Central Asia and Mawarannahr in particular experience a truly golden age during the height of the Abbasid Caliphate in the eighth and the ninth centuries.

Bukhara becomes one of the leading centers of learning, culture, and art in the Muslim world, its magnificence rivaling contemporaneous cultural centers such as Baghdad, Cairo, and Cordoba.

Some of the greatest historians, scientists, and geographers in the history of Islamic culture are natives of the region.

As the Abbasid Caliphate begins to weaken and local Islamic Iranian states emerge as the rulers of Iran and Central Asia, the Persian language begins to regain its preeminent role in the region as the language of literature and government.

The rulers of the eastern section of Iran and of Mawarannahr are Persians.

The rich culture of Mawarannahr continues to flourish during the height of the Abbasid Caliphate in the eighth and the ninth centuries.

The Near and Middle East (820 – 963 CE): Abbasid Fragmentation, Local Dynasties, and the Maritime–Desert Frontier

Geographic and Environmental Context

The Near and Middle East extended from Anatolia and the eastern Mediterranean through the Tigris–Euphrates basin and the Iranian uplands to the Arabian and Red Sea coasts and Gulf rim.
It included three linked zones:

• The Middle East—Mesopotamia, Iran, Syria, the Caucasus, and the Persian Gulf littoral.

• The Near East—Egypt, the Levant, western Arabia, Yemen, Sudan/Nubia, and western Anatolia.

• Southeast Arabia—the incense-producing highlands and coasts of Hadhramaut and Dhofar, the Empty Quarter, and Socotra, the island midway between Arabia and India.

Together these regions formed the central hinge of Afro–Eurasian civilization: canals, caravan routes, and monsoon ports tied together the Mediterranean, Indian Ocean, and Inner Asian worlds.

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Climate and Environmental Shifts

The period fell within late-Holocene stability:

• Mesopotamia and the Nile Valley maintained fertile irrigation systems;

• Syrian and Anatolian uplands relied on rain-fed farming, sensitive to local drought;

• Arabian deserts remained arid but supported caravan mobility;

• Oases and wadis in Hadhramaut, Dhofar, and Oman sustained terrace farming and resin groves;

• Gulf fisheries and pearl banks flourished under consistent sea temperatures.

This steady climate sustained both agrarian production and long-distance commerce.

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Societies and Political Developments

Abbasid Caliphate and Regional Dynasties

• Baghdad, still the symbolic heart of the Islamic world, saw its authority erode under competing dynasties and governors.

• In Iran and Iraq, the Tahirids (Khurasan), Saffarids (Sistan), and Samanids (Transoxiana) rose to prominence.

• In 945, the Buyids, a Shiʿi-leaning Persian house, seized Baghdad itself, reducing the caliphs to nominal figureheads.

• Syria and Cilicia oscillated between Abbasid, Tulunid (868–905), and Ikhshidid (935–969) rule, with Byzantine–Muslim frontier warfare along the Cilician thughūr.

• The Caucasus saw the revival of Christian kingdoms: Bagratid Armenia regained sovereignty in 885, while Georgia’s Bagrationi princes consolidated their realms.

Egypt and the Levant

• Ahmad ibn Tulun (868–884) founded the Tulunid dynasty, asserting Egypt’s autonomy.

  • His capital near Fustat built monumental mosques and efficient fiscal systems.

• After Tulunid decline, the Ikhshidids maintained quasi-independent rule until the Fatimids seized Egypt in 969.

• Levantine ports—notably Tyre and Tripoli—prospered as glass, textile, and sugar centers.

• In western Anatolia, Byzantine control persisted along the Aegean, despite raids from Cilicia and Syria.

Arabia and the Gulf

• Eastern Arabia and Oman: The Qarmatians, a radical Shiʿi movement centered in al-Ahsa–Qatif, rose after 899, seizing Bahrain and attacking pilgrim caravans.

• Ibāḍī Oman endured as a theocratic state, its ports at Suhar and Qalhat linking the Gulf to India.

• In Yemen, Zaydi imams established authority in the northern highlands, while the southern Hadhramaut and Dhofar valleys thrived on frankincense cultivation.

• Socotra stood as a maritime crossroads where Arab, Persian, and Indian traders mingled with local Austronesian-descended seafarers.

• The Empty Quarter (Rubʿ al-Khali) remained the preserve of Bedouin tribes guiding caravans across vast, ungoverned sands.

Sudan, Nubia, and Christian Frontiers

• Makuria and Alodia, Christian kingdoms of the Nile south of Aswan, maintained independence through the Baqt treaty, trading slaves and gold for Egyptian grain and textiles.

