IRAN UNDER THE LATER QAJARS, 1845-1922 PDF

IRAN UNDER THE LATER QAJARS, I845-I922 Russian Cossack forces, and requested Russian officers to command and drill a new Persian Cossack Brigade, which was founded in 1879. This soon became the one well-trained and reliable force in the Persian army (as large as 2,000 men by the 1890s), useful most...

IRAN UNDER THE LATER QAJARS, I845-I922 Russian Cossack forces, and requested Russian officers to command and drill a new Persian Cossack Brigade, which was founded in 1879. This soon became the one well-trained and reliable force in the Persian army (as large as 2,000 men by the 1890s), useful mostly for protecting the Shah and his government. It was also another instrument of Russian influence in Iran. Added to the spate of concessions from 1888 to 1890, it meant that Iran was being increasingly manipulated by Russian and British economic and political pressures. PROTEST AND REVOLUTION: 1890—1914 The economic and political dislocations brought by the Western impact included the undermining of many Iranian handicrafts, the turning of workers in the one favoured craft of carpets into wage labourers who often worked for a pittance, the fall of prices of Iranian exports as compared to European imports, and the disastrous fall in the international price of silver, the basis of Iran's currency. These plus the difficulty of being a trader independent of Europeans and the impossibility of setting up protected factories led to growing economic discontent and resentment against European economic rivals. Increasing Western political and financial control of Iran was also resented, and the numerous Iranian traders and workers who travelled to India, Russian Transcaucasia, and Turkey were able to witness reforms and hear liberal or radical ideas that suggested ways that governments could change in form and could undertake modernizing and self-strengthening policies that might help Iran and free the country of foreign control. In the 1880s and after there were a number of men with official positions who advocated reform. Among the ministers the most important was Amin al-Daula, who had held a variety of posts, chiefly that of Minister of Posts, and was generally considered a sincere and honest reformer and westernizer who disliked the corruption and foreign dominance he saw around him. Less forceful or powerful than men like Amir-i Kabir or Mirza Husain Khan (with whom he did not enjoy good relations), he could achieve only little influence in the face of power maintained by Amin al-Sultan. Mirza Malkum Khan (1883- 1908), discussed above, after his departure from Iran became for years the Minister of Iran to Great Britain, and concentrated his reform activities on promoting a modified Persian script and to writings directed to a small number of elite Iranians. In 1889 Nasir al-Din Shah took his third trip to Europe, a trip that was heavily promoted by Wolff, who hoped to further British financial interest in Iran, and succeeded to a great extent. Among the concessions signed by the Shah 291 Was a concession for a lottery in Iran promoted in part by Malkum Khan. After his return to Iran, the Shah was faced with strong opposition to the lottery concession, coming largely from the religious elements who noted that gambling was forbidden by the Koran. The Shah cancelled the concession and so informed Malkum Khan, who hastened to sell the concession for a handsome price before it became known in England that it had been cancelled. This behaviour resulted in Malkum's dismissal from his posts and the stripping of all his titles. This somewhat tarnished but influential reformer now decided either to undermine, or alternatively to blackmail, the Iranian government by producing an oppositional and reformist newspaper, Qanun (law), which was printed in London and smuggled into Iran. Preaching the virtues of a fixed legal system and the evils of arbitrary and corrupt governments, Qanun concentrated its personal attacks on Amin al-Sultan, and was quite widely read among Iran's elite during the seven years of its existence, until the death of Nasir al-Din Shah. The only other free newspaper at this time, the much older Akhtar put out by Iranians in Istanbul, was much milder in its reformism, and hence, unlike Qanun, was less frequently forbidden entry into Iran. Within Iran there were only official journals, the one experience of a freer paper launched with the encouragement of Mirza Husain Khan in 1876, the bilingual La Patrie, lasted for only one issue, as its French editor called for free and fearless criticism. Before 1890 most educated westernizing reformers had been rather hostile to the ulama — as witness Amir-i Kabir, Mirza Husain Khan, Amin al-Daula, and the Babi and Bahai reformers. On the other hand, some ulama who felt Western innovation was dangerous to Islam stood out as opponents of the alarming trend towards the selling of Iran's resources to foreigners, and the ulama's virtual inviolability and their ties to the guilds could make even secular reformers recognize them as useful allies in a struggle against foreign control. From 1890 to 1912 and even beyond there were occasions during which some reconciliation existed between the secularist and ulama elements of the opposition. One of the forgers of this alliance, unusual in world history, between religious and radical elements was the internationally travelled Muslim reformer and pan-Islamist, Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, 1839-97.19 He claimed Afghan birth and upbringing, probably in order to have more influence in the Sunni world than he could have had as an Iranian who had a Shii education in Iran and in the Shii shrine cities of Iraq. Educated in the rationalist philosophical tradition of 291 Avicenna and later Iranian philosophers, who were far more widely taught in Iran than in the Sunni Middle East, Afghani seems also to have been influenced by the philosophically oriented Shaikhi school of Shiism. In about 1857-8, he travelled to British India, where he seems to have developed a lifelong hatred of British imperialism. After an unsuccessful attempt in Afghanistan to arouse its rulers against the British in the late 1860s, he travelled to Istanbul, whence he was expelled in 1870 for a "heretical" talk that restated the views of some Muslim philosophers. In Egypt from 1871 to 1879 he helped arouse and educate a group of young men who were prominent in Egypt's national awakening, and after his expulsion by the foreign- influenced khedive Taufiq, he continued his modernist and anti- imperialist writing first in India and then in Paris, where he edited the anti-British and pan-Islamic Arabic newspaper, al- Urwa al-Wuthqa. After an unsuccessful attempt in London to influence British policy in Egypt and the Sudan, he returned to the south Persian port city of Bushahr, whence he had left before for India, and where he had his books sent from Egypt. He apparently intended only to pick up his books and go to Russia, where his anti-British views had attracted the nationalist publicist Katkov. The Iranian Minister of Press, Itimad al- Saltana, who had read al-c Urwa al- Wuthqa, talked the Shah into inviting Afghani to Tehran. There he soon offended the Shah, apparently by his violent anti-British proposals, but he began to gather around him a group of Iranian disciples. To them he apparently spoke of the need of uniting religious and nonreligious oppositions to foreign encroachments. Forced by the Shah to leave Iran in 1887, he spent two years in Russia and then rejoined the Shah during his third trip to Europe. He then went to Russia, believing he had a mission from Amin al-Sultan to smooth over Russian hostility regarding concessions to the British, but in Iran Amin al-Sultan denied giving him such a mission and refused to see him. In the summer of 1890 Afghani heard that the Shah was planning to exile him and forestalled this by taking bast (sanctuary) in the shrine Shahzada Abd al- Azim just south of Tehran. Here he continued to gather disciples to whom he explained such means of organized opposition as the secretly posted and distributed leaflet and the political secret society. His contacts in Iran included his Tehran host, Amin al- Zarb, the largest and wealthiest Persian merchant and master of the mint; Amin al-Daula; some members of the ulama, notably the ascetic and reformist Shaikh Had! Najmabadi; and various reformers and ordinary people, such as his devoted servant Mirza Riza Kirmani. In January 1891, convinced that a leaflet strongly attacking the government for its concessions to foreigners emanated from Afghani, the Shah sent soldiers who forcibly dragged him from his sanctuary 194 and sent him on a forced march to the Iraqi border in mid- winter. From Ottoman Iraq, and then from London, where he soon proceeded and joined Malkum Khan, Afghani continued to write and speak against the Shah and his government, and he left behind a number of disciples, some organized in a secret society, whom he had instructed in political action and agitation. Discontent over the Shah's concession policy came to a head after he conceded a complete monopoly over the production, sale and export of all Iranian tobacco to a British subject, encouraged by Wolff, in March 1890. The concession was kept a secret for a time, but in late 1890 the newspaper Akhtar began a series of articles severely