The death of the Prophet led to only a short-term crisis. His immediate successor, Abu Bakr (ad 632-4), successfully reestablished political control over the Arabian Peninsula, and he and his successor ‘Umar (ad 634-44) then directed the energies of the tribes outward against the two empires to the north. There were two subsequent major crises over leadership in the following century, the fitnas (‘‘trials’’ or ‘‘civil wars’’) of AD 656-61 and c. ad 683-92; but the assumption was maintained in both cases that a single person should lead the umma in religion and politics - an idea that gave to those conflicts a centripetal energy crucial to the survival of the ‘‘conquest society’’ as a united entity.
Many aspects of how the authority of the first caliphs was understood by those who followed them will remain obscure to us because of the lack of reliable early sources. The early caliphs became central figures in later ‘‘classical’’ Islamic doctrine, where polemic obscures all but their historical outlines. There are tantalizing glimpses of forgotten roles. ‘Umar, for example, sometimes receives the title al-Faruq, an Aramaic word meaning ‘‘Redeemer,’’ perhaps indicating a messianic role for the conqueror of Jerusalem (Bashear 1990). The caliphs’ role as spiritual guides (imams) seems to have been essential to their authority from the outset. ‘‘He who dies without an imam dies a pagan death,’’ the Prophet is said to have stated (Crone 2004: 22). These early rulers are credited with using the titles khalifa (‘‘caliph,’’ ‘‘deputy,’’ ‘‘successor’’) and amir al-mu’minin (‘‘Commander of the Believers’’). Although the first inscriptional attestations of these epithets are from ad 694 and ad 661 respectively (Miles 1952: 171; Hoyland 1997: 690-1), it seems likely that both were used much earlier than that: Adam and David are ‘‘caliphs’’ in the Qur’an (Q. 2. 30; Q. 38. 26); amir was a common epithet for a pre-Islamic tribal leader (Athamina 1999: 10).
A caliph could also be referred to as a malik (‘‘king’’) and his authority as mulk (‘‘kingship’’). These more generic terms for authority were morally ambivalent, as they had been in pre-Islamic Arabian culture. The Bedouin poets had declared their hatred of kingship, fitting only for those who were prepared to pay tribute to rulers (Athamina 1998: 36-7). Mere temporal authority (that conferred by man, not by God) was often denounced and, while the Qur’an calls the prophets David and Solomon kings (Q. 2. 102, 251) and mentions Saul’s divinely bestowed kingship (Q. 2. 247), it also declares that true ‘‘kingship’’ belongs only to God (Q. 20. 114). This tension between divinely inspired and earthly authority echoes the Hebrew Bible, which had exerted a profound influence on the conception of legitimate authority in the Christian Roman world (Dagron 2003: 48-53).
The caliphs' acquisition of the characteristics of late antique monarchs was facilitated not only by the presence in the Qur'an of ideas about authority analogous to those in the Hebrew Bible but also by the demands of ruling an extensive empire and by expectations about kingship among the conquered peoples. Islamic tradition attributes the transformation to Mu‘awiya b. Abi Sufyan, the governor of Syria, who emerged victorious from the first civil war in ad 661 to become the first caliph to rule from Damascus rather than Medina. He was said to have declared himself the first ‘‘king’’ in Islam and to have accumulated the trappings of regal power: seals, bodyguards, palatial architecture, and formal audiences (Tab. ii: 205-6; Mas. v: 73-8). The shift of the political center from remote Medina to the former Roman provincial capital of Damascus must indeed have been decisive in this transformation, but the associated traditions are also shorthand for a more gradual process. One of Mu‘awiya’s rivals for the caliphate, the grandson of the Prophet, al-Hasan b. ‘Ali, resided briefly at the Sasanian ‘‘White Palace’’ at Ctesiphon (Tab. ii: 1-2). Indeed, the civil war had been triggered when a clique angered at his autocratic, centralizing policies murdered the third caliph, ‘Uthman (ad 644-56). The transformation of the office of leader of the new polity into something resembling a late antique monarch had begun before Mu‘awiya and continued long after him.
After the conquests, all the caliphs deployed the resources of the defeated late antique empires to proclaim their legitimacy to three audiences: the conquered populations, their undefeated enemies, and their own Arab-Muslim following. Some media, like court poetry, were directed at quite specific (and sympathetic) audiences; others, like architecture and coinage, were less discriminate and had to speak to diverse interpreters. Different audiences assumed varying significance at different moments. In a Syriac chronicle from the ad 680s, we can see the impression made by Mu‘awiya’s royal ceremonial upon a hostile Christian observer living under Muslim rule (Palmer 1993: 31-2). Islamic historical tradition also preserves numerous stories that attribute the regal conduct of caliphs to the need to persuade Byzantine ambassadors of their power and authority: Mu‘awiya built the palace of al-Khadra’ (al-Rihawi 1972: 35); ‘Umar II retained the Great Mosque of Damascus (Flood 2001: 227).
Internal conflict, however, was the most important stimulus to the public expression of legitimate royal authority. Mu‘awiya may have gained his reputation as the first king in part from his efforts to shore up his support in Syria during the first fitna (ad 656-61); there is certainly material evidence of his regal activities (Johns 2003: 418-24). The second fitna (ad 683-92) provoked a far more spectacular burst of creativity. The widespread adaptation of the Sasanian and Byzantine coinages to proclaim the legitimacy of rival Arab rulers dates from this period (Johns 2003: 426-33). The magnificent Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem was built by the eventual victor in the war, ‘Abd al-Malik (685-705). It may have been constructed at a time when he did not control the Hijaz and required a rival shrine within his territory (Elad 1992).
‘Abd al-Malik’s victory in ad 692 allowed him and his successors to develop the administrative machinery of the new empire to a point where a far more extensive proclamation of their authority became possible, across all the provinces. The enunciation of royal power in the Umayyad caliphate had an experimental character. Initial adaptations of Byzantine and Sasanian images on coins were abandoned for issues that were purely epigraphic. Much of the original symbolic intent behind the Dome of the Rock was eventually forgotten. The most striking feature of this experimentation was that, although the forms in which royal power was expressed could not but be Roman and Sasanian, Arab-Muslim expectations determined their reconfiguration. Aniconism dominated religious contexts almost without exception. The Arabic script prevailed quickly over Greek and Persian in public contexts. For all that royal audiences and court culture came to resemble Sasanian practice (Grabar 1977; Hillenbrand 1981), caliphs never wore crowns or diadems, and the insignia of their authority were associated first and foremost with the Prophet. Such dramatic departures from late antique precedent indicate great cultural resilience and selfconfidence. Caliphs’ proclamations of their imperial authority had to be acceptable to the Arab-Muslims they ruled.
World History
