In 921-2, the Abbasid caliph al-Muqtadir dispatched a diplomatic mission to the khaganate of Bulgar on the Volga, north-east of Kuibyshev. The mission came across a trading-post of the Rus, and one of the members, Ibn Fadlan, left a vivid record of the encounter:
Never had I seen people of more perfect physique. They are all tall
as date-palms, and reddish in colour. They wear neither coat nor kaftan,
but each man carries a cape which covers one half of his body, leaving
one hand free. No one is ever parted from his axe, sword, and knife ...
They are the filthiest of God's creatures ... lousy as donkeys. They
arrive from their distant lands and lay their ships alongside the banks
of the Volga, which is a great river, and there they build big houses on
its shore ..
. On beaching their vessels, each man goes ashore carrying bread, meat,
onions, milk, and nabid [beer?] and these he takes to a large wooden post
with a face like that of a human being, surrounded by smaller figures,
and behind them there are high poles in the ground. Each man prostrates
himself before the large post and recites: 'O Lord, I have come from distant
parts with so many girls, so many sable furs (and whatever other commodities
are in his catalogue). I now bring you this offering.' He then presents
his gift, and continues 'please send me a merchant who has many diners
and dirhems and who will trade favourably with me without contradicting
me ...'
These were by no means the only or the first Europeans to trade with the Abbasid caliphate. As we saw in the last chapter, coin hoards from Russia and Scandinavia contain thousands of silver coins from the mints of western and central Asia, exported in payment for furs and slaves. An analysis of 77 ninth-century hoards from European Russia reveals several periods in which dirhems were travelling northwards. In brief, Period 1 covers the first two decades of the ninth century up to the 820s, when new coins were regularly occurring in some numbers in the hoards. During Period 2, from the mid-820s until the 840s or 850s, virtually no newly minted coins were concealed in hoards; apparently only pre-820 dirhems were in circulation. Period 3 covers the next forty years, up to the 890s. During this time a small number of newly minted coins were hidden with a larger number of late eighth- and early ninth-century dirhems. Then in the 890s a new flood of freshly minted dirhems entered Russia, and the tenth- and eleventh-century hoards contain mostly coins of the period c.890-950. This evidence from European Russia is consistent with the two striking periods of Islamic coins found at places like Birka, in Sweden, as well as in Denmark. The message is clear: trade was passing up the river Volga from the Abbasid caliphate through the lands of the Khazars to Staraja Ladoga on the eastern Baltic seaboard. It seems to have begun in the late eighth century when the caliphs made trade treaties with the warlike Khazars who controlled the Transcaucasian routeways. Yet why did this trade route through the Caucasus and up the Volga flourish in the late eighth and early ninth centuries, and then dwindle, to be eventually resumed on a massive scale at the beginning of the tenth century?
The answer lies partly in Europe with the economic reforms of Charlemagne and partly in western Asia.
The first Islamic dynasty, that of the Umayyads, was overthrown in 750. Throughout their empire, which extended from Spain to Pakistan, Arabs formed a ruling elite and the caliph depended on the army to maintain his grip. Social injustice encouraged revolt and the Umayyads were destroyed by a movement which claimed to be the liberator of the oppressed inhabitants of the eastern provinces. The movement emerged as a major threat when its leader, Mohammed b. Ali, laid claim to the caliphate on the grounds that, unlike the Umayyads, he was a member of the family of the Prophet, through his great-grandfather al-Abbes. In 747 his followers seized Merv, the capital of Khorasan. They rapidly gained control of the province and advanced westwards, taking the cities of Rayy (near Tehran) and Nihavand. Mohammed's forces then fell upon Iraq. While one group defeated an Umayyad army near Kufa, another marched north and defeated the main Umayyad forces on the Greater Zab. In a short time, they had advanced into Syria, executed most members of the Umayyad family and established their own dynasty, which took its name from their ancestor, al-Abbas.
The Umayyads had ruled from Damascus. The Abbasids sought a new capital outside Syria, which was full of supporters of the former regime (and in any case dangerously close to the Byzantine frontier), and nearer their power base in the east. Iraq was the obvious choice and the Abbasid caliphs experimented with one site after another. Abu'l Abbas (750-4) first chose Qasr ibn Hubayra, between Baghdad and Kufa, but in 752 he transferred the court to Anbar on the Euphrates. His successor, al-Mansur (754-75), built a third capital, Hashimiyah, between Kufa and Hira, but this too was abandoned.
Baghdad
Al-Mansur travelled the length of the Tigris looking for the ideal site. Eventually he chose Baghdad on the west bank, at a point not far from the old Sasanian capital, where the Tigris and Euphrates are less than 40 kilometres apart and were connected by canals. The great geographer al-Muqaddasi (writing in about 985) tells how the local inhabitants assured the caliph that, by choosing Baghdad,
Thou shalt always be surrounded by palm trees and be near water, so that if one district suffers from drought, or fails to yield its harvest in due season, there will be relief from another; while being on the banks of the as-Sarat [canal], provisions will reach thee in the boats which ply on the Euphrates. The caravans from Egypt and Syria will come by way of the desert, and all kinds of goods will reach thee from China on the sea, and from the country of the Greeks [i.e. the Byzantine empire] and from Mosul by the Tigris. Thus surrounded by rivers, the enemy cannot approach thee except in a ship or over a bridge, by way of the Tigris or the Euphrates.
