Ubaydallah Ibn Abdallah Ibn Tahir
Abu Ahmad Ubaydallah ibn Abdallah ibn Tahir ( ar, أبو أحمد عبيد الله بن عبد الله بن طاهر, c. 838 – May 913) was a ninth century Tahirid official and military officer. He was the last major Tahirid to hold high office, having served as the governor of Baghdad at various points between 867 and 891. Career Ubaydallah was the son of Abdallah ibn Tahir, the governor of Khurasan from 828 to 845. During the civil war of 865–866 he was present in Baghdad, and throughout the siege of the city he served in a military capacity under his brother Muhammad ibn Abdallah ibn Tahir, who as governor commanded the overall defense against the besiegers. At the end of the war, he was responsible for transferring the signet, cloak and scepter of the defeated caliph al-Musta'in (r. 862–866) to the victor al-Mu'tazz (r. 866–869). Upon Muhammad's death in November 867, Ubaydallah assumed the governorship of Baghdad as his brother's designated successor, and he ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Baghdad
Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon. In 762 CE, Baghdad was chosen as the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate, and became its most notable major development project. Within a short time, the city evolved into a significant cultural, commercial, and intellectual center of the Muslim world. 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 the "Center of Learning". Baghdad was the largest city in the world for much of the Abbasid era during the Islamic Golden Age, peaking at a population of more than a million. The city was largely destroyed at the hands of the Mongol Empire in 1258, resulting in a decline that would linger through man ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Shurta
''Shurṭa'' ( ar, شرطة) is the common Arabic term for police, although its precise meaning is that of a "picked" or elite force. Bodies termed ''shurṭa'' were established in the early days of the Caliphate, perhaps as early as the caliphate of Uthman (644–656). In the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates, the ''shurṭa'' had considerable power, and its head, the ''ṣāḥib al-shurṭa'' ( ar, صاحب الشرطة), was an important official, whether at the provincial level or in the central government. The duties of the ''shurṭa'' varied with time and place: it was primarily a police and internal security force and also had judicial functions, but it could also be entrusted with suppressing brigandage, enforcing the '' ḥisbah'', customs and tax duties, rubbish collection, acting as a bodyguard for governors, etc. In the Abbasid East, the chief of police also supervised the prison system. From the 10th century, the importance of the ''shurṭa'' declined, along with the po ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Abu Al-Faraj Al-Isfahani
Ali ibn al-Husayn al-Iṣfahānī ( ar, أبو الفرج الأصفهاني), also known as Abul-Faraj, (full form: Abū al-Faraj ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥaytham al-Umawī al-Iṣfahānī) (284–356 AH / 897-967 CE) was a litterateur, genealogist, poet, musicologist, scribe, and boon companion in the tenth century. He was of Arab- Quraysh origin and mainly based in Baghdad. He is best known as the author of '' Kitab al-Aghani'' ("The Book of Songs"), which includes information about the earliest attested periods of Arabic music (from the seventh to the ninth centuries) and the lives of poets and musicians from the pre-Islamic period to al-Isfahani's time. Given his contribution to the documentation of the history of Arabic music, al-Isfahani is characterised by Sawa as "a true prophet of modern ethnomusicology". Dates The commonly accepted dates of al-Isfahani's birth and death are 284 AH/897–8 CE and 356/967, based on the dates given by ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Islamic Literature
Islamic literature is literature written by Muslim people, influenced by an Islamic cultural perspective, or literature that portrays Islam. It can be written in any language and portray any country or region. It includes many literary forms including ''adabs'', a non-fiction form of Islamic advice literature, and various fictional literary genres. In the 2000s academics have moved beyond evaluations of differences between Islamic and non-Islamic literature to studies such as comparisons of the novelization of various contemporary Islamic literatures and points of confluency with political themes, such as nationalism. Literary genres Fiction The best known fiction from the Islamic world is '' The Book of One Thousand and One Nights'' (''Arabian Nights''), a compilation of many earlier folk tales set in a frame story of being told serially by the Persian Queen Scheherazade. The compilation took form in the 10th century and reached its final form by the 14th century; t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Clifford Edmund Bosworth
Clifford Edmund Bosworth FBA (29 December 1928 – 28 February 2015) was an English historian and Orientalist, specialising in Arabic and Iranian studies. Life Bosworth was born on 29 December 1928 in Sheffield, West Riding of Yorkshire (now South Yorkshire). His father Clifford Bosworth, clerked for Board of Guardians before working for Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance, his mother was Gladys Constance Gregory. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in modern history from the St John's College, Oxford, before achieving an MA in Middle Eastern studies and PhD degrees from the University of Edinburgh. Before attending the University of Edinburgh, he worked for the Department of Agriculture for Scotland, where he met Annettee Ellen Todd, who he would go on to marry in Edinburgh on 19 September 1957, the couple would go on to have three daughters. He held permanent posts at the University of St Andrews, University of Manchester, and at the Center for the Humanities ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Banu'l-Furat