• Armenia and Georgia to the north and Nubia to the south framed the Islamic heartlands with strong Christian enclaves, balancing the Abbasid world through diplomacy and trade.

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Economy and Trade

• Agrarian cores:

  • Iraq and Khuzestan: grain, dates, flax, and cotton under canal irrigation.

  • Egypt: Nile surpluses of wheat, barley, and linen textiles.

  • Yemen and Oman: aromatics, coffee precursors, horses, and pearls.

  • Syria and Anatolia: olives, vines, and cereals.

• Maritime commerce:

  • The Persian Gulf hosted fleets linking Basra and Siraf to India, Socotra, and East Africa.

  • The Red Sea tied Aden, Aydhab, and Jeddah to Egypt and Levantine ports.

• Caravan and overland routes:

  • From Tabriz–Rayy–Nishapur across Iran;

  • Mosul–Aleppo–Cilicia toward the Byzantine frontier;

  • Caucasus passes (Darial/Derbent);

  • Hadhramaut–Najran–Mecca incense road through the desert interior.

• Coinage and credit: Abbasid gold dīnārs and silver dirhams circulated widely; regional mints under Buyids and Samanids proliferated; merchants’ letters of credit (suftaja) streamlined long-distance exchange.

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Subsistence and Technology

• Canals and qanāt systems sustained Mesopotamia and Iran.

• Syrian norias and Yemeni terraces optimized water management.

• Shipbuilding: sewn-plank and nailed hulls; lateen sails enabled monsoon navigation.

• Craft industries: Egyptian linen, Levantine glass, Persian silks, Yemeni aromatics, and Anatolian wines defined the region’s artisan wealth.

• Military innovation: cavalry archery, heavy cataphracts, and fortified passes; the Cilician frontier became a laboratory of cross-cultural warfare.

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Movement and Interaction Corridors

• Tigris–Euphrates canal system: arteries of Mesopotamian life.

• Nile River: the logistical spine of Egypt.

• Red Sea and Arabian Sea routes: joined the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean via Aden and Socotra.

• Caucasus and Anatolian corridors: funneled trade between steppe and Mediterranean.

• Pilgrimage routes: Mecca and Medina connected the Islamic world through faith and exchange.

From the incense valleys of Dhofar to the ports of Tyre and Tripoli, these networks bound deserts, rivers, and seas into one integrated economy.

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Belief and Symbolism

• Islam: Abbasid orthodoxy persisted at Baghdad, but regional heterodoxies thrived—Qarmatian egalitarianism, Zaydi imamate in Yemen, and Ibāḍī autonomy in Oman.

• Christianity: Byzantium retained coastal Anatolia and Cyprus; Armenia, Georgia, Nubia, and Makuria remained vibrant Christian realms on Islam’s periphery.

• Judaism: thriving mercantile communities in Cairo, Fustat, and the Levant linked Mediterranean and Indian Ocean trade.

• Pilgrimage and ritual: The Hajj unified Muslims across regions; incense rituals in Dhofar and Hadhramaut blended ancient practice with Islamic trade wealth.

• Socotra’s syncretism: Islam and Christianity coexisted with pre-Islamic traditions, embodying the cultural crossroads of the Arabian Sea.

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Adaptation and Resilience

• Decentralization allowed flexibility: Tulunid Egypt, Buyid Iraq, and Zaydi Yemen adapted governance to local needs.

• Hydraulic and maritime redundancy—multiple water and trade routes—buffered ecological shocks.

• Pluralism fostered resilience: Islamic, Christian, and Jewish communities often cooperated economically.

• Caravan–port symbiosis balanced overland and sea commerce, ensuring continuity even amid political fragmentation.

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Long-Term Significance

By 963 CE, the Near and Middle East had evolved into a polycentric system:

• Baghdad remained the spiritual capital but shared power with Buyid amirs, Tulunid–Ikhshidid Egypt, Zaydi Yemen, and Qarmatian Bahrain.

• Christian Armenia, Georgia, Nubia, and Byzantine Anatolia endured as autonomous partners and rivals.

• Southeast Arabia and Socotra connected caravan deserts with Indian Ocean circuits, ensuring the region’s role as the commercial and religious nexus of the Old World.

This balance of fragmentation and connectivity defined the transitional centuries between the early Abbasid empire and the later Islamic golden age—an era of hydraulic empires, desert confederations, and maritime corridors linking Africa, Asia, and Europe in a single interdependent world.

Middle East (820 – 963 CE): Abbasid Fragmentation, Caucasian Kingdoms, and the Qarmatian Gulf

Geographic and Environmental Context

As defined above. Key zones: Baghdad–Tigris, Tabriz–Azerbaijan–Rayy, Caucasus (Armenia–Georgia–Azerbaijan), Cilicia and Syrian uplands, eastern Jordan, northeastern Cyprus, and the eastern Arabia–northern Oman–Gulf rim.

Climate and Environmental Shifts

• Stable late-Holocene conditions; productivity hinged on Tigris–Euphrates canals, qanāt belts in Iran, and Syrian rain-fed plains.

• Gulf fisheries and pearls flourished; steppe margins swung with rainfall.

Societies and Political Developments

• Abbasid Baghdad retained symbolic primacy while power devolved to regional dynasts.

• Iran–Iraq: Tahirids (Khurasan), Saffarids (Sistan) and Samanids (Transoxiana/Khurasan) pressed Abbasid frontiers; Buyids seized Baghdad in 945, creating a Shi‘i-leaning amirate over the caliphs.

• Syria & Cilicia: administered under Abbasid/Tulunid (868–905) and later Ikhshidid (935–969) governors; Cilician thughūr (frontiers) saw Byzantine–Muslim raiding.

• Caucasus: Bagratid Armenia restored kingship (885); Georgia consolidated under Bagrationi princes.

• Eastern Arabia–Gulf: the Qarmatians (from 899) dominated al-Ahsa–Qatif, raiding the Gulf and pilgrim routes; northern Oman maintained Ibāḍī polities and port autonomy.

• Northeastern Cyprus: intermittent Byzantine–Abbasid condominium and raiding base.

• Lebanon (north/coastal—Tripoli) prospered as a glass/textile port (southernmost strip excluded).

Economy and Trade

• Irrigated cores: Mesopotamian grain/dates/flax; Persian cotton/silk; Syrian cereals/olives.

• Gulf maritime: pearls (Bahrain/Qatif), horses, dates, and Gulf–India traffic via Hormuz’s precursors and Omani ports.

• Caravans: Tabriz–Rayy–Khurasan silk/horse routes; Aleppo/upper Syria to Jazira–Iraq.

• Coinage: Abbasid dīnārs/dirhams; regional mints proliferated under Buyids/Samanids.

Subsistence and Technology

• Canals & qanāt kept oases productive; Syrian norias; glass/textiles in Syrian and Lebanese workshops.

• Military: cavalry, composite bows; fortified Cilician passes.

Movement Corridors

• Tabriz–Rayy–Nishapur; Mosul–Aleppo–Cilicia; Baghdad–Basra–Gulf; Caucasus passes (Darial/Derbent); northeastern Cyprus as a coastal node.

Belief and Symbolism

• Sunni orthodoxy at Baghdad; Shi‘i Buyid patronage later in the century.

• Armenian/Georgian churches flourished; Ibāḍī Oman endured.

• Qarmatian heterodoxy challenged pilgrimage and Abbasid prestige.

Long-Term Significance

By 963, the Middle East was a polycentric field: Buyid Baghdad, Armenian–Georgian crowns, Ikhshidid Syria/Cilicia, and a Qarmatian-dominated Gulf—frameworks that would channel Fatimid, Seljuk, and Byzantine surges in the next age.

The growing prominence of Turks in military and in political affairs, in addition to the cleavages between Arabs and Iranians and between Sunnis and Shias, give cause for discontent and rivalry at court.

Nomadic, Turkic-speaking warriors have been moving out of Central Asia into Transoxiana (i.e., across the Oxus River) for more than a millennium.

The Abbasid caliphs had begun importing Turks as slave-warriors (Mamluks) early in the ninth century.

The imperial palace guards of the Abbasids were Mamluks who were originally commanded by free Iraqi officers.

By 833, however, Mamluks themselves are officers and gradually, because of their greater military proficiency and dedication, they begin to occupy high positions at court.

The mother of Caliph Mutasim (who comes to power in 833) had been a Turkish slave, and her influence is substantial.

The Turkish commanders, no longer checked by their Iranian and Arab rivals at court by the tenth century, are able to appoint and depose caliphs.

The political power of the caliphate is fully separate from its religious function for the first time.

The Mamluks continue to permit caliphs to come to power because of the importance of the office as a symbol for legitimizing claims to authority.
 
A military family known as the Buwayhids occupies Baghdad in 945 after subjugating western Iran.

Shias from the Iranian province of Daylam south of the Caspian Sea, the Buyids continue to permit Sunni Abbasid caliphs to ascend to the throne.

The humiliation of the caliphate at being manipulated by Shias, and by Iranian ones at that, is immense.

The main pillars of Ibn Ra'iq's regime are the Turkish troops under Bajkam and Tuzun, former subordinates of Mardavij.

