem and the veil symbolized subjugation to males.

The seclusion of elite women, wives and concubines continued and veiling spread to all.

Arab Women

Abbasid wealth generated a large demand for concubines and male slaves.

Most came from non-Muslim neighboring lands. Poor women remained economically active, but

the rich were kept home. They married at puberty and spent their lives in

domestic management and childbearing. At higher political levels women lobbied for the

advancement of their sons’ careers.

Nomadic Incursions

By the mid-tenth century breakaway former provinces began to challenge Abbasid rule.

When the Buyids of Persia captured Baghdad in 945.

Caliphs became powerless puppets controlled by sultans, the actual rulers.

The Seljuk Turks defeated the Buyids in 1055 and ruled the remnants of the Abbasid Empire for two centuries.

Nomadic Incursions

The Seljuks (Turks) were Sunnis who tried to eliminate the Shi’a (genocide).

Seljuk (Turks) military power restored the diminished caliphate.

Egyptians and Byzantines were defeated, which opened Anatolia (Turkey), the center of the later Ottoman Empire, to settlement by Turkic nomads.

Crusades

The West European Christian knights in 1096 invaded Muslim territory to capture the biblical Holy Land.

They established small, rival kingdoms that were not a threat to the more powerful surrounding Muslim leaders.

Muslims reunited under Saladin recaptured most near the close of the 12th century. The last fell in 1291.

Crusades

The Crusades had an important impact upon the Christian world through intensifying the existing European borrowing from the more sophisticated technology, architecture, medicine, mathematics, science, and general culture of Muslim civilization

Europeans recovered much Greek learning lost after the fall of Rome.

Crusades

Italian merchants remained in Islamic centers after the Crusader defeat and were far more important carriers of Islamic advanced knowledge than the Christian warriors. Muslim peoples were little interested in aspects of European civilization.

Sufi Mystics

Sufis developed vibrant mysticism, but ulama (religious scholars) became more conservative and suspicious of non-Muslim influence and scientific thought.

Sufis created the most traditions, but often was opposed by Orthodox scholars.

Sufi Mystics

Sufis created the most innovative religious movement. They reacted against the teachings of the ulama and sought personal union with Allah through asceticism, medication, songs, dancing, or drugs

Had reputations as healers and miracle workers; other continued the expansion of Islam