With the assistance of hindsight, medieval writers were unanimous in praising the choice from the commercial point of view. Ya'qubi, writing in 842, states that the caliph chose the site because
it is an island between the Tigris and the Euphrates. The Tigris to the east and the Euphrates to the west are the waterfronts of the world. Everything that comes on the Tigris from Wasit, Basra, Ubullah, Ahwaz, Fars [presumably Siraf: see p. 133], Oman, Yamamah [southern Arabia], Bahrain and their vicinity can go up [to Baghdad] and anchor there. In the same way, whatever is carried by boat (down) the Tigris from Mosul, Rabi'ah, Azarbaijan and Armenia, and whatever is carried on boats on the Euphrates from Mudar, Raqqa, Syria, the frontier, Egypt and North Africa, can come and unload at this terminus. It can also be a meeting place for people from Jibal (the central Zagros), Isfahan, Kur and Khorasan.
Tabari (d.923) makes the caliph exclaim: 'This is the Tigris; here is no distance between us and China. Everything on the sea can come to us ...'
Once the site had been chosen, the construction of the new capital proceeded at breakneck speed. The caliph himself is said to have laid the first brick in 762. A year later he transferred the court, the treasury and the army from Hashimiyah. Most medieval writers maintain that the walls were completed in 766-7. The work had occupied a huge labour force and craftsmen drawn from the Iraqi cities of Mosul, Kufa, Wasit and Basra, not to mention Syria, the Hejaz and Iran.
Abbasid Baghdad is buried beneath the modern city for, as Guy LeStrange remarked, so wise was the choice of site that it has served as the capital of Mesopotamia almost without interruption. Our knowledge of the city of al-Mansur, therefore, comes from written sources, notably Ya'qubi and al-Khatib (1002-1071), who repeated information derived from the work of al-Khwarizmi, who actually lived at Baghdad in the early ninth century. Three scholars in particular have collated the descriptions of Ya'qubi, al-Khatib and others: LeStrange, Ernst Herzfeld and Sir Archibald Creswell.
The nucleus of Abbasid Baghdad was the 'round city', a circular enclosure protected by a double wall, containing the palace, the principal mosque, ministries, barracks and residential quarters. According to al-Khatib (who gives no fewer than five different estimates of the size of the city! ), the architect, Rabah, recorded its diameter as 5093 cubits, or 2640 metres. If the first figure is correct, the area was 547 hectares; Ya'qubi's figure gives an area of 860 hectares.
A minute analysis of the descriptions of the round city allowed Herzfeld to offer a detailed reconstruction of the plan. Creswell, reviewing the same data, came to much the same conclusions, which can be summarised as follows:
The defences consisted of an inner wall 35 cubits (18.1 metres) high, with towers 40 cubits (20.8 metres) high at regular intervals. Beyond this was an open space and a lower outer wall, apparently without towers. The outer wall was surrounded by a water-filled moat.
Inside the defences was a concentric residential zone, divided into quadrants by vaulted passages leading from the main gates to a central walled enclosure, containing the palace, the mosque and the government offices. The palace of al-Mansur, known as the Palace of the Golden Gate, stood in the middle of the enclosure. It was a square building, 400 cubits (208 metres) across. At the centre was a two-storey structure surmounted by a dome; the total height was 80 cubits (41.6 metres).
The round city (in effect, a huge palace precinct) was by no means the only component of Abbasid Baghdad. To the south lay al-Karkh, a township which already existed in 762, while to the north was al-Harbiya, a quarter dominated by the officers of the caliph's army. Across the river stood Rusafah (laid out in 769), ash-Shammasiyah and al-Mukharrim.
Baghdad was exceptionally well placed for communications by river; it was also the centre of a network of roads. Most famous of these was the 'Khorasan road' which led eastwards across the Iranian plateau from Kermanshah to Hamadan, Rayy and Nishapur, before continuing to Merv, Bukhara and Samarkand. Here the road forked, one branch striking north to Tashkent and the other leading eastwards to China. This, incidentally, is the route by which silver for the Abbasid treasury arrived in Baghdad. The richest mines in the caliphate lay in the east: in Panjshir in eastern Khorasan and at Ilaq in Transoxiana. The largest single source was in the Panjshir valley and the nearby mine of Jarbaya, north of Kabul. Istakhri, Ibn Hauqal and Yaqut all describe the perilous task of extracting the ore by torchlight and the tough, gambling communities that worked the mines. The silver was collected at Andarab and exported to the West in the form of bullion or coin, via Balkh and Nishapur. For a while, the mines at Ilaq, in what is now Uzbekistan, almost rivalled the Panjshir valley, and we also read of sources in Kirgiziya and Tadzhikistan. In these cases the metal was sent to Bukhara, where much of it was converted into coin. Other sources of silver existed in Iran, and al-Hamdani tells us that 20,000 dirhems per week - about 1 million per year - were struck from the silver mined at Radrad, in Yemen.
Trade in the Arabian Sea
Seen from Baghdad, the most spectacular result of the creation of new markets in Iraq was the boom in maritime trade. This has a long history in the Persian Gulf, going back to the third millennium B.C., if not earlier. The fortunes of southern Arabia had been built not only on local products (such as frankincense), but also on goods imported from the East (such as silk, gemstones and cinnamon). Long before the Hegira, well-travelled routes connected the northern, eastern and western shores of the Arabian sea, and Ubullah, at the head of the Persian Gulf, was known as Farj al-Hind, 'the marches of India'. For merchants from the Gulf, the main area of operations extended from Aden to Gujarat, and by the sixth century the Sasanians had established a factory in Sri Lanka. Cosmas Indicopleustes wrote of 'Persian Christians who have settled there' and described how 'from all India, Persia and Ethiopia many ships come to this island ... From the farther regions - I refer to Tsinista [China] and other places of export - the imports of Sri Lanka are silk, aloes, cloves, sandalwood and so forth ... [which are passed on] to Persia, Homerite [in Yemen] and Adoulis [in Ethiopia]'. Tabari, Hamza of Isfahan and Tha'alibi even believed that Khusro I (531-78/9) conquered Sri Lanka, and although the claim is preposterous it may well reflect the dominant role of Sasanians in the island's trade with the west. As Procopius complained, 'it was impossible for [Byzantium's allies] the Ethiopians to buy silk from the Indians, for Persian merchants always locate themselves at the very harbours where the Indian ships first put in ... and are accustomed to buy the entire cargoes'.