criticizing the concession. The January 1891 leaflet that brought about Afghani's expulsion attacked the tobacco concession among others, and new critical leaflets were issued by Afghani's followers in the spring. The tobacco concession brought far more protest than any other because it did not, like the others, deal with spheres that were unexploited, or only slightly exploited, by Iranian businessmen, but rather with a product already widely grown throughout Iran, and profiting many landholders, large and small merchants, shopkeepers and exporters. Massive protests against the concession began in the spring of 1891, when the tobacco company's agents began to arrive and to post deadlines for the sale of all tobacco to the company. The first major protest, led by a religious leader, came in Shiraz, and this leader was exiled to Iraq. There he conferred with Afghani, who now wrote his famous letter to the most important leader of the Shii ulama, Hajji Mirza Hasan Shirazi, asking him to denounce the Shah and his sale of Iran to Europeans. Some writers to the contrary notwithstanding, Shirazi did not immediately take any strong action, but he did write privately to the Shah making many of the points that Afghani had made to him. A dangerously revolutionary movement now broke out in Tabriz, where the government was forced to suspend the concession operation, and mass, largely merchant- and ulama- led protests spread to Mashhad, Isfahan, Tehran and elsewhere. In December 1891, the movement culminated in an incredibly successful nationwide boycott on the sale and use of tobacco, observed even by the Shah's wives and by non-Muslims, which was based on an order either issued by, or more likely, attributed to Shirazi, which he subsequently confirmed. The government tried to suppress only the company's internal monopoly, leaving it with an export monopoly, but this proved impossible. A mass demonstration in Tehran culminating in the shooting on an unarmed crowd causing several deaths, followed by even more massive protests, forced the government to cancel the entire concession in early 1892. The affair left the Iranians with their first foreign 291 debt — £500,000 from the British owned Imperial Bank for exorbitant compensation to the company. The movement was the first successful mass protest in modern Iran, combining ulama, modernists, merchants, and townspeople in a coordinated movement against government policy. The movement's coordination throughout Iran and with the mujtahids of Iraq was facilitated by the existence and heavy use of the telegraph. Although many of the ulama were now bought off by the government and some quiet years followed, the "religious- radical alliance" had shown its potential for changing the course of Iranian policy, and the government did not grant further economic concessions for several years. The tobacco movement also encouraged the growth of Russian influence at the expense of the British. To preserve his position, Amin al-Sultan felt it necessary to assure the Russians that he would henceforth be oriented towards them, and his later policies bore this out. The British policy of 1888—90, of encouraging economic concessions by the Shah — a policy favoured by Lord Salisbury and the Foreign Office, and pushed with special energy by Wolff— had backfired, as Russian counter concessions and Russian support against the tobacco concession culminated in an increase in Russian, and not British, influence. Those who, looking only at the years 1888—90, dub the Wolf ministry, which ended in 1890, a success close their eyes to the implicitly anti British revolt and the rise of Russian influence which were, in fact, the most important international political consequences of that policy, as many contemporaries recognized. Ulama opposition to the Shah temporarily died down as many ulama were bought off, but attacks on the government from abroad continued. From London, Afghani contributed strong articles to Malkum's Qanun, and printed a letter sent out to Shii ulama in Iraq and Iran calling on them to depose the Shah. Late in 1892, Afghani went to Istanbul as a guest of Sultan Abdulhamid, who kept him from publishing further attacks on the Shah, but encouraged him to spread pan-Islamic propaganda among Iranians and other Shiis, calling on them to lend support to the Ottoman Sultan-Caliph. With this aim Afghani formed an Iranian Shii pan-Islamic circle in Istanbul, two of whose prominent members were Azali Babis who had by now become radical freethinkers — Mirza Aqa Khan Kirmani, a writer and editor Akhtar and his close friend, the poet and teacher Shaikh Ahmad Ruhi, also of Kirman. The circle sent out numerous 291  letters to the Shii ulama in Iran and elsewhere calling on them to give allegiance to the Sultan-Caliph. The Iranian Embassy complained of this activity, implicitly directed at weakening the authority of the Shah (which helps explain the participation of irreligious anti-Shah radicals in an apparently religious activity). The Ottoman Sultan agreed to the extradition of Ruhi, Kirmani, and a third Iranian, Khabir al-Mulk. While the three were waiting in prison in Trabzon, however, Afghani intervened for them, and the Sultan agreed not to send them to Iran. Meanwhile, the devoted Iranian servant and follower of Afghani, Mirza Riza Kirmani, who had been imprisoned for years for anti-government activities, arrived to visit Afghani in Istanbul in 1895. There Afghani seems to have given him the idea of returning to Iran to kill the Shah.21 After his return to Iran, Mirza Riza made his way to Shahzada Abd al- Azim, a Shii shrine, at the time that the Shah was planning to visit it in preparation for the celebration of the 50th lunar anniversary of his reign. Mirza Riza pretended to be a petitioner and suddenly shot the Shah on 1 May 1896. Immediately after, he was attacked by a crowd of women present in the shrine and lost an ear before he was saved by Amin al Sultan. The Shah was whisked away from public view, and his dead body was propped up in a carriage while Amin al-Sultan pretended to carry on a conversation with him — this in order to avoid the disorders and rebellions that often accompanied a change of ruler. The Cossacks were notified to cover Tehran, and disorder was avoided. Further anxiety concerned possible pretentions to the throne by two of the Shah's powerful sons. Zill al-Sultan, the Shah's oldest living son who was excluded from succession due to his mother's low birth, had a long history of political power and ambition. Feared and powerful as the oppressive governor of a large group of southern provinces, he had built up a virtual private army of western-trained soldiers that put most of the regular army to shame, and had not hesitated to kill a major Bakhtiyari chief and put down violently anyone he considered a threat. His ambition to take the throne in place of his weak and sickly half-brother, the Crown Prince Muzafar al-Din, was well known. Concern was also felt about his young brother, Kamran Mirza Naib al-Saltana, frequently army chief and/or governor of Tehran, who had the advantage of being on the scene in Tehran. The combination of Amin al Sultan, the Cossacks, and the clearly expressed support of both Russians and 291 British for the legitimate heir, however, brought expressions of loyalty to Muzaffar al-Din by both brothers. Nasir al-Din Shah was scarcely an illustrious or progressive ruler, but he was a relatively powerful one, under whose rule there were few serious tribal disorders or local revolts. The disorders he faced were more directly political, and he or his advisors had at least the negative virtue of knowing when it was necessary to bend or give in. Unlike his son he did not squander his treasury, and the loan raised to pay compensation to the tobacco company remained his only foreign loan. His interest in reform was sporadic at best, and he sacrificed or crippled the power of his only two serious reforming chief ministers when faced by the opposition of vested interests. In his last years he lost even this much interest in reform — a supposed project for codifying laws after the 1889 European trip came to nothing. Instead, he turned to the consolation of women and of a repulsive boy protégé, and to acquiring as much money and treasure as possible, without spending it for any public purpose. He left no legacy of a state or army machinery that might weather the eventuality he must have known was coming — the rule of a weak and sickly successor. Not all of Nasir al-Din's actions had negative results however. His patronage of the arts contributed to innovations in music, painting, and calligraphy. He also took a keen interest in poetry, and even tried his hand at writing poems. Significant literary novelties developed during his reign, many of which originated with court poets. Writers, who became important in political protest before and during the Constitutional period, took important steps towards reforming the archaic character of Persian prose. Increased Western contacts influenced many of these innovations. Several European works were translated. A few modern schools and medical clinics were established, mostly by European missionaries. Other new services included the establishment of the first modern police force in Tehran with the advice of an Austrian officer (1879). City services in Tehran, such as cleaning, paving and lighting streets, collection of refuse and maintenance of public parks got their first impetus towards the end of this period. In addition to these, telegraphs, regular newspapers, and banking and limited insurance services were introduced in Iran for the first time during Nasir al-Din Shah's reign.23 Postal services also expanded and first postage stamps were circulated (1868). In comparison with countries like Egypt and Ottoman Turkey, however, these changes were limited. 