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Ashinas
Abu Ja'far Ashinas ( ar, أبو جعفر أشناس; died 17 or 19 December 844) was a general of the ''Abbasid Caliph'' Al-Mu'tasim. One of the earliest and most prominent members of al-Mu'tasim's Turkic guard, he rose to become one of the leading figures of the empire under al-Mu'tasim, serving as a commander in the Amorium campaign, and playing a leading role in the purge of the old Abbasid elites that followed. He was also governor of Egypt from 834, as well as of the Levant and Upper Mesopotamia from 838 on, although in practice he appointed deputies to govern in his stead. Under al-Mu'tasim's successor al-Wathiq, his powers were extended further into a virtual viceroyalty over all western provinces of the caliphate. Origin and early career According to the accounts of al-Ya'qubi and al-Tabari, Ashinas was one of the first slaves purchased by Abu Ishaq, the future al-Mu'tasim, for his Turkish guard, along with Itakh al-Khazari, Wasif, and Sima al-Dimashqi. Unlike later pr ...
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Al-Mu'tasim
Abū Isḥāq Muḥammad ibn Hārūn al-Rashīd ( ar, أبو إسحاق محمد بن هارون الرشيد; October 796 – 5 January 842), better known by his regnal name al-Muʿtaṣim biʾllāh (, ), was the eighth Abbasid caliph, ruling from 833 until his death in 842. A younger son of Caliph Harun al-Rashid (r. 786–809), he rose to prominence through his formation of a private army composed predominantly of Turkic slave-soldiers (, sing. ). This proved useful to his half-brother, Caliph al-Ma'mun, who employed al-Mu'tasim and his Turkish guard to counterbalance other powerful interest groups in the state, as well as employing them in campaigns against rebels and the Byzantine Empire. When al-Ma'mun died unexpectedly on campaign in August 833, al-Mu'tasim was thus well placed to succeed him, overriding the claims of al-Ma'mun's son al-Abbas. Al-Mu'tasim continued many of his brother's policies, such as the partnership with the Tahirids, who governed Khurasan and Ba ...
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Al-Mu'tasim
Abū Isḥāq Muḥammad ibn Hārūn al-Rashīd ( ar, أبو إسحاق محمد بن هارون الرشيد; October 796 – 5 January 842), better known by his regnal name al-Muʿtaṣim biʾllāh (, ), was the eighth Abbasid caliph, ruling from 833 until his death in 842. A younger son of Caliph Harun al-Rashid (r. 786–809), he rose to prominence through his formation of a private army composed predominantly of Turkic slave-soldiers (, sing. ). This proved useful to his half-brother, Caliph al-Ma'mun, who employed al-Mu'tasim and his Turkish guard to counterbalance other powerful interest groups in the state, as well as employing them in campaigns against rebels and the Byzantine Empire. When al-Ma'mun died unexpectedly on campaign in August 833, al-Mu'tasim was thus well placed to succeed him, overriding the claims of al-Ma'mun's son al-Abbas. Al-Mu'tasim continued many of his brother's policies, such as the partnership with the Tahirids, who governed Khurasan and Ba ...
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Sack Of Amorium
The Sack of Amorium by the Abbasid Caliphate in mid-August 838 was one of the major events in the long history of the Arab–Byzantine Wars. The Abbasid campaign was led personally by the Caliph al-Mu'tasim (), in retaliation to a virtually unopposed expedition launched by the Byzantine emperor Theophilos (r. 829–842) into the Caliphate's borderlands the previous year. Mu'tasim targeted Amorium, an Eastern Roman city in western Asia Minor, because it was the birthplace of the ruling Byzantine dynasty and, at the time, one of Byzantium's largest and most important cities. The caliph gathered an exceptionally large army, which he divided in two parts, which invaded from the northeast and the south. The northeastern army defeated the Byzantine forces under Theophilos at Anzen, allowing the Abbasids to penetrate deep into Byzantine Asia Minor and converge upon Ancyra, which they found abandoned. After sacking the city, they turned south to Amorium, where they arrived on 1 August ...