Even in the first few centuries A.D. the compiler of the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea had information about not only Sri Lanka, but also the east coast of India, and western merchandise (including wine and table wares from the Mediterranean) reached Arikamedu (near Pondicherry) in some quantity. Centuries later, we even have the hint of a Sasanian emporium on the Malay peninsula. lt is contained in a letter of Ishoyahb III (647 or 650-657/8), catholicus of the Nestorian church, who reports that the metropolitan of Rev Ardashir (in the Persian Gulf) was responsible for the church in 'India', by which he meant a region extending 'from the maritime borders of the Sasanian kingdom to the country called QLH, which is a distance of 12000 parasangs'. Syriac QLH is taken to be the same as the Arabic Qal'ah, the name given by westerners to a port in Burma or Malaysia. The implied existence of a Nestorian church at Qal'ah indicates at least occasional contact with the West.
Tabari, Baladhuri and Dinawari all wrote of 'China ships' in the port of Ubullah at the time of the Moslem conquest. Unfortunately, the phrases they use (sufun min al-sin and sufun siniyah) are open to more than one interpretation, and it is not clear whether our sources meant 'Chinese ships' or 'ships that sail to China', or even 'ships carrying Chinese merchandise'. We cannot exclude the possibility, therefore, that some ships from the Far East sailed to the Gulf just as (regardless of the identity of the Possu who appear in the Chinese sources and are sometimes taken to be Persians) some ships from the West may have ventured beyond Sri Lanka. Nevertheless as far as regular traffic was concerned, at the time of the Hegira, Sri Lanka was the customary terminus for sailings from both the Far East and the West.
By the end of the Abbasid period, the pattern had changed and ships from Siraf (on the Iranian coast of the Gulf) and Sohar (on the Sea of Oman) made regular voyages not only to Sri Lanka, but also to China and Last Africa. Both Ibn Khurdadbih and the author of Akhbar al-Sin w'al-Hind described the route to China. According to the latter, ships either coasted to Daibal (in the Indus delta) before striking south, or took advantage of the monsoon and sailed directly to Kulam (Quilon) in south India. They then rounded Sri Lanka and made for the Nicobar Islands, where they took on food and water, and Qal'ah. The final stages of the journey took them through the Malacca Strait to ports in Vietnam and their ultimate goal, the warehouses of Khanfu (Canton) in southern China. The voyage from Oman took 120 days, excluding stops. In Canton, foreign merchants were assigned special quarters and were required to place their goods in a bonded warehouse. At the end of the sailing season, when all the merchants had arrived, the goods were released from bond, three-tenths were taken as duty and the rest was sold to the highest bidders. The Chinese government had the right of pre-emption but, Akthar reports, it paid the highest prices. Trade with the East brought to the Gulf silk, paper, porcelain and many commodities from China; drugs, spices and aromatic wood from south-east Asia; tin from Malaysia; rubies and other gemstones from Sri Lanka; and pepper from India. It brought gold, ivory, slaves and timber from East Africa. The voyages were hazardous and immensely long (the round-trip to China was 16,000 kilometres), but the profits were high. 'I have met Ali al-Hili,' someone noted in the twelfth century, 'and he told me that when he came back from China ... his merchandise was worth half a million diners.'
The first detailed account of trade with Africa is that of Mas'udi, who went there at least twice, the last occasion being in 917. While most merchants dealt with entrepots on the coast, at least one enterprising Sirafi visited the interior. Mastudi reported that the most distant ports of call were Sofala (near Beira in Mozambique) and Waq Waq (which has been identified variously as Madagascar, the Comores or part of the African mainland). The journey from Sohar to Sofala was a round-trip of nearly 12,000 kilometres: not as long as the voyage to China, but enormous none the less.
The ports
So far, we have described Abbasid maritime trade on the basis of written descriptions. In the last twenty years, however, excavations have taken place at several of the ports described by Istakhri, Mas'udi and others. As a result of its commercial activities, one port in particular became notoriously rich: Siraf, on the Persian Gulf. It was not the only wealthy port on the Gulf (Basra before the Zanj rebellion was another), but in the present context it is of special significance: first, because its wealth was derived almost entirely from the network of trade which supplied Iraq with the products of Africa, India and the Far East; secondly, because it has been excavated on generous scale.
The remains of Siraf stand on the Iranian coast, 200 kilometres south of Shiraz. At this point, the Zagros Mountains, which form the western edge of the Iranian plateau, extend almost to the shore, leaving a coastal strip less than one kilometre wide. The medieval city developed round a shallow bay, sandwiched between the mountains and the sea. The bay affords a sheltered anchorage, and one of the few caravan routes between the Gulf and interior ran from Siraf to Shiraz, the regional capital (Fig. 53). Otherwise the environment has little to offer; the landscape is rugged and the climate severe, with high temperatures and low rainfall.