291 Muzaffar al-Din Shah's relatively mild nature was shown in his treatment of Mirza Riza Kirmani, who was extensively interrogated but not tortured before he was hanged. The Iranian government also demanded from the Ottomans the extradition of Afghani and of his three followers still jailed in Trabzon. Sultan Abdulhamid still refused to return Afghani, claiming he was an Afghan and not subject to Iranian jurisdiction. The three unfortunate progressives in Trabzon, however, who had no connection with the Shah's assassination, were extradited, and the cruel new crown prince, Muhammad Ali Mirza, had them summarily executed in Tabriz. Continued Iranian demands for Afghani's extradition (Mirza Riza having said that Afghani was the only other person involved in the assassination) stopped when Afghani became extremely ill with cancer, and died in 1897. Muzaffar al-Din Shah's weak character did not prevent him from being open to reformist forces. He allowed the return to activity of a man nicknamed "Rushdiyya" because he had set up a modernized type of "Rushdiyya" higher school on the Ottoman model in Tabriz, where it met with overwhelming religious hostility. Such schools were now opened for the first time in Tehran. The Shah also dismissed the unpopular Amin al-Sultan and, later, appointed the reformist Amin al-Daula to be chief minister in August 1897. The Shah, however, had paid off his father's huge harem extravagantly, and now was continuously eager to have money to meet the incessant demands of his own courtiers, many of whom had come with him from Tabriz and pressed to make up for the years of relatively lean waiting. The Shah's doctors also advised trips to European watering spots, and he wanted money for this too. When Amin al Daula was unable to raise a new loan from the British, and when his reformist attempts in law, administration of finance, and education aroused the opposition of ulama and courtiers, he was dismissed and Amin al-Sultan was brought back as premier in 1898. Amin al-Daula's efforts for fiscal reform and centralization, like similar measures attempted by reforming ministers before him, were frustrated by opposition from court vested-interest groups and some government officials and ulama. His abolition of the barat system (assignment of drafts to be collected from provincial treasuries) made officials dependent for their salaries on the central treasury, which they saw as an ineffective tax collector and an unreliable provider of income. Reorganization of finances also meant a cut in court spending, which affected the entire ruling family including the Shah. 299 One of Amin al-Daula's projects was to invite in some Belgian customs administrators to reorganize the customs, which had been farmed out region by region, resulting in customs farmers underbidding each other, below the already low 5 % limit, in order to attract trade, and also in farmers collecting far more than they paid in. The Belgian experiment was extended under Amin al-Sultan, and the leader of the Belgians, Naus, was made Minister of Customs. This resulted in an increase in efficiency and collection, but also widespread complaints by Iranian merchants that they were discriminated against in favour of foreigners, particularly the Russians, with whom the Belgians had close relations. The exact validity of these charges is unclear, but it is clear that many Iranian merchants had now to pay more than formerly, and that they blamed this on the Shah, the prime minister, and the presence of foreigners. Naus's influence soon extended far beyond customs, and he became de facto Minister of Finance. In order to pay for the foreign trips recommended by the Shah's doctors, Amin al-Sultan floated two large loans from Russia, in 1900 and 1902. The first loan required Iran to pay off its British debts and not to incur any other debts without Russian consent, while the second one included major economic concessions. The Russians also insisted on a new customs treaty, which was signed in 1902, and gave key Russian goods lower rates than the already low 5 % ad valorem. The income gained from the loans and from customs reform was not used productively, and went largely for the three extravagantly expensive trips to Europe which the Shah and his entourage took between 1900 and 1905. Meanwhile, discontent with the government was becoming organized once again. Secret oppositional societies became active in Tehran and elsewhere, and distributed inflammatory leaflets, called shabnamas (night letters) because of their night- time distribution, against the government in 1900 and 1901. Some members of the societies were afterwards discovered and arrested. A new coalition among some of the leading ulama, courtiers, and secular progressives began to focus on the dismissal of Amin al-Sultan, who was seen as responsible for the alarming growth of loans and concessions to the Russians that were leading to Russian control of Iran. Even the British, alarmed at the growth of Russian influence, gave some money and encouragement to leading members of the ulama in Tehran and in the shrine cities of Iraq to help arouse activity against the Russian-favoured trade agreement. This opposition movement also called for the removal of Belgian customs officials and closure of newly established modern schools. These agitations were accompanied by an outburst of anti-foreign and anti- minority feelings in a few cities, instigated by some of the ulama. Chief among these were the anti-Bahai riots of the summer of 1903  122 which led to the killing of dozens of Bahais in Isfahan and Yazd. The Bahais were easier scapegoats than the foreign subjects residing in Iran. Although unable to stop the 1902 loan from Russia as they had tried, the opposition became menacing enough to help force the dismissal of Amin al Sultan (now adorned with the higher title of Atabak) in September 1903. A decree execrating the Atabak as an unbeliever attributed to the leading Shii ulama of Iraq was widely circulated and believed, although doubts were cast on its authenticity. The Shah now appointed a reactionary relative of his, Ain al- Daula, as premier, but popular protests against the Belgian customs officials and against high prices continued. Secret societies grew, and some helped to educate their members by reading and disseminating critical literature about Iran written in Persian abroad. This literature formed the basis for the ideological awakening of many Iranians who had not travelled abroad or received modern education. It included the works of men of Persian Azarbaijani origin living in Russian Transcaucasia, such as Fath Ali Akhundov, whose father had migrated from Iranian Azarbaijan. His anonymous Kamal al- Daula va Jalal al-Daula a collection of fictitious epistles describing conditions in Iran, was bitterly critical. A similar series of Persian letters was imitated by Mirza Aqa Khan Kirmani, who also wrote other books and articles critical of Iranian conditions. Also widely read were the educational works of Talibov, an Azarbaijani emigre to Transcaucasia, and especially the "Travel book of Ibrahim Beg" by Zain al- Abidin Maraghai a book of fictitious travels in Iran that mercilessly exposed the evils of Iranian society. Less known, but not without influence, were other critical works, such as the translation of James Morier's Hajji Baba of Isfahan by Mirza Habib Isfahani, which added sharpness and a more contemporary flavor of criticism to the original. The "True Dream" by the progressive preachers from Isfahan, Jamal al-Din Isfahan! and Malik al-Mutakallimin, criticized under false names such high ranking ulama as the notorious Aqa Najafi, who used their position to add to their wealth and power, and corrupt governors such as Zill al-Sultan Such fiction reinforced the impression created by the reformist political writings of Malkum Khan and others, and by the newspapers published abroad and sent into Iran (with greater freedom under Muzaffar al-Din than under 122 Nasir al-Din), which were now joined by Parvarish and Surayya from Cairo and Hablai-Matin from Calcutta. The legally distributed papers in Iran continued to be only official or semi- official ones. Some Iranians now began to plan revolutionary action, and revolutionary sentiment was strengthened by the Russo-Japanese War of 1904—5 and the Russian Revolution of 1905. Iranians knew that Russia would intervene against any attempt to overthrow or undermine Qajar government, but with the Russian government fully occupied first with war and then with revolution, it was clearly a propitious time to move. In addition, the strength shown by the recently backward Japanese against the dreaded Russians gave people courage, as did the possibility of shaking by revolution such a potent autocracy as that of Russia. The sight of the only Asian constitutional power defeating the only major European nonconstitutional power not only showed formerly weak Asians