Chapter 5 Matching Exercise

A senior military position in the Abbasid caliphate that came to surpass the civilian bureaucracy, effectively relegating the caliphs to ceremonial figureheads by 936. The term is translated as “commander of commanders.”

Refers to the designation of an imam by the previous imam in Shiite Islam.

Non-Arab slaves, mostly Turkish, who originally were captured in battle or purchased. They were then converted to Islam, trained, manumitted, and often integrated into the ruling apparatus through military and administrative duties.

Parcels of land in varying sizes awarded by the central government to military commanders—and sometimes administrators. The iqta holders would be responsible for local governmental duties such as tax collection, and also commit to providing a certain number of troops when called upon by the central government. This would relieve the central treasury of the burden of paying for a salaried or standing army.

Followers of Ahmad ibn Hanbal in the ninth century CE, otherwise known as the Traditionalists. They resisted the doctrine of Mutazilism and asserted that the Quran is the final, unalterable Word of God and could not be reinterpreted. Hanbali Islam today is one of the legal schools (madhabs) of Sunni Islam, known as the most rigid of the generally acknowledged four madhabs.

(related, mujtahid): The ability to interpret divine will, the Quran. A mujtahid is a recognized authority in applying reason in interpreting Islamic precepts.

A name given to the slaves, mostly of African origin, who worked in southern Iraq largely on agricultural land reclamation. They rose up in rebellion against the Abbasid caliphate in 869 CE, holding significant territory in present-day southern Iraq and southwestern Iran until their defeat by Abbasid forces in 883.

plural kuttab: Literally meaning “secretary” in its singular form. The plural refers generally to the civilian bureaucracy in the Abbasid caliphate.

Those from the province of Khurasan in northeast Iran who formed the military core in support of the Abbasid revolution and played a leading role in the state in the early Abbasid period.

singular alim: Muslim religious scholars.

Credibility

(Arabic: sons): This is the plural of ibn (son), and in this book a reference to the abna al-dawlah, the Sons of the Revolution, the descendants of the original Khurasaniyya who played the key military role in the Abbasid revolution.