Until the excavations began in 1966, we knew nothing about Siraf before the ninth century. The excavations revealed that it was already a port in the Sasanian period, with a fort and other buildings immediately above the beach and a citadel on high ground overlooking the bay. In the hills behind the site are numerous rock-cut tombs, apparently the ossuaries of a Zoroastrian community. Among the finds from the buildings on the shore are sherds of Red Polished ware imported from north-west India in the first few centuries A.D. - clear proof of long-distance trade. Other finds include a Roman coin of the fourth century and a gold solidus of the Byzantine emperor Constans II, minted in 651-9.
Although we know now that Siraf was already a port in the Sasanian period, we also know that it became exceptionally wealthy only in the late eighth or early ninth century. The evidence comes partly from ninth- to eleventh-century documents and partly - but much more convincingly - from the excavations of 1966-73. Both sources give an exciting impression of prosperity and long-distance communications in the period c.800-1050.
Most of the written evidence consists of travellers' memoirs, which describe the wealth of Siraf and the fortunes to be made from trade with China and other distant countries. The fullest account was compiled by Istakhri, writing in about 950, who states that the city was almost as large as Shiraz, the capital of Fars. Despite the poverty of the environment, the community flourished and merchants spent huge sums on building fine multistorey houses. The goods which enriched the bazaar included ambergris, gemstones, ivory, spices and pearls. Siraf prospered, we are told, until the late tenth century, when a decline set in. Muqaddasi maintained that an earthquake in 977 frightened away many of the merchants. By 1100, Kish, an island port 100 kilometres down the coast, had usurped the former supremacy of Siraf.
This, in a nutshell, is the documentary evidence; survey and excavation tell the same story, but in greater - and tangible - detail. The medieval city extended along the shore for four kilometres. Curtain walls with forts and look-out posts protected the approaches along the coastal plain. The precipitous north face of the escarpment behind Siraf made defences on the landward side unnecessary. As far as we know, the waterfront was unprotected until the tenth century - a vivid testimony to the control exercised by the Abbasids in the Gulf. The total area of Siraf within the walls was about 250 hectares: less than half the area of the round city of Baghdad, but very large indeed in the context of an area with little rainfall and no perennial river. In the western part of the city, at least 110 hectares were densely built up, with narrow streets and few, if any, open spaces. Near the shore stood the Friday Mosque, the bazaar and a residential quarter, with an industrial suburb near the city wall. On higher ground, well placed to derive maximum benefit from any breeze that blew, were the palaces of the richest merchants. Behind these, on the flanks of the escarpment, were the cemeteries. In the eastern part of Siraf, permanent buildings were rare and the area may well have contained the palm-frond huts of a large working population.
In a traditional Islamic city, the most important public building is the mosque. The principal mosque at Siraf stood in the bazaar. The earliest structure, built at the beginning of the ninth century, was a rectangular building with a central courtyard and a covered sanctuary facing Mecca. The mosque was rebuilt on a larger scale, also in the ninth century, and subsequently underwent modification and repair until its abandonment in the twelfth or thirteenth century.
The bazaars extended along the waterfront for at least a kilometre. An area excavation near the Friday Mosque revealed that the most common features were rows of one-room shops on either side of narrow streets, which may have been covered. At one point, the excavation disclosed a sequence of occupation spanning more than two centuries, throughout which (to judge by working debris found in all periods) the area was occupied by coppersmiths - an indication that different crafts were concentrated in different parts of the bazaar. Nearby were a small mosque and a public bath. The excavation of part of a prosperous residential quarter indicated the nature of public planning and private wealth at Siraf. The quarter had a gridded plan, with a main street and narrow alleys at regular intervals, dividing one house from the next. The houses contained the same basic elements. The entrance passage gave access to a paved courtyard. On the ground floor, most of the rooms were entered from the yard, suggesting that this was the focal point of communal activity. The walls of two of the houses survived to heights of more than four metres, showing that the buildings were at least two storeys high. Carved and moulded stucco was common.
Among the buildings on high ground above the bazaar were five large complexes, each with several courtyards and one or more private cisterns. Partial excavation of the largest complex revealed a palace - the only word for a residence that was larger than Longleat or Hatfield House - evidently the property of a wealthy merchant or official, possibly the governor himself.
Medieval writers contrasted the wealth of Siraf with the poverty of its environment, and modern visitors endorse this impression. Rugged mountains, dissected by deep, boulder-strewn canyons, dominate the hinterland; the soil is poor. The contrast demands an explanation, and after a detailed survey of the geomorphology, soils and traces of land-use within an irregular radius of 5-7 kilometres of Siraf, the excavators concluded that up to 700 hectares could have been cultivated. These would have gone a long way towards feeding the city, but not far enough. Food was imported from the well-watered upland valleys of the interior and perhaps also from overseas - and paid for from the profits of long-distance trade.
Siraf is not the only source of archaeological information on the maritime trade of the late eighth and ninth centuries. Excavations are in progress at Sohar and have taken place at Banbhore (which is probably Daibal) in the Indus delta and at Manda and other sites on the African coast.