overcoming the seemingly omnipotent West, but aroused much new interest in Iran as elsewhere in Asia in a constitution as a "secret of strength". The Iranian Constitutional Revolution is usually dated from December 1905, when the governor of Tehran bastinadoed a group of sugar merchants for not lowering their raised sugar prices. Merchants were joined by a large group of mullas and tradesmen who then took sanctuary (bast) in the Royal Mosque of Tehran, whence they were dispersed by agents of Ain al- Daula with the help of the Imam Juma of Tehran, a leading pro- government cleric. A group of ulama then decided, at the suggestion of the prominent reforming mujtahid, Sayyid Muhammad Tabataba°i, to retire to the shrine of Shahzada Abd al-c Azim, south of Tehran. There they were joined by a crowd of some 2,000 religious students, middle- and low-ranking mullas, merchants and common people. The bast took 2 5 days and was financed by discontented merchants and rivals of Ain al-Daula, including supporters of Amin al-Sultan. The crucial demand was for a representative adalatkhana ("house of justice") of which the meaning and composition were not spelled out — perhaps in order to maintain the unity of modernizers and traditional ulama. The Shah dismissed the unpopular governor of Tehran, and in January 1906, agreed to the adalatkhana, upon which the ulama returned to Tehran and were received with enthusiasm. The Shah and Ain al-Daula showed no sign of fulfilling the promise, however, and further agitation against the government by the popular and radical preachers, Sayyid Jamal al-Din 121 Isfahani and Shaikh Muhammad Vaiz, increased, and provided a potent means of mass political enlightenment in the absence of an open oppositional press. Sayyid Jamal was expelled from Tehran, and the government ordered Shaikh Muhammad to be expelled too. On 11 July 1906, confronting a strong popular attempt to keep Shaikh Muhammad from being expelled, an officer killed a young sayyid. After this a great mass of mullas and some others left Tehran to take bast in Qum, on 20 July 1906, while even greater numbers of merchants and tradesmen, reaching 12,000—14,000, took a week-long bast in the grounds of the British legation in Tehran (British personnel then being in summer quarters in Qulhak), while Tehran business was at a standstill. Inside the legation grounds the protesters were organized according to their guild affiliations, each guild having its own tent and cooking equipment. Revolutionary propaganda was propagated by the preachers present. Now the protestors demanded and finally got not only the dismissal of Ain al-Daula, but also a representative assembly or majlis — an idea put forth by the constitutionalists. Although not yet demanded by the movement, the word constitution, mashrutiyyat, began to be voiced by the advanced reformers. At the end of July the Shah dismissed Ain al-Daula, and early in August he accepted the majlis. The first Majlis (Assembly) was elected by a six-class division of electors that gave far greater representation to the guilds (who comprised mainly middle- and lower-middle-class elements) than they found in subsequent Majlises elected by a one-class system dominated by the landlords and the rich. Tehran, the most politically advanced city aside from Tabriz, got disproportionate representation (60 out of 15 6 deputies were from Tehran). The first Majlis opened in October 1906, as soon as the Tehran deputies were elected. A committee was assigned to write the Fundamental Law, which the Shah delayed signing until he was mortally ill, in December 1906. A longer Supplementary Fundamental Law was added in 1907, and signed by the new Shah, Muhammad All, in October. These two documents, based largely on the Belgian constitution, formed the core of the Iranian constitution until 1979. These documents were more honoured in the breach than the observance after 1912, and especially after 1925. The clear intent of the constitution was to set up a truly constitutional monarchy in which Majlis approval was required on all important matters, including foreign loans and treaties, and in which ministers would be responsible to the Majlis. Equality before the law and personal rights and freedoms, subject to a few limits, were also guaranteed, despite the protests of the ulama that members of minority religions should not have equal status with those of the state religion, Islam. The Majlis also passed laws guaranteeing 121 compulsory public education and free press. The ulama opposed these laws as being anti-Islamic. The Majlis quickly showed its patriotism by refusing a new Russian loan and beginning plans for a national bank instead, which, however, ultimately foundered due to lack of capital. Two conservative provisions, for a group of mujtahids to rule on the compatibility of laws with Islam and for a half appointed upper-house, were not enforced, although the Senate was created on Muhammad Riza Shah's initiative after World War II. The new freedoms of press and assembly brought about a sudden flourishing of newspapers, which not only carried direct political news and comments, but also published some of the best new poetry and satire. Particularly noteworthy was the Sur-i Israfil with its poems and the brilliant political satire of the young Dihkhuda. Revolutionary societies or anjumans were formed throughout Iran, some of them based on older guilds or fraternal groups, which now became actively involved in politics. The term anjuman was also used for the city councils, usually elected, which now appeared for the first time in many cities with parliamentary encouragement. In January 1907, the mild and ineffectual Muzafar al-Din Shah died, and was succeeded by his cruel and autocratic son, Muhammad All Shah. Although the new Shah had to take an oath to support the constitution, he did not invite any Majlis deputies to his coronation, and he recalled as prime minister the Atabak, who had been travelling abroad since his dismissal in 1903. Since the constitution was not categorical about who really appointed the prime minister, and the Majlis wished to avoid a direct clash with the new Shah, they accepted the appointment despite hostile telegrams from anjumans and internal arguments. Conflicts over the Atabak's return and over the constitution occurred between the conservative party in the Majlis, led by the two prime mujtahids of the revolution, Sayyid Muhammad Tabataba°i and the less principled Sayyid Abd Allah Bihbahani, and by liberal officials, and the smaller democratic left, represented especially by the deputies from the progressive city of Tabriz led by the patriotic young Sayyid Hasan Taqizada. Tabriz and its surrounding province of Azarbaijan made up the advanced body of the revolution. More modernized economically, heavily involved in international trade, and in contact through travel and emigration with the similarly Turkish-speaking areas of Istanbul and Russian Transcaucasia (where many thousands emigrated temporarily or permanently every year, and from whence arms were imported), Tabriz was uniquely situated to play a vanguard role. The Atabak did not fulfill the Shah's hope that he would get rid of the Majlis, but rather tried to strike a compromise between the Shah and courtiers and the 122 Majlis conservatives. In so doing, he aroused the distrust of both the autocrats and the radicals. He was assassinated by a member of a radical group on 31 August 1907, but there is convincing evidence that the Shah was also planning his assassination and may even have penetrated the assassin's group.30 The Shah hoped to use the assassination as an excuse to suppress the revolutionaries, but in fact, it encouraged them and increased their strength and boldness. On the same date, 31 August 1907, the Anglo-Russian Treaty settling their differences in Tibet, Afghanistan, and Iran was signed. The growth of the German threat encouraged this treaty, which hurt Iranians, who had counted on British help against Russian intervention. The treaty divided Iran into three spheres, with northern and central Iran, including Tehran and Isfahan, in the Russian sphere; south-east Iran in the British sphere; and an area in between (ironically including the area where oil was first found in 1908) in the neutral zone. The Iranians were neither consulted on the agreement nor informed as to its terms when it was signed.  After an unsuccessful assassination attempt on the Shah, and an equally unsuccessful coup attempt by the Shah, the Shah executed a successful coup with the help of the Russian-led Cossack Brigade in June 1908. The Majlis was closed and many popular nationalist leaders, especially those of more advanced views, were arrested and executed. The radical preachers, Jamal al-Din Isfahan!, caught while trying to flee, Malik al- Mutakallimin, and the editor of Suri Israfil Mirza Jahangir Khan (the last two had Azali Babi ties) were among those killed. Taqizada (and some others) found refuge in the British Legation, whence he went abroad for a time. While the rest of the country bowed to royal control, the city of Tabriz which, exceptionally, had an armed and drilled popular guard, held out against royal forces. The leaders of this popular resistance were brave men of humble origin. One of them, Sattar Khan, had defied the royal order to put up white flags as a sign of surrender to the approaching royal forces, and had instead gone around with his men tearing down white flags, thus initiating the Tabriz resistance. With the help of his co-leader, Baqir Khan, Sattar Khan and their men held out for months against an effective siege by royalist troops. When food supplies became critical the Russians sent troops into Tabriz ostensibly to protect Europeans, but effectively they took over. Many of the popular forces, known alternatively as mujahids or fidais, both implying self- sacrificing fighters for the faith, left for the nearby Caspian province of Gilan, where they were joined by a local revolutionary armed force, and together they began a march on  121 Tehran. Meanwhile the Bakhtiyari tribe, which had several grudges against the Qajars, and had some leaders who were genuinely liberal and others who wanted to get much of the power of the central government into their own hands, helped to liberate Isfahan from royalist forces and began moving northwards toward Tehran. The Bakhtiyaris and the northern revolutionaries converged on Tehran in July 1909; the Shah took refuge with the Russians and his minor son Ahmad was made Shah with the Qajar prince, Azud al-Mulk and, later, the conservative Oxford-educated Nasir al-Mulk as regents. In his opposition to the Majlis, Muhammad A1i Shah was assisted by a number of high-ranking ulama. Foremost among them were Shaikh Fazl-Allah Nuri, later hanged by Constitutionalists in 1909, and Sayyid Muhammad Yazdi of the Iraqi shrine cities. These clerics initially saw the movement as an opportunity to increase their political influence and prevent Westernizing reforms. By 1907, when the liberals had gained the upper hand in radicalizing and secularizing the movement, the conservative elements shifted sides and began to oppose the constitution. The second Majlis was elected under a new electoral law calling for a single class of voters, and was marked by differences between what were now considered parties — the Moderates, led by Bihbahani, who was assassinated by an extremist in 1910, and the new Democratic Party led by men like Taqizada, who was forced to leave Iran after Bihbahani's assassination, with which he was surely unconnected. Iran's chief problem remained finances, with the related problem of reestablishing control over the provinces, many of which were more subject than ever to tribal disorders and robberies, and remitted little of their due taxes. Desiring a foreigner unconnected with the British or the Russians, the Iranians brought a young American expert, Morgan Shuster, to control and reform their finances. Shuster proposed to set up a tax-collecting gendarmerie, and to head it he proposed an officer in the British Indian army, then with the British Legation in Tehran, Major Stokes, who agreed to resign his commission and position. The Russians protested that the Anglo-Russian Agreement meant that they should control any such officials in the north, and convinced the British to support their position. In November 1911, the Russians sent an ultimatum demanding the dismissal of Shuster and the agreement of Iran not to engage foreigners without British and Russian consent. The Majlis rejected the ultimatum, but as Russian troops advanced toward Tehran the more compliant Nasir al-Mulk and the "moderate" and heavily Bakhtiyari cabinet forcibly 121 dissolved the second Majlis, accepted the ultimatum, and dismissed Shuster, in December 1911.  These events marked the real end of the revolution, which may be considered a short-term failure, but which left a considerable legacy. In addition to the constitution itself, a series of financial reforms ending feudal grants and regularizing financial practices remained as a legacy, as did a move toward greater civil jurisdiction in the courts, and the Majlis as a guardian against certain foreign encroachments. Another important new feature of the period before and during the revolution was the entry of women into the political arena. Although women had long participated in bread riots, they now staged some political demonstrations, and Tehran had a women's anjuman and a women's newspaper. This trend was to grow significantly after World War I, when several short-lived women's newspapers advocated the need for improvement of the status of women, especially through promotion of education. Women's organizations, however, were often disrupted by conservative ulama and others. Although the constitution was never abrogated, no new Majlis was elected until 1914 and Russian troops continued to occupy northern Iran, while the anjumans were dissolved, the Press was censored and power returned to a conservative cabinet under vigilant British and especially Russian control. Despite the constitution and political awakening that remained as positive achievements, many people reverted to apathy and cynicism when faced by the restoration of foreign and conservative controls.  In 1901, a British subject, D'Arcy, had been granted a concession for oil in all Iran except the five northern provinces — Russian reaction being forestalled by the ruse of presenting the (Persian) text of the concession to the Russian legation at a time when the chief minister knew that the Russians' translator was away. Although the first years' explorations were discouraging, oil was finally struck in the southwest in 1908. In 1912 the British navy converted from coal to oil and in 1914 the British government bought a majority of shares in the company holding the concession. The company backed the virtually autonomous Shaikh Khazal, the most powerful Arab leader in Khuzistan province, and also entered into independent relations with the adjacent region, and the British exercised a control in the south quite comparable to that held by Russia in the north. Given their experience with the British and Russians for decades, it was no wonder that many Iranian nationalists and democrats turned to the Germans for support during World War I. 121  ‫قسمت دوم جزوه‬ 222 -202 ‫ ص‬،2 ‫ جلد‬،‫تاریخ کمبریج اسالم‬ repudiation of kinship is striking, and must reflect the egalitarian thinking of those living in Basra and Kufa more than that of the Kharijite tribesmen who had broken off from Ali and who, often operating in kinship groups (the Shayban and Tamim tribes produced many Kharijites), rebelled against Umayyad and early Abbasid rule. Just how committed these tribesmen were to Kharijite ideals of merit is hard to know; what is clearer is that Kharijite bands were committed to violent rebellion according to a fairly consistent pattern: secession through emigration (hijra) and jihad against those whom they considered unbelievers. (In some exceptional cases, the Kharijite commitment to violence extended to non combatant women and children.) In practising emigration and jihad, the Kharijites were falling foul of the Umayyads, but they were holding fast to ideas that had powered Muhammad and his contemporaries out of Arabia.80 That they had so little success says something about how quickly things had changed in the space of a couple of generations. The early Islamic polity: instruments and traditions of rule in the Sufyanid period We saw earlier that Umar (r. 634 44) is credited with establishing the first diwan, which distributed stipends to conquering soldiers. Several other administrative innovations are similarly ascribed to the second caliph, such as the introduction of the Muslim calendar and the office of the qad¯i (judge). So, too, is an indulgent and conservative fiscal policy towards indigenous cultivators: taxes were kept reasonable, the peasants left undisturbed, and the remnants of the Byzantine and Sasanian bureaucracies left intact. Fewer such innovations are attributed to the altogether more controversial Uthman and Ali. With the longer and more stable reigns of Muqawiya (r. 661 80) and Abd al Malik (r. 685 705), the innovations appear with greater frequency: the former is commonly credited with establishing a number of other diwans, and the latter with a wide range of administrative and bureaucratic measures. These include translating the tax documents from Greek and Persian into Arabic, and reforming weights, measures and coins, as we shall presently see. The tradition, in sum, lays the foundation of the Islamic state in the inspired rule of the second of the four ‘rightly guided caliphs’, and describes its growth as evolutionary.81 Does it have things right? The material and documentary 2 evidence tells a story that is different from that of the tradition a story of deferred revolution, rather than gradual evolution. The conquerors put in place a rudimentary system for the redistribution of conquest resources among the tribesmen, and tribal chieftains (ashraf ) played a crucial role in the overlapping networks of indirect rule that characterised Muqawiya’s caliphate. Similarly rudimentary was the division of authority in the newly conquered territories: the caliph seems to have ruled northern Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine and Arabia directly, and the rest of the empire was divided into three huge governorships: North Africa and Egypt; Basra and those eastern provinces associated with it; and Kufa and associated provinces. By later Umayyad and Abbasid standards, administrative geography was thus undifferentiated and monolithic. So, too, were administration and bureaucracy. Governorships were awarded for a number of reasons, but