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Al-Wathiq
Abū Jaʿfar Hārūn ibn Muḥammad ( ar, أبو جعفر هارون بن محمد المعتصم; 17 April 812 – 10 August 847), better known by his regnal name al-Wāthiq bi’llāh (, ), was an Abbasid caliph who reigned from 842 until 847 AD (227–232 AH in the Islamic calendar). Al-Wathiq is described in the sources as well-educated, intellectually curious, but also a poet and a drinker, who enjoyed the company of poets and musicians as well as scholars. His brief reign was one of continuity with the policies of his father, al-Mu'tasim, as power continued to rest in the hands of the same officials whom al-Mu'tasim had appointed. The chief events of the reign were the suppression of revolts: Bedouin rebellions occurred in Syria in 842, the Hejaz in 845, and the Yamamah in 846, Armenia had to be pacified over several years, and above all, an abortive uprising took place in Baghdad itself in 846, under Ahmad ibn Nasr al-Khuza'i. The latter was linked to al-Wathiq's con ...
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Itakh Al-Khazari
Aytākh or Ītākh al-Khazarī ( ar, إيتاخ الخزري) was a leading commander in the Turkic army of the Abbasid caliph al-Mu'tasim (r. 833-842 C.E.). As the ''nisba'' in his name suggests, he was a Khazar by origin, and is said to have been a slave working in the kitchen of Sallam al-Abrash al-Khadim—whence his nickname ''al-Tabbakh'', "the cook"—before he was purchased as a '' ghulām'' by al-Mu'tasim in 815. He rose to become one of the senior commanders in al-Mu'tasim's "Turkic" guard, and participated in several expeditions such as the Sack of Amorium. Under al-Mu'tasim, he served as ''sahib al-shurta'' at Samarra, and became commander of the Caliph's personal guard. By the time of the accession of al-Wathiq in 842, he was, along with the Turk Ashinas, the "mainstay of the caliphate". Al-Wathiq named him governor of the Yemen in 843/4. After the death of Ashinas, in 844/5, he was named governor of Egypt, but he appointed Harthamah ibn al-Nadr al-Jabali there i ...
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Abbasid Caliphate
The Abbasid Caliphate ( or ; ar, الْخِلَافَةُ الْعَبَّاسِيَّة, ') was the third caliphate to succeed the Islamic prophet Muhammad. It was founded by a dynasty descended from Muhammad's uncle, Abbas ibn Abdul-Muttalib (566–653 CE), from whom the dynasty takes its name. They ruled as caliphs for most of the caliphate from their capital in Baghdad in modern-day Iraq, after having overthrown the Umayyad Caliphate in the Abbasid Revolution of 750 CE (132  AH). The Abbasid Caliphate first centered its government in Kufa, modern-day Iraq, but in 762 the caliph Al-Mansur founded the city of Baghdad, near the ancient Babylonian capital city of Babylon. Baghdad became the center of science, culture and invention in what became known as the Golden Age of Islam. This, in addition to housing several key academic institutions, including the House of Wisdom, as well as a multiethnic and multi-religious environment, garnered it a worldwide reputation as ...
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Kharijite
The Kharijites (, singular ), also called al-Shurat (), were an Islamic sect which emerged during the First Fitna (656–661). The first Kharijites were supporters of Ali who rebelled against his acceptance of arbitration talks to settle the conflict with his challenger, Mu'awiya, at the Battle of Siffin in 657. They asserted that "judgment belongs to God alone", which became their motto, and that rebels such as Mu'awiya had to be fought and overcome according to Qur'anic injunctions. Ali defeated the Kharijites at the Battle of Nahrawan in 658, but their insurrection continued. Ali was assassinated in 661 by a Kharijite seeking revenge for the defeat at Nahrawan. After Mu'awiya's establishment of the Umayyad Caliphate in 661, his governors kept the Kharijites in check. The power vacuum caused by the Second Fitna (680–692) allowed for the resumption of the Kharijites' anti-government rebellion and the Kharijite factions of the Azariqa and Najdat came to control large a ...