The Banu'l-Furat () were a Shia family of civil functionaries of the Abbasid Caliphate in the late 9th and early 10th centuries, several of whom held the office of vizier. In the sources, the members of the family are often simply designated as Ibn al-Furat. Along with their rivals, the Banu'l-Jarrah, they controlled the Caliphate's central government in the early decades of the 10th century. The most notable members of the family were: * Abu'l-Abbas Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Musa ibn al-Hasan ibn al-Furat (died 904), chief fiscal minister of the caliphs al-Mu'tadid and al-Muktafi until his death. * Abu'l-Hasan Ali ibn Muhammad ibn Musa ibn al-Hasan ibn al-Furat (855–924), originally deputy of his brother Ahmad, vizier in 908–912, 917–918 and 923–924. Deposed and executed with his son al-Muhassin due to their abuse of power in July 924. * Abu'l-Khattab Ja'far ibn Muhammad ibn Musa ibn al-Hasan ibn al-Furat (died 909/10), head of the land department of East and West from 908 t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Abu'l-Hasan Ali Ibn Al-Furat
Abu'l-Hasan Ali ibn Muhammad ibn Musa ibn al-Hasan ibn al-Furat () (855 – 18 July 924) was a senior official of the Abbasid Caliphate who served three times as vizier under Caliph al-Muqtadir. Ali emerged into prominence as an able fiscal administrator and deputy to his older brother Ahmad. Eventually he came to lead one of the two major and rival court factions during al-Muqtadir's caliphate, the Banu'l-Furat, the other being the group of officials around the commander-in-chief Mu'nis al-Muzaffar and the vizier Ali ibn Isa al-Jarrah. He played an important role in the selection of al-Muqtadir as caliph in 908, going on to serve as vizier in 908–912, during which time he succeeded in re-incorporating Fars into the Caliphate and to restore a measure of authority over the Sajids of Adharbayjan. After a second tenure in 917–918 he was imprisoned by his successor, and was released in 923, becoming vizier for the third and last time soon after. His brutality towards his rival ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Abu'l-Abbas Ahmad Ibn Al-Furat
Abu'l-ʿAbbās Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Mūsā ibn al-Ḥasan ibn al-Furāt () a member of the Banu'l-Furat family, was a senior fiscal administrator for the Abbasid Caliphate and eventually head of the fiscal administration under the caliphs al-Mu'tadid and al-Muktafi, until his death in 904. Ahmad's family had been of some prominence at Baghdad already in the early 9th century, but it was his father Muhammad ibn Musa who first occupied an important administrative post. Ahmad began his career alongside his brother Ali during the late caliphate of al-Mu'tamid () and the regency of al-Muwaffaq. Both were protégés of the fellow Shi'ite Isma'il ibn Bulbul, who, after becoming vizier to both al-Mu'tamid and al-Muwaffaq in 885, brought them into the administration as fiscal experts and entrusted them with the department of land revenue of the Sawad. Following Ibn Bulbul's dismissal, Ahmad was imprisoned for a while, but at the accession of al-Mu'tadid () in 892, he was rele ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Ibn Al-Mu'tazz
Abdallah ibn al-Mu'tazz ( ar, عبد الله بن المعتز, ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Muʿtazz; 861 – 17 December 908) was the son of the caliph al-Mu'tazz and a political figure, but is better known as a leading Arabic poet and the author of the ''Kitab al-Badi'', an early study of Arabic forms of poetry. This work is considered one of the earliest works in Arabic literary theory and literary criticism. Persuaded to assume the role of caliph of the Abbasid dynasty following the premature death of al-Muktafi, he succeeded in ruling for a single day and a single night, before he was forced into hiding, found and then strangled in a palace intrigue that brought al-Muqtadir, then thirteen years old, to the throne. Life Born in Samarra as a prince of the imperial house and the great-great-grandson of Harun al-Rashid, Ibn al-Mu'tazz had a tragic childhood in the Byzantine intrigues of the Abbasid caliphate. His grandfather, the caliph al-Mutawakkil, was assassinated when Ibn ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Al-Muktafi
Abū Muḥammad ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad ( ar, أبو محمد علي بن أحمد; 877/78 – 13 August 908), better known by his regnal name al-Muktafī bi-llāh ( ar, المكتفي بالله, , Content with God Alone), was the Caliph of the Abbasid Caliphate from 902 to 908. More liberal and sedentary than his militaristic father al-Mu'tadid, al-Muktafi essentially continued his policies, although most of the actual conduct of government was left to his viziers and officials. His reign saw the defeat of the Qarmatians of the Syrian Desert, and the reincorporation of Egypt and the parts of Syria ruled by the Tulunid dynasty. The war with the Byzantine Empire continued with alternating success, although the Arabs scored a major victory in the Sack of Thessalonica in 904. His death in 908 opened the way for the installation of a weak ruler, al-Muqtadir, by the palace bureaucracy, and began the terminal decline of the Abbasid Caliphate. Early life Ali ibn Ahmad was born in 877/8 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Badr Al-Mu'tadidi
Abu'l-Najm Badr al-Mu'tadidi was the chief military commander of the Abbasid Caliphate during the reign of Caliph al-Mu'tadid (892–902). Originally a military slave (''ghulam'' or ''mawla'') who served under the future al-Mu'tadid in the suppression of the Zanj Rebellion, his ability and loyalty led him to become the Caliph's commander-in-chief, exercising considerable influence in the governance of the state throughout Mu'tadid's reign. He was executed on 14 August 902 due to the machinations of the ambitious vizier, al-Qasim ibn Ubayd Allah. Life Badr was the son of one of Caliph al-Mutawakkil's freed slaves (), whose name is uncertain (Khurr or Khayr). He began his career as an equerry under the stable-master of al-Muwaffaq, the virtual regent of the Caliphate during the reign of his brother al-Mu'tamid () and father of the caliph al-Mu'tadid (). He then became one of a group of the military slaves or pages () recruited by Mu'tadid for the campaigns against the Zanj Reb ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |