This is the English translation of «الدين المفتري عليه» (The Slandered Religion), Part 3 of 10.

Chapter Two: The Abbasids — Despotism Wrapped in Religion (الفصل الثاني: العباسيون — الاستبداد المغلّف بالدين)

Al-Mada’in, the year 137 AH / 755 CE. A man in his fifties enters the caliph’s palace with the steps of one confident — the maker of kings. It is Abu Muslim al-Khurasani — the man who led the armies of the Abbasid revolution, toppled the Umayyad state, and paved the throne for Abu al-Abbas, then for Abu Ja’far al-Mansur. The caliph receives him with feigned cheer, seats him near, and prolongs the talk with him… then at an agreed moment, al-Mansur claps his hands. A curtain opens at the مجلس’s front, and out come men with drawn swords: Uthman ibn Nahik and his companions. Abu Muslim stands terrified: “Spare me for your enemy, O Commander of the Faithful!” Al-Mansur answers him coldly: “Is there an enemy more hostile than you?” And the swords fall. The maker of the revolution is killed by order of the throne’s maker, in the palace the throne built.

Contemplate this scene well, for it is the key to the whole chapter: the Abbasid revolution, raised in religion’s name — “al-Rida from the House of Muhammad” — began by killing the man who made it. If this is the fate of the revolution’s maker, what is the fate of the slogans it raised? And what is the fate of the nation that believed them?

The Secret Call: A Revolution Simmering in Darkness

The Umayyad state did not fall by a single blow; it was felled by a secret project that worked decades in hiding. The Abbasids — a branch of Banu Hashim, cousins of the Alids — had inherited the call from their imam Muhammad ibn Ali ibn Abd Allah ibn Abbas, who built a tight secret organization: preachers roaming the provinces, “naqibs” (chiefs) in Khurasan, and a pledge taken in darkness to an unknown name: “al-Rida from the House of Muhammad” — the acceptable one from Muhammad’s household. Note the political shrewdness here: the slogan was loose enough to gather under it the Shi’a angered at the Umayyads, the mawali denied equality, and every malcontent against the state — without naming who would actually rule. And the organization had a precise secret structure: disguised preachers roaming the provinces, “naqibs” in Khurasan, and a pledge taken at night of hearing and obeying an imam the pledgers never saw. Thirty years the call worked in darkness — the Umayyads oblivious to the fire hidden under their ash, until Nasr ibn Sayyar cried his famous cry and none answered him.

And Khurasan was the fertile soil: thousands of Persian mawali who had embraced Islam yet remained second-class citizens — paying the land tax, denied stipends, humiliated in mosques and markets. There the preachers found their prize in a young Persian of mysterious origin, clever, decisive, knowing no mercy: Abu Muslim al-Khurasani, whom the “Imam” Ibrahim ibn Muhammad sent to Khurasan as commander of the armed revolution.

And the Umayyad governor of Khurasan, Nasr ibn Sayyar, saw the fire approaching, helpless. He wrote to the Umayyad caliph Marwan ibn Muhammad — nicknamed “al-Himar” (the Donkey) for his endurance in wars — pleading and warning, sealing his letter with the verses that became among the most quoted in politics:

I see beneath the ash the glimmer of fire * and it is about to burst into flame
For fire is kindled with two sticks * and war begins with words

But Marwan was busy with the seditions of Syria and Iraq, and did not rescue him. And in the year 129 AH / 747 CE the black banners were raised in a village near Marw, and Abu Muslim went out with the mawali’s army; Khurasan fell, then Iraq, then came the decisive battle on the Zab river in the year 132 AH / 750 CE, where Marwan ibn Muhammad’s army was crushed, and the last Umayyad caliph fled to Egypt and was killed in Busir. And a state that had ruled ninety years fell.

The Zab and Abu Futrus: The Revolution Devours Its Enemies

Abu al-Abbas — nicknamed “al-Saffah” (the Bloodshedder) — entered Kufa and preached the inauguration sermon famous for what he said of himself: “I am al-Saffah the Mubih, and the Tha’ir the Munih.” Stop at these two words: “al-Mubih” — the one who renders blood licit; “the avenger who grants rest.” The man was more honest with himself and with history than he should have been: the revolution that came in the name of “al-Rida from the House of Muhammad” declared from its first day that it was a revolution of liquidation, not a revolution of justice.

And the proof came on the banks of the Abu Futrus river near Ramla in Palestine, in Dhu al-Qa’da of the year 132 AH. Abdullah ibn Ali — al-Saffah’s uncle and commander of his armies in Syria — gathered what remained of the Umayyad princes, gave them safe-conduct, and invited them to a feast in his palace. When they felt secure and the tables were spread, he signaled to his men, and they fell upon them with swords, killing some eighty men of the Umayyad house — among them Sa’id ibn Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan. Then — and this is the account the history books passed on in its horror — leather mats were spread over the dead and the dying, and above them the table of food was laid, and Abdullah ibn Ali and his companions ate while the slain breathed their last beneath them.

Nor did vengeance stop at the living: the graves of the Umayyad caliphs in Damascus were exhumed, the graves of Muawiya and Hisham and others were dug up, and their remains were crucified — revenge upon the dead because the living had not sufficed. And ask yourself: are these the morals of a revolution that came to restore shura and justice? Or the morals of a gang that came to seize the booty and terrorize all who thought of contesting it?

The answer came swiftly, and on the night with which we opened this chapter: Abu Muslim al-Khurasani — the maker of the revolution and commander of its armies, the man without whom there would have been no Abbasid throne — was killed treacherously by Abu Ja’far al-Mansur in the year 137 AH / 755 CE, because he had become stronger than the caliph himself, and because the people of Khurasan obeyed him more than they obeyed the caliph. Thus the Abbasid age began with a rule that would govern it from first to last: the ruler rids himself of those who brought him to power, because their existence reminds him that he owes his throne to someone — and the absolute throne tolerates no creditors.

Nor did even al-Mansur’s own uncle escape this rule: Abdullah ibn Ali — the hero of Abu Futrus — claimed the caliphate for himself after al-Saffah’s death; al-Mansur defeated him with Abu Muslim’s own army, then imprisoned him for years and killed him in his prison. The revolution that began with the slogan “the House of Muhammad” ended up devouring the House of Muhammad itself.

Al-Mansur: Builder of the State… and Killer of Its Makers

Abu Ja’far al-Mansur (136–158 AH / 754–775 CE) was the true founder of the Abbasid state: he built Baghdad — “the City of Peace” — in the year 145 AH / 762 CE, a circular, carefully planned city that became the capital of the world and the center of trade and learning for centuries. And in its circular plan there was an intended symbol: the caliph at the heart, the city revolving around him as planets revolve — an architectural image of the entire philosophy of rule: everything revolves around the ruler, and nothing revolves around the nation. And he founded the diwans, regulated the land tax, and built a strong centralized state the region had not known for centuries.

But ask: a state for whom? And at what price? A state for the caliph alone, at the price of the blood of all who helped build it. For the al-Mansur who built Baghdad is the same who killed Abu Muslim, imprisoned his uncle and killed him, and hunted the Alids — his own cousins, whom the slogan “al-Rida from the House of Muhammad” had deceived — so Muhammad al-Nafs al-Zakiyya and his brother Ibrahim revolted against him in the year 145 AH, and he crushed and killed them. Muhammad al-Nafs al-Zakiyya had risen in Medina in the year 145 AH demanding the pledge for himself as the worthiest of the Prophet’s household; al-Mansur’s army besieged him and killed him, then his brother Ibrahim was killed in Basra. Thus the curtain fell on the dream of “al-Rida from the House of Muhammad”: the House of Muhammad themselves became fuel for a throne built in their name.

And here this book’s thesis appears in its darkest splendor: religion was the fuel of the revolution, not its goal. Religious sentiments — love of the Prophet’s household, anger for justice, nostalgia for the Rashidun caliphate — were used to mobilize the masses; once power was seized, the fuel was thrown into the fire. Shura was never reconsidered, the nation was never asked its opinion of who rules it; rule passed from one hereditary family to another hereditary family, more organized and more brutal.

The Barmakids: When the Sultan Fears His Servants

And the same rule repeated itself half a century later, in a clearer and more tragic form. The Barmakids — a family of Persian origin — were the masterminds of the state in Harun al-Rashid’s reign: Yahya ibn Khalid his minister and tutor, and his sons al-Fadl and Ja’far running the caliphate’s affairs — seventeen years with the ministry in their hands, the state at the peak of its prosperity.

But power breeds fear in the hearts of absolute kings. Whisperings began reaching al-Rashid: the Barmakids had become stronger than the caliph, people sought their doors and ignored his, and wealth flowed through their hands. And on Saturday night, the first of Safar in the year 187 AH / 803 CE, al-Rashid struck: all the Barmakids were seized in a single night; Ja’far ibn Yahya — the closest of men to the caliph, his boon companion and friend — was killed, his body cut up and crucified on Baghdad’s bridges; Yahya and his son al-Fadl were imprisoned until they died in prison; their wealth, houses, and estates were confiscated. In hours the legend ended of a family that had actually ruled the state seventeen years.

Contemplate the irony: al-Rashid did not destroy his enemies, but his loyal servants. Why? Because the absolute ruler fears the near strong one more than the distant enemy — whoever knows the palace’s secrets and the corridors of rule. So the Abbasid rule works without pause: whoever makes the caliph’s glory becomes a danger to the caliph, and is crushed. Thus the state is run: not by competence and loyalty, but by fear and liquidation. And is a state’s glory built on fear? The state may remain strong for decades, but it stays the state of one man: when the man dies or weakens, it collapses with him — because no institution in it can say to him: stop.

The War of the Two Brothers: Inherited Legitimacy Decided by the Sword

And just before the Barmakids, the Abbasid house itself presented the world with the ugliest image of hereditary rule: a civil war between two brothers over the throne. Al-Rashid had divided the succession between his two sons: al-Amin in Baghdad, al-Ma’mun in Khurasan, and hung the “Mecca document” in the Kaaba. When he died in the year 193 AH / 809 CE, the document did not survive months: al-Amin wanted to depose his brother from the succession in favor of his own son, and war ignited (195–198 AH).

And Baghdad was besieged — the capital of the caliphate, the City of Peace — bombarded by catapults, its people starved; and in the end the caliph al-Amin was killed in the year 198 AH / 813 CE at the hands of the troops of Tahir ibn al-Husayn, commander of al-Ma’mun’s armies, and his head was sent to his brother. A brother killing his brother, a Muslim army besieging Islam’s capital and bombarding it, and the head of a “Commander of the Faithful” carried to another “Commander of the Faithful.”

What legitimacy is this, decided by severing a brother’s head? And what system is this that makes the caliphate — supposed to be the nation’s trust — an inheritance the brothers contest with swords? The war of the two brothers proved what Yazid’s pledge had proved a century before it: when rule is inherited booty rather than a trust delegated by the nation, blood becomes the only language of political rotation.

The Mihna: The State Tries Consciences

But the true peak of religion’s employment came in al-Ma’mun’s reign (198–218 AH / 813–833 CE), reaching a form Islamic history had never known: a state no longer content to rule bodies, but wanting to rule doctrines.

In the year 218 AH / 833 CE al-Ma’mun imposed upon the nation a theological doctrine — the createdness of the Qur’an — making it a compulsory test: he wrote to his governors and judges to examine the scholars, judges, and hadith transmitters; whoever affirmed the Qur’an’s createdness was saved, whoever refused was imprisoned, tortured, and dismissed. These black years were called “the Mihna” (the Inquisition). Picture it: the caliph sits in his palace and decides what “correct Islam” is, then sends the executioners to impose it on people’s consciences by the lash!

And one man stood against this Mihna and became a symbol for the whole nation: Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal. Imprisoned in al-Ma’mun’s reign, then flogged a severe flogging in al-Mu’tasim’s reign, patiently telling his floggers: “Bring me something from God’s Book or His Messenger’s practice, and I shall say it.” He refused to say what the caliph wanted, and paid the price in years of prison and torture. Nor was Ahmad alone: in al-Wathiq’s reign Ahmad ibn Nasr al-Khuza’i — the courageous scholar — was killed in patience for refusing to affirm the Qur’an’s createdness, and the sources report that al-Wathiq killed him with his own hand. A man killed for saying: the Qur’an is God’s speech! What religion is this that the sword “protects” by killing its people? And his companion Muhammad ibn Nuh died on the road to them, chained in fetters — a martyr of the free word.

And the Mihna continued in al-Mu’tasim’s reign, then al-Wathiq’s, until al-Mutawakkil came in the year 234 AH / 848 CE and ended it, freed Ahmad ibn Hanbal and honored him, and removed the Mu’tazila from state offices — until he was called “the reviver of the Sunna.” But note the bitter irony: the one who ended the Mihna was another absolute caliph, by another individual decision! Religious freedom was not restored because the nation owned its right, but because a new ruler held a different opinion. And the lesson this book wants to entrench: what is granted by the ruler’s decision is taken away by the ruler’s decision. True freedom is not a grant from the sultan, but a right the nation owns through institutions that protect it from the sultan himself.

The House of Wisdom: Cultured Despotism

And the irony is that al-Ma’mun himself — the master of the Mihna — was an unrivaled patron of learning and translation: he founded the “House of Wisdom” in Baghdad, where Greek philosophy, medicine, astronomy, and mathematics were translated, the sciences flourished, and Baghdad became the world’s beacon. In the House of Wisdom’s halls worked al-Khwarizmi, to whom the “algorithm” is attributed, al-Kindi the philosopher of the Arabs, and Hunayn ibn Ishaq who transmitted Greek medicine into Arabic — names we rightly take pride in. But ask: did anyone ask these scholars their opinion of who rules them? Did their translations grant them a voice in choosing the caliph or removing him? And al-Mu’tasim after him built Samarra and a strong army, and the state reached the peak of its power.

And here the Abbasid chapter presents a bitter truth that must be stated plainly: despotism may be cultured and enlightened, but it remains despotism. Baghdad’s scientific flourishing — with all the heritage it produced that we pride ourselves on to this day — did not grant the nation the right to choose its ruler, nor to hold him accountable, nor to remove him. Scholars had Aristotle translated for them in the morning, and were flogged in the evening if they opposed the caliph’s doctrine. So do not be dazzled by civilization’s glitter: civilization without freedom is an ornament on a golden fetter, and a golden fetter is a fetter in the end.

Al-Mutawakkil: When the Sword Turns on Its Master

Al-Mu’tasim had committed the mistake his grandchildren would pay for: to protect his throne from the Abbasids and the Arabs, he created a new army of Turkish mamluks, housing them in Samarra far from Baghdad — an army loyal to the caliph alone, with no tribe and no kinship — or so he thought.

But a sword with no kinship has no loyalty either, except to whoever pays more. And in al-Mutawakkil’s reign (232–247 AH / 847–861 CE) — who ended the Mihna, persecuted the Shi’a, demolished al-Husayn’s tomb in Karbala in the year 236 AH and forbade its visitation — the Turkish commanders’ influence reached a point that terrified the caliph himself, and he tried to curtail it and confiscate their properties. And he had divided the succession among his three sons in the year 235 AH, publicly humiliating his son al-Muntasir in favor of his brother al-Mu’tazz; al-Muntasir bore a grudge and conspired with the Turks against his father.

And on the night of the fourth of Shawwal in the year 247 AH / 861 CE, the Turks led by Bugha al-Sharabi stormed the caliph’s مجلس in his palace at al-Ja’fariyya near Samarra, and killed him along with his minister al-Fath ibn Khaqan. “God’s shadow on earth” — as the caliphs styled themselves — was killed at the hands of his own troops, in a conspiracy in which his son and heir took part!

Al-Mutawakkil’s assassination began the “anarchy of Samarra”: a full decade of killing and deposing, in which caliphs were killed one after another — al-Muntasir poisoned, al-Musta’in deposed and killed, al-Mu’tazz tortured to death, al-Muhtadi killed — all at the hands of the Turkish commanders. The tables were turned: the caliph who claimed divine delegation became a plaything in the military’s hands, installed today and slaughtered tomorrow.

The Puppet Caliph: A Rubber Stamp in the Military’s Hand

And with the fourth century AH the farce was completed: the Buyids — Persian Shi’a — entered Baghdad in the year 334 AH / 945 CE; Mu’izz al-Dawla deposed the caliph al-Mustakfi and blinded him, and became “Amir al-Umara” (Commander of Commanders), the de facto ruler: coinage struck in his name, his titles mentioned on the pulpits, and the Abbasid caliph owning nothing but the signature on “religious legitimacy.” Then came the Sunni Turkish Seljuks led by Tughril Beg in the year 447 AH / 1055 CE, who wrested power from the Buyids — and the caliph stayed as he was: an elegant puppet in a Baghdad palace, summoned when needed to dress the new usurper in the cloak of legitimacy. And Baghdad saw heart-rending scenes: a caliph dragged from his palace and blinded — his eyes kohl-ed with heated iron — then paraded; another caliph deposed and locked in a room until he died; preachers on the pulpits supplicating for the Buyid or Seljuk prince before the caliph; and dinars minted in the name of whoever owned the army, not whoever owned “legitimacy.” The title “Commander of the Faithful” became mere linguistic décor on a coin whose owner could not afford a loaf of bread.

Contemplate the mocking irony: the religion used as a cover for the strong ruler had now become a rubber stamp granted to whoever owned the sword — Persian Shi’a or Turkish Sunni, no difference. The caliph no longer ruled in religion’s name; rather, religion was ruled in the caliph’s name: a ready signature on every usurpation, a ready fatwa for every sword. And this is the natural fate of whoever makes religion a tool of power: the tool ends in the hand of whoever prevails, and the name remains emptied of all meaning.

The Conclusion

The Abbasids are the second chapter of the deviation: they perfected what the Umayyads began — turning religion from a restraint on power into a tool of it. They revolted in the name of “the House of Muhammad” then killed the maker of their revolution, slaughtered their enemies’ princes over safe-conduct tables, imposed doctrines by the lash in the Mihna, and ended as caliphs without a caliphate: puppets in the military’s hand, rubber stamps in the usurpers’ hands. And the lesson: when the ruler owns the right to define religion, religion becomes the nation’s jailer instead of its liberator; and when legitimacy is built on conquest rather than the nation’s choice, the sword becomes the only voter, and blood the only language of politics. And the Muslims paid the price of this lesson for centuries: whenever a tyrant fell in religion’s name, a greater tyrant came in religion’s name — because the problem was never in the individuals alone, but in the equation itself: a religion unseparated from power, and a power undelegated by the nation.

But the decline did not stop at Baghdad’s puppet. For by the fourth century AH, the Islamic world had three men, each claiming to be “Commander of the Faithful”: an Abbasid caliph captive in Baghdad owning nothing of his affair, a Fatimid caliph in the Maghreb claiming Prophetic lineage, and an Umayyad caliph in Cordoba reviving the title in al-Andalus. Three caliphs… and one torn nation. So how did the one caliphate’s state turn into warring kingdoms, and how did religion itself become fuel for division instead of a bond of unity? That is what we shall see in the next chapter: the chapter of fragmentation.