The site of Banbhore stands among desolate salt flats on a former mouth of the Indus, 60 kilometres from Karachi and 40 kilometres from the present-day coast. As the only major site in a sparsely populated region, it is often - and plausibly - identified as Daibal. Excavations revealed that Banbhore was already occupied in the first few centuries A.D. Like Siraf and Sohar, it flourished in the ninth and tenth centuries. The Islamic town contained several well-defined elements. The walls enclosed an area just over 500 metres across. The most important building within the walls was the Congregational Mosque, which measured 41 x 43 metres and had an arcaded sanctuary facing Mecca and double arcades round the central courtyard. Among inscriptions from the mosque, none of which was found in situ, is a dedication bearing the date 109/727. Outside the walls, the excavators found an industrial quarter and a pool surrounded by a stone revetment: either a reservoir or, more probably, an enclosed harbour. The site as a whole is littered with imported pottery: Chinese stoneware, white glazed table wares from Iraq and coarse pottery from the Persian Gulf. Like Siraf, Banbhore stood on a barren coast, which could not have supported a town without the wealth generated by trade. It served as a port of call for ships voyaging between India and the Gulf, and as the outlet for commodities from up country: lapis lazuli (from the Hindu Kush), musk (from the Himalayas), indigo and other items of trade.
On the opposite side of the Arabian Sea, we have written information about the involvement of East Africa in the ninth century, but no detailed account until a hundred years later, when Mas'udi recalled seeing ships from Siraf and Sohar as far south as Sofala. But thanks largely to the work of Neville Chittick we now possess archaeological evidence for the period of commercial expansion under the early Abbasids. In 1960-5 Chittick excavated at Kilwa in Tanzania and subsequently worked at Manda in Kenya.
The ruins of Kilwa stand on a small inshore island, 250 kilometres south of Dar es-Salaam. For three hundred years before the arrival of the Portuguese, Kilwa was the wealthiest port on the East African coast. In the period which interests us, the settlement was small. Stone buildings were rare, perhaps non-existent. Fishing and gathering shellfish played an important part in the subsistence economy and the only industries recognised by the excavators were iron-working and the manufacture of shell beads. One short inscription shows that there were Moslems in the town. Imported pottery (less than one per cent of the total) and small objects point to contacts with western Asia. But there was little sign of wealth, and our overall impression is of a coastal settlement with a handful of Moslem traders dealing in commodities (perhaps ivory) from the interior.
Manda presents a different picture. Like Kilwa, Manda was on an inshore island. Traces of stone buildings cover about 10 hectares, and a further 10 hectares are strewn with potsherds, but not rubble; presumably they were occupied by gardens or huts. A masonry revetment, built to protect the settlement from marine erosion, contains blocks of coral weighing more than a tonne - a scale of construction without parallel elsewhere in Africa south of the Sahara, not even at Great Zimbabwe. The finds include an astonishing amount of imported pottery: 30 per cent of the sample - one pot in three - consists of glazed sherds from Iraq, Chinese white and green stonewares, even coarse ware from the Persian Gulf. Evidently we are dealing with something special, and the explanation may well be timber. Manda is an inhospitable place with only one asset: it is surrounded by mangrove swamps. Palm trunks apart, the coasts of southern Arabia and the Persian Gulf have no timber for building. Nevertheless flat roofs of matting and mud resting on poles are ubiquitous. The poles are placed at intervals of 0.2-0.3 metres with the ends resting on the tops of the walls, and even a modest building requires dozens; Siraf alone must have used millions. Until recently, East Africa provided most of the supply, exporting tens of thousands of mangrove poles a year to Arabia. Manda, a rich site surrounded by mangroves, suggests that the trade began in (or before) the Abbasid period, when local supplies (mangroves once grew in the Gulf) were exhausted.
The expansion of trade
The time has come to attack the question: When, between the seventh and the tenth centuries, did merchants from the Gulf extend the range of their regular voyaging to include China and East Africa, which are separated by almost a quarter of the world's circumference?
The question has been answered on more than one occasion, on the basis of written evidence. Hourani, for example, reminded us of the Omani, Abu Ubayda al-Saghir, who visited China towards the middle of the eighth century and of a merchant from Basra who was financing trade with China in about 775. In 825, a fleet was sent from Basra to punish the pirates of Bahrain who preyed on ships from China, India and Iran. Buzurg b. Shahriyar (writing in the mid-tenth century) recalled that the first captain to visit China regularly was one Abharan, but he did not record the date. Nevertheless Hourani drew the conclusion that 'by the middle of the ninth century it is certain that there was regular sailing to China'.
The archaeological evidence now at our disposal allows us to offer a more precise solution. The vital information comes from the Congregational Mosque at Siraf, where at least three, and possibly five, phases of construction have been recognised. The original mosque was a rectangular building 51 metres long and 44 metres wide, standing on a platform 2 metres high. Not long after it was built, the mosque was enlarged in either one or two operations. Later it was restored, again in one or two operations. The mosque was built on the remains of a fort and other structures of the Sasanian and early Islamic periods. In the terminology used when discussing the finds, the fort and the other early buildings belong to periods B1-4; the mosque was constructed in period B5 and enlarged in B6. The mosque was surrounded by a bazaar, in which the earliest structures were associated with the same range of pottery and coins as the building and the enlargement of the mosque itself; its construction, therefore, is attributed to period B5 or B6.
Glazed pottery was in use throughout the history of the mosque and the buildings beneath it. The overwhelming majority (97.9 per cent) of the 'local' glazed wares consisted of fragments with yellow clay and blue-green glaze. A negligible proportion (0.1 per cent) had colourless glaze, and corrosion rendered the remaining 2 per cent indeterminate. The most distinctive form, present in periods B4-6, was a jar with barbotine decoration: a type familiar for more than fifty years, thanks to the publication of examples from Susa, Samarra and Baghdad. A striking feature of these jars, wherever they come from, is the similarity of one piece to the next. All are between 50 and 60 centimetres high and have a heavy ring base, ovoid or pear-shaped body, short tapering neck and a rim of triangular section. Below the neck are three horizontal handles. Between each pair of handles is an area of robust barbotine ornament consisting of leaf scrolls or abstract motifs beneath an arc composed of two parallel lines divided by pellets. Stamped, incised and gouged ornament also occurs.
Neutron activation analyses showed that sherds with blue-green glaze from Siraf and sites in Iraq were made from clays with the same, or very similar, combinations of trace elements. These differed from the trace elements in the clay used for potting at Siraf itself. It is reasonable to suppose, therefore, that the bulk of the pottery with yellow clay and blue-green glaze found at Siraf was imported, presumably from Iraq.
Beginning in period B3, the 'local' glazed earthenwares were associated with stoneware from China or south-east Asia. The occurrence of all types of glazed pottery was as follows :
Period Chinese Blue-green Local colorless Local corroded Without glaze Total
B6 230
2703 17 473 40684 44107
B5 1818 45426 27 329 230446 270946
B4 88 3046 0 51 37914 41099
B3 46 1321 6 212 42880 44465
B2 0 29 0 9 3265 3303
B1 0 15 1 6 904 926
Among the material from periods B1 and B2 were sherds of Indian Red polished ware from Gujarat. The Far Eastern finds from periods B3 and B4 consisted of fragments of 'Dusun' and black glazed jars. In periods B5 and B6, they were joined by bowls with painted decoration and with pale green or yellowish glaze, patches of which have been scraped from the interior. Period 6 preceded the importation of Chinese white ware and its Islamic imitations.
The finds may be interpreted as follows:
Periods B3 and B4. Direct or indirect trade with China had begun, although the stoneware jars accounted for only 0.1 per cent of the pottery in period B3 and 0.2 per cent in B4.
Period B5. The mosque was built. About this time, 17.1 per cent of all the pottery was glazed: a higher percentage than at any other period in the history of Siraf. At least 16.3 per cent of the pottery had blue-green glaze and jars with barbotine ornament were common. The range and quantity of Chinese ceramics had increased; now they included table wares as well as jars and accounted for 0.7 per cent of the entire sample, or 4.1 per cent of the glazed pottery.
Period B6. The mosque was enlarged. The range of Islamic and Far Eastern glazed pottery was virtually the same as in period B5, but the quantities had declined to 7.2 per cent and 0.5 per cent respectively.
Jars with blue-green glaze and barbotine ornament have an exceptionally wide distribution in Africa and south and southeast Asia. At Manda, for example, Chittick found pottery with blue-green glaze in the earliest archaeological deposits, which preceded the arrival of Chinese and Islamic white wares.
Let us return to Siraf. The evidence for the absolute chronology of periods B3-6 was as follows:
Period B3. A long period of occupation. Latest coin (sealed by
a late floor): Umayyad or early Abbasid. Suggested date: ended c. 750-75.
Period B4. Two coins only, both Umayyad or early Abbasid. Suggested
date: between c. 750-75 and c. 815-25.
Period B5. Latest legible coins: from the platform, 188/803-4;
from the steps, 199/814-15. Suggested date: c. 815-25.
Period B6. Latest legible coin: c. 188/803-4. Suggested date:
not later than c. 850.
The implications of all this are obvious. Siraf, which as a city had no raison d'etre other than as an entrepot for ships voyaging to and from the Arabian Sea, was trading with India long before the eighth century and was, therefore, a Sasanian port. By the second half of the eighth century, if not before, stoneware jars (containers for perishable merchandise) began to arrive at Siraf, as a result either of direct contact with China or of trading with middlemen, perhaps in Sri Lanka. We are reminded of Abu Ubayda al-Saghir and the merchant of Basra, both of whom were involved in the China trade in about 750-75.
In the early ninth century, Siraf and the pattern of its overseas trade was transformed. The construction of the Congregational Mosque (and perhaps also the bazaar), which required a considerable investment of wealth, coincided with a spectacular increase in the quantity and variety of glazed pottery used in the town. Islamic glazed wares (which not only cost more than pottery without glaze to produce, but also seem to have been imported) now accounted for 17.1 per cent of all the pottery (compared with 7.5 per cent in the preceding period). The Chinese ceramics now included table wares and amounted to 0.7 per cent of all the pottery in use (compared with 0.2 per cent). One cannot avoid the conclusion that foreign trade had reached an unprecedentedly high level and now included direct contact with China.
At about the same time, trade with Africa increased. The distribution of jars with blue-green glaze and barbotine decoration, which were shown at Manda to have arrived before the first Chinese or Islamic white wares, strongly suggests that ships from the Gulf or Oman had ventured far south of the equator before about 850.
We arrive, therefore, at a new answer to the question: When did merchants from the Gulf begin to trade with China and southern Africa on a regular basis ? As far as China is concerned, the sudden rise in the quantity of Chinese ceramics at Siraf (from 0.2 per cent to 0.7 per cent) in period B5 suggests that direct trade began before the completion of the mosque in about 815-25. Such precision is impossible in the case of the African trade, since jars with barbotine ornament remained in use after about 815-25 and our only indication of date comes from Manda, where contact with the Gulf had begun before the importation of white wares, which may not have come into use until about 850, or even later.
Be that as it may, one cannot escape the conclusion that the China trade was under way well before c. 850 (the date suggested by Hourani); indeed, it seems to have begun before c. 815-25. According to Chinese sources, after a raid by Ta-shih and Possu (whoever they may have been) in 758, the port of Canton was closed to foreigners until 792. It seems to us that the foundation of Baghdad in 762 helped to create a rich consumer market in Iraq, the reopening of Canton thirty years later made possible direct trade with China and the finds from Siraf show convincingly that trade had begun (and generated enough wealth to build the mosque and perhaps also the bazaar) by about 815-25. The range of long-distance trade with Africa increased at the same time, or slightly later. In any case, when we read of Bahraini pirates preying on ships from China, India and Iran in 825, it is difficult to doubt that they were attacking ships bound for Basra from Siraf. If we were to venture a final hypothesis, it would be that the age of expansion of Abbasid maritime trade began in the caliphate of Harun al-Rashid (786-809).
Internal politics, 775-892
The Abbasids created a new focus of wealth in Iraq and stimulated an almost meteoric increase in the range and volume of seaborne trade, which now embraced not only India, but Africa and the Far East. This commercial expansion followed rapidly on the foundation of Baghdad in 762, and the evidence from Siraf shows that by the beginning of the ninth century the quantity of maritime trade had reached an unprecedentedly high level. At precisely this period Abbasid silver was pouring into Russia, Scandinavia and north-west Europe. About 820, however, the supply of coin to the north declined and remained short for the rest of the ninth century. We have no reason to suppose that the demand in Europe and Scandinavia collapsed, or that the Volga trade route was cut. The explanation, therefore, lies in Asia, where two factors immediately capture our attention: the continuing failure of the caliphate to achieve political stability and the gross extravagance of individual caliphs.
First, internal politics. The caliph al-Mansur died in 775. Although his successor, al-Mahdi (d. 785), adopted a conciliatory attitude towards religious and nationalist minorities (such as the Shi'ites and members of the Zandaqa movement in Iran, which opposed the caliphate), the third Abbasid caliph, al-Had), attempted to suppress them. The aggressive policy of al-Had) simply aggravated an already-difficult situation and divided the ruling family. The caliph was assassinated in 786. His successor, Harun al-Rashid, inherited a sea of troubles. Iran was on the point of revolt and eventually the rulers of the Maghreb declared their independence. The economy, however, was booming and the caliph amassed an enormous fortune.
At the death of Harun, a power struggle erupted. Al-Amin usurped the throne, and his rival, al-Mamun, laid siege to Baghdad. Al-Amin held out for more than a year, during which the city was extensively damaged. In the end he was taken and executed, and al-Mamun, a former governor of Khorasan, abandoned Baghdad and established the court at Merv. It was a short-sighted move. In 817 an anti-caliph was proclaimed in Iraq and fighting broke out between the cities of Wasit, Kufa and Baghdad. After restoring order, al-Mamun returned to the former capital in 819. He died there in 833.
The reign of the next caliph, al-Mutasim (d. 842), was also blighted by attempted coups d'etat. Remembering the civil war between al-Amin and al-Mamun, al-Mutasim imported foreign slaves - Turks, Slavs and Berbers - to form a large (and extremely expensive) praetorian guard. The price was higher than he thought. Disputes broke out between the citizens of Baghdad and the caliph's guards. For this reason (Ya'qubi tells us) al-Mutasim decided to remove the court. After a brief sojourn at Raqqa, he established a new capital, Samarra.
The court remained at Samarra for nearly fifty years (836- 82). It was a period of palace revolutions and widespread unrest. Two caliphs were assassinated, two others forced into exile. Baghdad was besieged again (865-6). In Egypt, the Abbasid governor, Ibn Tulun, was an independent ruler in all but name. In southern Iraq, the armies of Zanj (African) slaves, who worked in the fields and sugar plantations, rebelled in 868. The slave revolt lasted fourteen years, during which Basra was sacked and Wasit theatened. At times, the trade route from the Gulf was closed. When, in 892, al-Mutadid ascended the throne, the treasury was empty.
Samarra
It was not only the cost of maintaining the army and repairing the ravages of civil war that drained the Abbasid treasury, but also the reckless extravagance of the Abbasids themselves. We are not talking about the life-style at court (although this was notorious), but building on a gigantic scale. The works of al-Mansur at Baghdad were dwarfed by those of al-Mutasim and his successors at Samarra, for in forty-six years they created a city which sprawled along the Tigris for 35 kilometres: from Woolwich, as it were, to Kew.
Ya'qubi provides a long account of the founding and construction of Samarra. The caliph inspected a number of possible sites before visiting Samarra, 120 kilometres upstream from Baghdad. The area was desolate and the only inhabitants were the monks of a Christian monastery. But when one of the monks recounted the legend of a former city at Samarra, which would be rebuilt by 'a great, victorious and powerful king', al-Mutasim decided to build:
... he had architects brought and told them to choose the most suitable positions, and they selected a number of sites for the palaces. He gave each of his followers a palace to build ... Then he had plots of ground marked out for the military and civil officers and for the people, and likewise the Great Mosque. And he had the markets drawn out round the mosque with wide market rows, all the various kinds of merchandise being separate ... according to the arrangement after which the markets of Baghdad [and Siraf] were designed. He wrote for workman, masons and artisans, such as smiths, carpenters and all other craftsmen to be sent, and for teak and other kinds of wood, and for palm trunks to be brought from Basra ... Baghdad ... and from Antioch and other towns on the Syrian coast, and for marble workers and men experienced in marble paving to be brought.
Ya'qubi goes on to record that the Turkish troops were allocated separate quarters and to list members of the caliph's retinue who were given grants of land, on condition that they constructed bazaars, bath-houses and mosques for their followers. Main streets were laid out, canals dug and palm trees imported for planting. 'The ground had lain fallow for thousands of years, so everything that was planted or sown there flourished.' Craftsmen were imported to supply the population: papyrus makers from Egypt, potters from southern Iraq and so on. It was the caliph's clear intention to create and populate a new city, virtually overnight.
The most spectacular buildings of al-Mutasim and his successors were, in chronological order:
1. The Jausaq al-Khaqani, al-Mutasim's palace, built between 836 and
842.
2. The Great Mosque, built by al-Mutawakkil in 848/9-52.
3. The Balkuwara palace, built by al-Mutawakkil c.849-59.
4. The Mosque of Abu Dhulaf, also built by al-Mutawakkil in 860-1.
5. The Qasr al-Ashiq, al-Mutamid's palace, built in 878-82.
The Jausaq al-Khaqani was the largest building of them all. Its walls enclosed 175 hectares, 71 of which were occupied by gardens along the Tigris. A flight of steps, 60 metres wide, ascended from the gardens to a monumental entrance, the Bab al-Amma. Beyond the entrance stood the nucleus of the palace, some 200 metres square, containing reception rooms, the caliph's apartments and the harem. Behind the nucleus was a courtyard, 380 metres long; to either side were quarters for the caliph's retinue and guards, the stables and magazines. The palace was not simply huge. In the words of one of the excavators, Ernst Herzfield:
The magnificance ... was in keeping with this composition ... The dadoes of the walls were everywhere decorated with stucco ... [although] in the throne rooms ... [they] are replaced by similar ones of carved marble ... The upper parts of the walls of the Harim were decorated with fresco paintings ... All woodwork, doors, beams, and ceilings were of teak-wood, carved and painted, or only painted and partly gilded.
The Balkuwara palace was almost as huge, consisting of a rectangular walled area of 1,250 metres a side, overlooking the Tigris. Along the river were gardens with richly decorated pavilions. The main building, which contained the throne room, royal apartments, etc., measured 465 by 255 metres. Beyond this lay an even larger compound with courtyards, mosques and other buildings. The walls of the main palace were decorated with paintings and stucco, while the principal entrance had glass mosaics.
The latest of the caliph's palaces at Samarra, the Qasr al-Ashiq, was also the smallest: a rectangular building, with imposing bastioned walls, which measured a mere 140 by 93 metres. It stood on a platform, partly natural and partly composed of vaulted substructures, with a magnificent view of the city.
The caliph al-Wathik (842-7) consolidated the foundations of Samarra laid by al-Mutasim, and Ya'qubi tells us that, thanks to his efforts, the people realised that the city was intended as a permanent capital. From this moment it attracted inhabitants. When, therefore, al-Mutawakkil constructed the Great (Congregational) Mosque, he produced a building as impressive in its proportions as the palaces. The Great Mosque measured 240 by 156 metres internally, with a sanctuary 25 bays wide and 9 bays deep. Muqaddasi reports that it rivalled the Great Mosque of Damascus and had walls covered with ornament: glass mosaics with a gold ground, to judge from the tesserae found by Herzfeld when he cleared part of the interior. Outside the mosque was a free-standing minaret, more than 50 metres high.
Ya'qubi tells us that, not content with constructing the Balkuwara palace and the Great Mosque, al-Mutawakkil 'resolved to build himself a city ... so that his memory should be preserved'. In 859/60 he laid out a new quarter, Ja'fariya, containing a palace, houses, bazaars and a new congregational mosque known as the Mosque of Abu Dhulaf, which measured 213 by 135 metres internally.
Each of these buildings was prodigious: the Jausaq al-Khaqani was larger than Versailles, the Great Mosque the largest ever built. While size alone is no criterion of quality, it is a measure of effort and, therefore, expenditure. And while the principal building material (sun-dried brick) and labour were cheap, the collective cost of the five buildings just described - not to mention the rest of the city - must have been immense. In the century between the reign of Harun al-Rashid (786-809) and the accession of al-Mutadid (892), the Abbasid caliphs went from fabulous wealth to bankruptcy, and lost revenues from rebellious provinces apart, an important one of the ingredients in the recipe for disaster must have been the creation of Samarra, aptly described as an 'act of folly on a vast scale'.
Five conclusions
1. Baghdad (founded in 762), thanks to its position and the presence of the Abbasid court, rapidly became the centre of a great commercial network, which at the end of the eighth century and in the early ninth century expanded to include the Arabian Sea and places as far removed as southern China. The reign of Harun al-Rashid (775-809) saw the wealth of Baghdad and the volume of trade reach unprecedented heights.
2. The Abbasid caliphs failed to create internal stability, and the ninth century was a period of frequent revolts and of infighting between members of the ruling family, factions at court and the army. The legitimate successor of al-Rashid climbed to the throne over the body of a usurper; of the eight succeeding caliphs, two were assassinated and two died in exile.
3. With few exceptions, the caliphs were reckless spenders. The foundation of a new capital, Samarra, in 836, demanded expenditure on a colossal scale. Al-Mutasim built a palace larger than Versailles in 836-42; al-Mutawakkil replaced it with another, almost as large, in about 849-59; al-Mutamid built a third in 878-82. The city itself extended along the Tigris for 35 kilometres.
4. The product of intermittent warfare and gross extravagance was an economic disaster. At the death of Harun al-Rashid, the Abbasid treasury was overflowing; on the accession of al-Mutadid (892) it was empty.
5. The high point in the exportation of silver to Scandinavia, therefore, coincided with an economic boom in western Asia in the reign of Harun. The drying-up of the supply coincided with the gradual exhaustion of the Abbasid economy.