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From Baghdad to Bukhara, from Ghazna to Delhi: The Khil‘a Ceremony in the Transmission of Kingly Pomp and Circumstance

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Robes and Honor

Part of the book series: The New Middle Ages ((TNMA))

Abstract

Prior to his death in 193/809, the fifth ‘Abbāsid caliph, al-Rashīd, made an unusual disposition of the caliphate, bequeathing to his eldest son, al-Amīn, the caliphal office together with the western and central provinces, while endowing his second son, al-Ma’mūn, the offspring of a Persian slave-girl, with the great province of Khurasan north and east of the Iranian Dasht-i Lut and Dasht-i Kavir.2 This latter charge provided the fiscal and manpower resources for the younger son to challenge the elder, and after a protracted fratricidal struggle, al-Amīn was killed and al-Ma’mūn took his place (198/813). Recognizing the practical problems of administering Khurasan from Baghdad, he appointed his most trusted henchman, Ṭāhir b. al-Husayn, its governor in 205/821.

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Notes

  1. See, for example, Richard N. Frye, The Golden Age of Persia: The Arabs in the East (London: Thames and Hudson, 1975), pp. 186–212.

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  2. This letter was written by Ṭāhir al-Husayn around 205–206/821 to his son ‘Abd Allah b. Tāhir on the occasion of al-Ma’mūn appointing the latter as governor of Raqqa and Egypt. See Ibn Khaldūn, The Muqaddimah, trans. Franz Rosenthal, 3 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958), vol. 2, pp. 139–56.

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  11. Ibid., p. 64.

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  12. Ibid., p. 77. According to Rosenthal, the word kiswa is often used as a collective with a meaning approximating to a complete wardrobe (p. 77, n. 392). For ‘Amr’s request for appointment, see Ibid., pp. 70 and 84.

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  33. Khushdāshiyya is a term used for a group of mamluks bound by loyalty to a common master and to each other in Mamluk Egypt. See D. Ayalon, LʻEsclavage de Mamlouk (Jerusalem: The Israel Oriental Society, 1951), pp. 29–31 and 34–37; D. P. Little, An Introduction to Mamluk Historiography (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1970), pp. 125–26; and R. Irwin, The Middle East in the Middle Ages: The Early Mamluk Sultanate, 1250–1382 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986), pp. 65, 88–90 and 154–55. While the term khushdāshiyya or its Persian equivalent has not been found in the Indian sources (Peter Jackson, “The Mamluk Institution in Early Muslim India,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 3d ser., 2 [1990]: 351), Minhāj-i Sirāj’s practice of referring to the Muʻizzī, Quṭbī and Shamsī mamluks surely makes a distinction between members of different slave-households, making it difficult not to assume a bonding comparable to Egyptian khushdāshiyya practice.

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  34. He minted coinage in his own name. See S. Lane-Poole, The Coins of the Sultans of Dehli in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1884), pp. xviii–xix, 10–12, and plate I; Dominique Sourdel, Inventaire de monnaies musulmanes anciennes du Musée de Caboul (Damascus: Institut Français de Damas, 1953), pp. 129–32 and plate VI; Edward Thomas, “On the Coins of the Kings of Ghazni,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 9 (1848):379–80.

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  1. Gavin R. G. Hambly
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Stewart Gordon

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Hambly, G.R.G. (2001). From Baghdad to Bukhara, from Ghazna to Delhi: The Khil‘a Ceremony in the Transmission of Kingly Pomp and Circumstance. In: Gordon, S. (eds) Robes and Honor. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-61845-3_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-61845-3_8

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-61847-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-349-61845-3

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