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Ghilman
Ghilman (singular ar, غُلاَم ',Other standardized transliterations: '' / ''. . plural ')Other standardized transliterations: '' / ''. . were slave-soldiers and/or mercenaries in the armies throughout the Islamic world, such as the Safavid, Afsharid and Qajar empires. Islamic states from the early 9th century to the early 19th century consistently deployed slaves as soldiers, a phenomenon that was very rare outside of the Islamic world. The Quran mentions ''ghilman'' () as serving boys who are one of the delights of ''Jannah'' or paradise/heaven of Islam, in vers 52:24 (Vers56:17is also thought to refer to ghilman.) Etymology The words ''ghilman'' () and its singular variant ''ghulam'' () are of Arabic origin, meaning ' or '. It derives from the Arabic root ''ḡ-l-m'' (). History The ''ghilman'' were slave-soldiers taken as prisoners of war from conquered regions or frontier zones, especially from among the Turkic people of Central Asia and the Caucasian peoples ( T ...
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Persian Language
Persian (), also known by its endonym Farsi (, ', ), is a Western Iranian language belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian subdivision of the Indo-European languages. Persian is a pluricentric language predominantly spoken and used officially within Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan in three mutually intelligible standard varieties, namely Iranian Persian (officially known as ''Persian''), Dari Persian (officially known as ''Dari'' since 1964) and Tajiki Persian (officially known as ''Tajik'' since 1999).Siddikzoda, S. "Tajik Language: Farsi or not Farsi?" in ''Media Insight Central Asia #27'', August 2002. It is also spoken natively in the Tajik variety by a significant population within Uzbekistan, as well as within other regions with a Persianate history in the cultural sphere of Greater Iran. It is written officially within Iran and Afghanistan in the Persian alphabet, a derivation of the Arabic script, and within Tajikistan in the Tajik alphabet, ...
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Ferdinand Justi
Ferdinand Justi (2 June 1837 in Marburg, Germany – 17 February 1907 in Marburg) was a German linguist and Orientalist. He finished his studies of linguistics at the University of Marburg and the University of Göttingen. In 1861 he lived in Marburg, where in 1865 he became associate and in 1869 full professor of comparative linguistics and Germanic philology Germanic philology is the philological study of the Germanic languages, particularly from a comparative or historical perspective. The beginnings of research into the Germanic languages began in the 16th century, with the discovery of literary tex .... In addition to his academic work, he studied with meticulous precision the life of the Hessian peasants in the last third of the 19th century, especially in the immediate and wider area of Marburg, on which he wrote his observations and described it in countless sketches and watercolors. One of his main themes included buildings, furniture, agricultural implements, and esp ...
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Édouard Chavannes
Émmanuel-Édouard Chavannes (5 October 1865 – 29 January 1918) was a French sinologist and expert on Chinese history and religion, and is best known for his translations of major segments of Sima Qian's ''Records of the Grand Historian'', the work's first ever translation into a Western language. Chavannes was a prolific and influential scholar, and was one of the most accomplished Sinologists of the modern era notwithstanding his relatively early death at age 52 in 1918. A successor of 19th century French sinologists Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat and Stanislas Julien, Chavannes was largely responsible for the development of Sinology and Chinese scholarship into a respected field in the realm of French scholarship. Life and career Édouard Chavannes was born on 5 October 1865 in Lyon, France. As a youth he studied at the ''lycée'' in Lyon, where, like most students of his era, his education focused mainly on the Latin and Greek classics. Chavannes was then sent to Paris ...
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Abna Al-dawla
The ''abnāʾ al-dawla'' ( ar, أبناء الدولة, meaning "sons of the regime/dynasty"), often simply " the ''Abnāʾ''", is a term for the Khorasani Arabs who had participated in the Abbasid Revolution of 749–750 and their descendants, who settled in Baghdad and Iraq. They became the ruling elite of the Abbasid Caliphate and formed the mainstay of the caliphal army. However, the term appears rarely in the sources until the time of the Fourth Fitna civil war in the 810s, when it is applied to the Khurasanis of Baghdad, who overwhelmingly supported Caliph al-Amin against his brother al-Ma'mun. The terms ''ahl Khurāsān'' ("people of Khurasan") and ''abnāʾ ahl Khurāsān'' ("sons of the people of Khurasan") are more frequently used for the Khurasanis who formed the mainstay of the Abbasid regime in general. Following al-Ma'mun's victory in the civil war, the ''abnāʾ al-dawla'' were largely replaced by the latter's Persian followers, and under his successor al-Mu'tasim ...
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