Chapter 5 Matching Exercise

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

Credibility

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.

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 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.”

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.

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

(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.

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.

Literally meaning “those who withdraw or separate themselves,” it was a philosophical school that became significant during the Abbasid caliphates of al-Mamun and al-Mutasim in the early- to mid-ninth century. Considered to be religious rationalists influenced by Greek reason, Mutazilites believed in human freedom of action as well as the createdness of the Quran, therefore it was subject to interpretation at different times. It was mostly the ideology of the elite ruling class although it was harshly implemented by an inquisition during its heyday. Although not surviving long as a religious doctrine, it certainly influenced the development of certain evolving Shiite principles over the next century.