kinship was always a criterion; and when genuine kinship was lacking, it was invented, as in the case of a famous governor of Basra, Ziyad ibn Abihi (Ziyad, the son of his father’), whose services were so valuable to Muqawiya that the caliph made him a foster brother.82 (Muqawiya himself married into the Kalb tribe, thus consolidating his tribal support in Syria.) Sitting in small courts atop rump bureaucracies, his governors seem to have enjoyed broad and undifferentiated civil and military authority; the law remaining underdeveloped and authority undifferentiated, they played roles that would subsequently be played by judges, tax collectors and commanders of the later Marwanid and Abbasid periods. Moreover, such power as Muqawiya and his governors possessed was mediated by tribal chiefs, upon whom they relied to raise armies, and non Muslim local elites, upon whom they relied to raise taxes. Gifting and bestowing favours and privileges were the currency of these transactions. Similarly, non Muslim subject populations generally did not experience Islamic rule, or experienced it only indirectly: local authority was usually in the hands of non-Muslim authorities, and Muqawiya seems to have been considered a benevolent, hands off ruler. That Muqawiya apparently handled the ashraf as in some measure as primi inter pares does not mean that he failed to develop a language of caliphal authority. As the seat of the caliphate moved from Medina to Kufa to 1 Damascus that is, from a corner of Arabia to one of Late Antique Syria’s major cities ideas of authority and rule naturally transformed to some degree. Such as it is, the evidence does suggest that Muqawiya innovated in ways that anticipate the later caliphate. According to the historical tradition, which is generally less than sympathetic to the caliph, Muqawiya introduced, inter alia, the maqsura (a private enclosure inside the mosque), a number of ceremonial practices, and a caliphal guard. Although the epigraphic record leads back to the 640s, it was Muqawiya who appears to have been the first caliph to publicise his name and claim to rule: already in 662 or 663, his name and title appear in Greek in a monumental inscription in Palestine (‘Muqawiya, commander of the believers’), and other examples (from Egypt and Arabia) follow in graffiti, coins and papyrus protocols.85 It is also with Muqawiya that a record of correspondence begins much spurious, but some at least partially authentic between the caliph and his neighbouring sovereigns, Constans II (r. 641 68) and Constantine IV (r. 668 85).86 Although nothing remains of it, Muqawiya’s palace in Damascus was apparently an impressive building complex, which announced itself clearly enough in the formerly Byzantine capital; like other Syrian properties of his, it would be reoccupied by subsequent caliphs, including Abd al Malik. The evidence is very thin, but it may even be that the ingredients for what became the standard form of the mosque a large courtyard enclosure with a hypostyle hall at one end were first mixed in Iraq during Muqawiya’s reign. In sum, he may have come to power through civil war, but his vision of caliphal rule projected from Syria principally by Syrian tribesmen was a powerful one, which survived nearly a century after his death. Still, if ideas of authority and rulership were transforming during the reign of Muqawiya, the instruments of power and persuasion remained relatively undeveloped. Muqawiya’s was a conquest polity in which regionalism was the rule 1 an ambitiously centralising state, one that patronised not only building projects on an unprecedented level, but also relatively stable institutions, emerged only during the reign of Abd al Malik. This very modesty of very early Islamic rule is clearly reflected in the coinage. Although circulation and minting patterns are clearer in the former Byzantine provinces than they are in the east, undated issues make sequences and chronologies difficult to establish and highly controversial, even in Syria and Palestine. Even so, some basic patterns are well established, and the most important of these is an early conservatism. The pre conquest divide in precious metal (Byzantine gold and Sasanian silver) was preserved throughout most of the seventh century. Within greater Syria, where the evidence is fullest, we know that the coinage of vanquished adversaries continued to circulate, small handfuls of Sasanian issues left over from the Sasanian occupation of 612 30, and large fistfuls of Byzantine coinage, some having survived from Byzantine rule, others filtering in across a porous frontier: thus one finds large numbers of Byzantine issues struck during the reign of Constans II (641 68), and others struck as late as the reign of Constantine IV (r. 668 85). In design, too, Byzantine and Sasanian models were closely followed, the issues of Constans II and Khusrau II (r. 590 628) proving the most popular.89 Muqawiya appears on a silver coin in the fifty fourth or fifty fifth year of the hijra as the ‘commander of the believers’; but the coin, which was minted in the southern Iranian town of Darabjird, retains strikingly pre Islamic elements: its dating is to the era of the Sasanian shah Yazdegerd, and its language is Pahlavi, or Middle Persian.90 Within this broad conservatism there was thus a measure of innovation in the coinage, but this innovation is clearest in Iraq and Iran that is, outside the metropolitan capital of Syria, where the caliph’s influence was presumably strongest. An argument that Muqawiya did have a hand in minting reform has been tentatively made, but it turns more on a single (and controversial) line in an early Syriac chronicle than on the surviving numismatic record. Whether any minting took place under caliphal supervision before the 690s therefore remains unproven, although the regional coinages of Syria from the 660s and 670s apparently show some increased organisation. 2 What is indisputable is that clearly centralised and coordinated minting appears only in the last decade of the seventh century as and when state institutions were crystallising. For much of the seventh century a bewildering array of coins was in circulation in Syria, some genuine Byzantine issues, others imitations (particularly of Constans II), others imitations of imitations. There is, then, no reliably early evidence for anything beyond very rudimentary instruments of rule that we can attribute to the caliphs or their courts. There is compelling evidence for a fairly sophisticated state apparatus at work throughout the seventh century, however. We find it in Egypt, where a wealth of Greek papyri (receipts of various sorts, requisitions, entagia, proto cols) reflect the continuity and, as recent scholarship has shown, an apparent expansion of an early Islamic fiscal system rooted in Byzantine traditions. (Layers of the Sasanian administrative apparatus survived into the early Islamic period, too, but there is virtually no documentary or contemporaneous evidence for it.) In what ways was the Byzantine system affected by Islamic rule? Arab Muslim officials of various sorts figure in the papyri from soon after the conquest, where they appear to have been both knowledgeable about, and assertive in, the management of the fisc. As a bilingual (Greek and Arabic) papyrus dated to AH 22 puts it (in the Greek): ‘In the name of God, I, Abdellas [Abd Allah], amir [commander] to you, Christophoros and Theodorakios, pagarchs of Herakleopolis. I have taken over from you for the maintenance of the Saracens being with me in Herakleopolis, 65 sheep.’ 92 In fact, the early Islamic papyri document some reorganising of Egypt’s administrative geography, and perhaps also the introduction of the poll tax to Egypt, which would reflect the practical imposition of the jizya as it is promised in Q 9:69. 93 It now appears that the Muslim rulers of early and mid seventh century Egypt were not the passive receptors of Byzantine bureaucratic traditions, as some earlier scholars had argued, but assertive participants in their transformation. 5 The papyri from Egypt, like the many fewer that survive from Palestine, thus demonstrate the continuity of Byzantine traditions and, in the Egyptian case, an expansion and elaboration of Byzantine traditions during the first half century of Islamic rule. But if Egypt possessed a sophisticated tax regime, nowhere do we find anything reliable that connects it to the imperial capital, either in Arabia, southern Iraq or Syria. Nor do we find any indication that the Arab Muslim oversight of the Byzantine machinery that they had inherited was conditioned by an imperial programme projected by Medina, Kufa or Damascus. In fact, that the impetus for maximising tax revenue was a local initiative is suggested by the contrasting histories of other provinces, such as Northern Mesopotamia, where taxation appears to have been relatively low and irregular for most of the seventh century that is, until the Marwanids imposed an altogether new and more robust tax administration.95 To judge from a small clutch of papyri that survive from Nessana, an irregular regime seems to have been in place there too. 6 In sum, there is good reason to think that first and second generation conquerors may have been hesitant imperialists, who, settling more frequently at some distance from local inhabitants than next to them, looked after themselves rather than their subjects. ‘What, then, did the Arabs do with the regions they conquered?’, an archaeologist asks: ‘For the most part, they seem to have left them alone.’ 97 This is what the evidence says,98 and it is what sense dictates: why emulate the traditions of the Byzantine and Sasanian states when God had delivered victory over them to austere monotheists, and when there already were people in place to do the job well? Precisely the same conservatism that led the early caliphs to leave indigenous Greek and Persian speaking and writing bureaucrats in place in the provinces acted as a brake upon administrative innovation at the empire’s centre. And being conservative came naturally: all of the caliphs who ruled until 680 had been born and bred in Arabia, and had witnessed the glorious moments of early Islam.99 Muqawiya, whose father had been a very prominent opponent of Muhammad’s and had converted only late and opportunistically, himself converted only when Mecca was conquered by Muhammad, where upon he entered his circle of advisers and confidants (he is conventionally identified as one of the Prophet’s secretaries). He was thus very much the product of the same world that had produced Muhammad himself: a Qurashi schooled in the ways of tribal politics of Mecca and Medina, he was already in his fifties when he became caliph in 40/661. By contrast, Abd al Malik was born in 26/646f., that is, at the beginning of Uthman’s reign. His formative experience was not of Qurashi Mecca or Muhammad’s community in Medina, or even of Medina filled with the spoils of Umar’s spectacular conquests. It was of a town riven by the controversies of Uthman and Ali’s reigns. In other words, what Abd al Malik knew of Islam’s glorious origins was mediated by others, and the lessons he learned during his childhood were about the 7 fragility of the early Islamic elite. These lessons would be repeated during the second civil war, when the elite fragmented further. Historical discontinuities may have taken an enormous toll on the preservation of their history, but it freed Muslims of the early period to innovate and experiment. Little wonder, then, that it is only with Abd al Malik and his generation of Muslims that we have clear evidence for a programme of state building that was driven by the Muslim ruling elite, and which systematically diffused new ideas of power and authority.100 Since the evidence for all of this explodes onto the scene within a short time the late 680s and early 690s we must accordingly describe the process of early Islamic state building as revolutionary, rather than evolutionary. The second fitna and the Marwanid revolution The second fitna, like the first, was triggered by problems of succession. Muqawiya’s appointment of his son as heir apparent seems to have been unpopular in principle, since it departed from traditions of acclamation and election. Yazdi ’s difficulties were compounded by his conduct: the son possessed little of the father’s nous and forbearance, and it was at the beginning of Yazdi ’s reign that an Umayyad army suppressed a rebellion led by the Prophet’s grandson, al Husayn. In the long term, his gruesome slaying at Karbala (680) came to exemplify Umayyad brutality and provide inspiration to subsequent Shıite movements, especially as it followed earlier instances of Sufyanid abuse of the Shia, such as Muqawiya’s execution of the Kufan Shiite al Hujr ibn Adi; in the short term, it deepened the crisis for Muawiya’s successor. Umayyad rule was further weakened with the succession in 683 of the sickly and incompetent Muqawiya II, who ruled for a matter of months. Umayyad authority outside Syria had started to dissolve earlier, but now it collapsed almost entirely, with the result that several Umayyads and non Umayyads emerged as candidates for the caliphate. Of these, four are especially prominent in the sources: Abd Allah ibn al Zubayr, the pious son of a revered Companion who would rule effectively from Mecca; al Dahhak ibn Qays al Fihri, a governor of Muawiya’s; Hassan ibn Malik ibn Bahdal, a cousin of his son, Yazid; and Amr ibn Said, an Umayyad who had served Muawiya. 8 In the event, Umayyad rule would be reconstituted, but the process would be slow and difficult. It started in the early summer of 684 with the acclamation in al Jabiya (near Damascus) of Marwan ibn al Hakam, a well respected and senior member of the Umayyad house; Marwan promptly set about establishing himself in Syria, defeating al Dahhak at Marj Rahit., and then moving to Damascus. He died in the spring of the following year, and was succeeded by his son, Abd al Malik. It was Abd al Malik who, after several false starts and heavy campaigning, completed the process eight years later by defeating his Syrian rivals (notably Amr ibn Said), campaigning in Iraq and ı Northern Mesopotamia, and eventually sending an army against Ibn al Zubayr’s Mecca. There, in March 691, Abd al Malik’s most trusted commander and future governor of the east, al Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, laid siege to the city and put an end to the caliphate of Ibn al Zubayr.102 Although Abd al Malik’s bid for the caliphate dates from 685, when he received the oath of allegiance in Syria, it was probably only with the death of Ibn al Zubayr late in 692 that he was widely acknowledged as caliph. Regnal dates that conventionally put the beginning of his caliphate in 685 say more about subsequent Umayyad claims than they do about contemporaneous attitudes. Indeed, there can be little doubt that Ibn al Zubayr, although portrayed by much of the primary and secondary literature as a pretender or rebel (one most frequently described as ‘he who takes refuge in the house’, i.e. the Kaba), had been widely acknowledged as caliph certainly much more so than Yazid, Muawiya II, Marwan and, at least until 692, Abd al Malik himself. A political and dynastic dead end who had the great misfortune to have been overthrown by the extraordinarily successful Abd al Malik, Ibn al Zubayr then had his caliphate written out of most (if not all) of the history books. History itself was different. Almost universally respected because of his descent from al Zubayr, the Prophet’s Companion who had rebelled alongside Aisha in the battle of the Camel, Ibn al Zubayr had firm control of the Prophet’s homeland and the emerging cultic centre of Mecca, and minted coins as early as 684 (using what was becoming the standard caliphal title, ‘the commander of the faithful’). He ruled lands stretching from Egypt in the west to eastern Iran and parts of Afghanistan in the east by appointing governors, 9 levying taxes and dispatching armies, and successfully suppressed the most potent opposition movement of the civil war, a Shıite rebellion in southern Iraq (685 7) led by a shadowy figured named ‘al Mukhtar’, who championed the right to the caliphate of Muhammad ibn al Hanafiyya, a son of Ali’s by a concubine. It is true that his vision of a Hijaz¯ based empire turns out to have ı been naive and nostalgic, but in several respects he was an innovator: for example, it is during his reign that part of the Muslim profession of faith (‘Muhammad is the messenger of God’) first appears on coinage, one of several practices that would survive his death in 692. He also undertook what appears to have been a substantial rebuilding programme in Mecca, which anticipates Abd al Malik’s. In overthrowing Ibn al Zubayr, Abd al Malik thus defeated the man who was at once the most effective spokesman for the interests of the Hijazs left behind by Umayyad rule, the most ı respected opponent of Umayyad dynastic claims, and the one most widely acknowledged as caliph. Abd al Malik’s revolutionary impulse carried him beyond his defeat of Ibn al Zubayr. For it was during his reign that we witness nothing less than the transformation of the loosely federal, ideologically inchoate conquest polity of the early caliphs into the land based, bureaucratic state that lay at the heart of the Marwanid empire and one that, within a generation of Abd al Malik’s death, would reach its greatest size. Just how fragile the conquest polity had been can be seen in its catastrophic collapse upon the death of Muqawiya. Just how robust Abd al Malik’s state was can be seen in the events following his death, when he was succeeded by no fewer than four sons, three grandsons and two nephews. And because his and his sons’ rule was so successful in the short term, the traditions, institutions and ideas they put in place survived in the longer term, underpinning the Abbasid Empire of the eighth and ninth centuries. The changes were military, administrative and ideological; all contributed to the complex process itself already under way in which Islamic society became in many respects increasingly differentiated and complex, and the instruments of rule more powerful and persuasive. We may begin with the army. Having settled in the provinces in the 640s and 650s, by the 670s and 680s many conquering tribesmen would have begun to take up a variety of occupations, depending on their resources, abilities and opportunities; and in some instances we know that sedentarisation was encouraged among pastoralists, and that garrisons were being transformed into towns.104 Even 22 so, the contrast between civilian and soldier remained indistinct until Abd al Malik’s military reforms, when the tribesmen soldiers of the conquest armies, generally mustered and led by chieftains drawn from high status kinship groups, began to be replaced by a professional soldiery of Syrians. The lesson taught by the civil war, when fickle chieftains had abandoned the Sufyanids for rival candidates, was duly learned. What resulted was thus an altogether clearer contrast between civilian and soldier, which, in the view of a state claiming a monopoly on legitimate violence, transformed the armed civilian into a brigand or rebel. At the same time, because the army was overwhelmingly Syrian in composition, it also resulted in an altogether clearer distinction between (ruling) Syrian and (ruled) non Syrian. In the short term, the new style Syrian army was a success: within three years of defeating Ibn al Zubayr, Abd al Malik had launched what would turn out to be a four year campaign on the Byzantine frontier, and parts of Armenia would fall under Islamic rule for the first time. (The jihad would be expanded with considerable success by Abd al Malik’s son and successor, al Walid, especially in North Africa and Sind.) But problems naturally appeared. We occasionally read of desertion and the soldiers’ reluctance to fight; we also read of spectacular rebellions led by commanders on extended campaigns (thus a dangerous revolt in the east led by the celebrated Kind¯ commander, Ibn al Ashath, in 699) and of soldiers who had fallen off the diwan and thus out of favour with the Umayyads (thus the Kharijite rebellion led by Shabib ibn Yazid al Shaybani ¯ in Northern Mesopotamia and Iraq in late ı 695 and 696).105 Perhaps most important, the distinction between Syrian and non Syrian became politically explosive. The occupation of Iraq and Iran by Syrian soldiers Syrian garrisons were established in Iraq and Iran, the garrison of Wasit. Being built in 702 or 703, equidistant between Basra and Kufa as a base against their restive tribesmen provided the coercion necessary to extract taxes and tribute from non Syrians. This would lead in the short term to endemic rebellion in the provinces, most notably by Kharijites, and, in the long term, to the catastrophic revolution of 749 50. Meanwhile, the professionalisation of the army led to the emergence of two rival factions (the Qays/ Yaman, or ‘northerner’/’southerner’); and this rivalry would also subvert Umayyad rule until its end. 22 Military reforms thus strengthened Umayyad power in the short term, as they reflected the shift away from a relatively undifferentiated conquest society. The same processes characterised the administrative and fiscal reforms of the period. Here, too, we find indirect influence being replaced by direct control. The scale of these reforms is hard to exaggerate. As the Islamic historical tradition makes clear, the changes were in part linguistic: the language of tax administration, which until this period had remained unchanged in Greek and Persian, was now replaced by Arabic. The surviving documentary evidence offers some corroboration for this shift, although the pace of change in the Islamic east seems to have been considerably slower than the historical tradition would have it.107 The introduction of Arabic into the tax administration had the effect of opening up bureaucratic careers to Arabs and to non-Arab converts (mawali), who were incorporated into Islam through admission as clients by Arab patrons, although Christians and Jews would continue to serve; the Marwanid period is consequently filled with examples of extraordinary social climbing, as Arabs and mawali alike joined the ranks of administrators and tax officials. A relatively closed elite of tribesmen soldiers was cracking open. Effects aside, the intention of this linguistic change must have been to extend Umayyad control over tax revenues so as to maximise the elite’s share. Indeed, there is no doubt that the last two decades of the seventh century and first two of the eighth were a watershed in the fiscal history of the Near East, as irregular and inconsistent tribute taking was replaced by regular and more systematic taxing. The documentary and Syriac historical traditions show this at work in Syria and Northern Mesopotamia; in the latter we have a handful of apocalypses and apocalyptic histories that describe in hyperbolic detail the devastating effects of the new taxing regime. Even in Egypt, where the engines of the Byzantine tax machine had never stopped firing, we read of the unprecedented extension of tax liabilities to mobile peasants and monks, and the unrest that resulted from the new regime. Arabs, too, now became increasingly liable to taxation, as the poll and land taxes were firmly established for the first time, the former on non Muslims, the latter on non Muslim and Muslim alike. The scale and nature of these changes are reflected in the material evidence. Leaving aside all the papyri generated by the Byzantine machinery of Egypt, 21  we have precious little elite sponsored documentary and inscriptional material (which is to be distinguished from occasional graffiti) dating from the conquest and Sufyanid periods, but with the Marwanids the corpus not only grows larger, but also more consistent. For example, while no pre Marwanid milestones have been discovered, no fewer than six date from the reign of Abd al Malik.110 Patterns of non elite settlement and land use may have been slow to change in this period, but new tools and techniques of rule were being adopted: it is at the tail end of the seventh and early eighth centuries, to take another example, that mobile non Muslim taxpayers were made to wear seal pendants to mark their tax status. The best evidence for the scale and nature of change comes in the coinage. We saw earlier that coinage had been diverse, preserving (and elaborating upon) the varieties of Byzantine and Sasanian minting traditions that had carried on through the conquests. Starting almost immediately upon the defeat of Ibn al Zubayr, Abd al Malik’s minters abandoned the conservatism of their forebears, first (starting in c. 692) by introducing distinctively Islamic designs and motifs (such as a portrait of Abd al Malik; what may be a spear in a prayer niche), and second, starting with gold coins in around 696 7, by abandoning altogether the figural imagery and languages of pre Islamic coinage in favour of purely non figural, epigraphic coins with exclusively Arabic legends that expressed in formulaic ways distinctively Islamic ideas.112 Alongside these coinage reforms, which centralised minting and imposed standard weights,113 sits a reform of weights and measures. In addition to circulating tokens that broadcast legitimising and universalising claims, the elite was thus taking an unprecedented interest in fostering economic exchange. The Marwanids certainly patronised commercial building projects in Palestine and Syria. What we have, in sum, is the relatively sudden appearance of a cluster of institutions and practices: an imperial state designed for the systematic extraction of agricultural revenues was being engineered. It was to be effected by a professional soldiery resourced by an increasingly thorough tax regime, which 21 was managed by new cadres of bureaucrats and administrators. Its authority was to be anchored in that unitary conception of authority with which this chapter began, and which was now crystallising. As the poetry and prose of this and subsequent periods shows, Abd al Malik was ‘God’s caliph’, heir to the Prophet’s authority and God’s ‘shadow on earth’, a legislator, judge, guide, warrior, rain maker, prayer leader, perhaps an editor (the Qurpanic text may have been fixed only in the early Marwanid period)115 and certainly a builder of what remains the oldest intact Islamic building: the domed, octagonal building in Jerusalem that is called the Dome of the Rock. Completed in around 72/691f., the Dome of the Rock sits atop the Temple Mount, which looks down upon Christian Jerusalem. The building is a monument to victory: not merely victory over Ibn al Zubayr (its construction seems to have taken place during or soon after the end of the fitna) but, more importantly, victory over rival monotheisms. In fact, it was an imposing reminder of their obsolescence: just as the building was made to sit at the heart of the Holy Land, literally upon the foundations of the Jews’ Temple, so did the faith that it symbolised claim to reform and perfect earlier revelations. Thus its inscriptions announce that God is merciful and compassionate, that He is alone and has no sons (‘The messiah Jesus, son of Mary, was only a messenger of God … [Who] is too exalted to have a son’), that Muhammad is His Prophet, and that: Religion with God is Islam. Those who received the scripture differed only after knowledge came to them, out of envy for one another. Whoever denies the signs of God [beware], for God is swift to call to account. Conclusion Given the extraordinarily modest cultural and political traditions generally associated with western Arabia in Late Antiquity, how is it that Muhammad and the Arab caliphs and commanders who immediately succeeded him had both the vision and perspicacity to forge a new religio political tradition that would survive in post conquest Syria and Iraq? Sophisticated religious traditions generally emerge in societies with relatively high levels of social differentiation; the rule of history calls for the assimilation of conquering pastoral