Umayyad Caliphate

So I'm thinking WTF, because he's like, I'm going to abandon you if you don't give this to me.

The public treasury, which I'm like, it's one thing to be, because right before that, you'd been talking about the unjust seizure of wealth, right, and loaned by his Umayyad officials and kinsmen.

And so, like, it's one thing to be thinking, okay, you, we get what this, this was obtained through exploitation, etc.

Or the case of, on page 157, in a similar fashion.

There used to be 250 Catholic dioceses along North Africa.

St. Augustine of Hippo was from Carthage, but the Umayyad Muslims conquered North Africa in 10 years.

Because the Christians embrace that monasticism, like that St. Anthony in the desert.

If you're really Christian, you'll give away your money and live in a cave.

with the prophet Muhammad.

But you start to see Islamic empires come, the Umayyads, the Abbasid Caliphate.

And then about the 12th, 13th century, you get the Mongols coming through and and challenging Twelver Shiism.

And what's interesting about that is that's where we get the term assassins, because the Mongols were the first group that could subdue the assassins coming out of the Shia environment.

So I'm thinking WTF, because he's like, I'm going to abandon you if you don't give this to me.

The public treasury, which I'm like, it's one thing to be, because right before that you'd been talking about the unjust seizure of wealth, right? And, and loaned, um, by his Umayyad officials and kinsmen.

And so like, it's one thing to be thinking, okay, you, we get with this, this was obtained through exploitation, et cetera.

Um, or the case of, uh, on page 157 in a similar fashion.

So I'm thinking WTF, because he's like, I'm going to abandon you if you don't give this to me.

The public treasury, which I'm like, it's one thing to be, because right before that you'd been talking about the unjust seizure of wealth, right? And, and loaned by his Umayyad officials and kinsmen.

And so like, it's one thing to be thinking, okay, you, we get with this, this was obtained through exploitation, et cetera.

Or the case of on page 157 in a similar fashion.

By degrees even this show of respect was drawn off, and dynasties arose which espoused heretical tenets, repudiated the spiritual supremacy of the Caliph, and denounced him and all his line as usurpers.

Finally the time came when the Caliphs were as weak in temporal authority as the Pope of Rome, and were even kept prisoners in their palace by the mercenary bodyguards they had hired to protect them against their rebellious nobles.

This took place about three hundred years after the foundation of the Caliphate, and for the second half of their existence the Caliphs were little more than ciphers to be played with by the great princes of the empire, and to contribute a little pomp to their coronations.

Finally the Caliphate was abolished in Asia by the Mongol invasion in the thirteenth century, and though the title is still claimed by the Sultan of Turkey, there is no Caliph now in the old comprehensive sense of the word.

The earliest province to shake off the authority of the Caliph was Andalusia.

To understand how this happened, we must remember that the Caliphs did not succeed one another in an unbroken line of family inheritance.

After the first four or orthodox Caliphs, Abu Bakr, Omar, Uthman, and Ali, who were elected more or less by popular vote, the Syrian party set up Mu'ayyah as Caliph at Damascus, and from him sprang the family of the Umayyad Caliphs, so called from their ancestor Umayyah.

There were fourteen Umayyad Caliphs who reigned from 661 to 750, when they were deposed by As-Saffah, the butcher, who was the first of the second dynasty of Caliphs, called Abbasid, after their ancestor Abbas, an uncle of the Prophet Mohammed.

He's not as successful, but it's not so much because he doesn't, he can't.

It's he's more focused on establishing the governorships in the area, and to do this and to make sure that the various Arab tribes remain loyal, which not a bad plan, uh, he appoints basically all Umayyads in the various areas, specifically one very important, uh, part of the world in Syria.

So Uthman's ruling.

He rules for 12 years, and then, [chuckles] and then, uh, some people from Egypt come down, and they're like, "Hey, man, your taxes are ridiculous.

And then, uh, now you have Muawiyah and his son, Yazid, who are in charge of all the Muslims.

So you now finally, the Hashim line of Islam is kinda pushed off to the side, except Ali has a grandson who will come up.

Uh, and the Umayyads are the ones truly in charge of the Islamic world.

What does it mean to be a Muslim? Well, it means that you follow the Umayyad dynasty Because you have a father-son transfer and you've established this is now a pseudo-hereditary monarchy.

We did go over the most famous Mesopotamian stuff in the opening episodes, the Enuma Elish and Atrahasis and the Epic of Gilgamesh, but there was a lot that I skipped over, too.

I got to thinking more and more about old Ur and Uruk and Babylon and Nineveh, especially during these recent shows on the early literature of Umayyad and Abbasid Iraq.

No matter that our show had finally entered the early Middle Ages, no matter that I was working on a book about Homer's Odyssey, Akkadian literature and especially Sumerian literature is really special stuff.

As this season of our podcast began drawing to a conclusion, I knew it was time to write and record a new bonus sequence.