To secure his own position, Ibn Ra'iq even massacres the old caliphal bodyguard, the Hujariyya, destroying the last body of troops still loyal to the Abbasid dynasty.

Ibn Ra'iq's authority is soon weakened, however, when he falls out with the Baridis of Ahwaz, who had initially supported his rise to power.

When he tries to deprive them of their province, they reopen their contacts with the Buyids.

Finally, it is discontent among the Turkish military that leads to his downfall: the Turks under Bajkam rise up against him, and after a brief struggle, Bajkam becomes the new amir al-umara in September 938, while Ibn Ra'iq is sent to govern Diyar Mudar.

The struggle between Bajkam and Ibn Ra'iq has one long-term and disastrous consequence: trying to impede Bajkam's advance towards Baghdad, Ibn Ra'iq orders the blocking of the Nahrawan Canal to flood the countryside.

This action does not avail Ibn Ra'iq, but it heavily impairs the local agriculture for centuries to come, since the canal plays a central role in the ancient irrigation system of the Sawad.

Created in the sixth century, it had reached its peak under the Abbasid Caliphate, serving as the main water supply for the Abbasid capital of Baghdad, while the regions irrigated by it serve as the city's main breadbasket.

The Middle East: 940–951 CE

Linguistic Transformations and Cultural Shifts

Between 940 and 951 CE, the Middle East experiences a significant linguistic transformation as the flexible word order typical of Middle Iranian languages gradually evolves into the more structured and rigid syntax characteristic of Modern Iranian languages. This linguistic shift underscores broader cultural changes across the Iranian-speaking regions.

Such a linguistic transition reflects deeper cultural realignments and adaptations, influenced by ongoing interactions with neighboring Arab, Turkic, and Kurdish communities. As languages stabilize and diversify, they simultaneously reinforce ethnic identities and facilitate clearer administrative, literary, and scholarly communications.

The crystallization of these modern linguistic structures during this era sets the stage for subsequent literary and intellectual flowering, profoundly influencing regional identity and cultural development for generations to come.

'Ali, one of three sons of Buyeh, of Daylamite origin, had been appointed governor of Karaj about 930 by the Daylamite leader Mardaviz ibn Ziyar.

'Ali had seized Isfahan and Fars, while …

…his brothers, Hasan and Ahmad, took Jibal, Khuzestan, and Kerman.

The weakened Baghdad-based Abbasid caliphate now holds no more than nominal suzerainty over its subjects; real power having devolved to the largely independent secular regional dynasties who govern in the caliph's name.

Although the 'Abbasids' foreign mercenary troops have continued to be regularly converted to Islam, the base of imperial unity through religion is gone, and some of the new army officers have quickly learned to control the caliphate through assassination of any caliph who will not accede to their demands.

The power of the army officers had already weakened through internal rivalries when the Buyid dynasty begins threatening the Abbasid capital.

Tuzun, the Turkish general who had deposed and blinded the previous caliph al-Muttaqi, marches with al-Mutktafi, the new caliph he has installed, to Wasit and defeats them.

The tribute due from Mosul being withheld, Tuzun also marches against the Hamdanid ruler Nasir al-Dawla; but, after friendly relations are reestablished, he returns.

Soon after, Tuzun dies, and is succeeded by Abu Ja'far, one of his generals.

Baghdad now falls into a fearful state of distress.

Supplies, stayed by the enemies all round, no longer reach the markets, and people are reduced to eat dogs, cats and garbage.

The mob is driven by starvation to plunder the shops of their remaining stores.

Multitudes flee the city for Basra or elsewhere, dying in great numbers from weakness.

Abu Ja'far, finding himself unable to control affairs, at last requests the aid of Nasir al-Dawla from Mosul; even offering, if he would come, to vacate in his favor the supreme command, but the Hamdanids are at the moment engaged on one hand with the Rus' in Azerbaijan, and on the other with the Ikhshidids in Syria.

Just at this time, the governor of Wasit surrenders to the chief of the Buyids, and joining him marches on Baghdad.

Abu Ja'far and the Caliph flee into hiding.

The founders of the Būyid confederation are ‘Alī ibn Būyah and his two younger brothers, al-Hassan and Aḥmad, who are the sons of Buya, a fisherman from Lahijan in Tabaristan.

Originally a soldier in the service of the Ziyārīds of Ṭabaristān, ‘Alī had been able to recruit an army to defeat a Turkish general from Baghdad named Yaqut in 934.

Over the past nine years, the three brothers have gained control of the remainder of the 'Abbāsid Caliphate.

The Caliph receive the secretary of Buyid chief to make terms of peace, which the Caliph accepts.

Thus invited, Ahmad enters Baghdad, and under the title of Amir al-Umara (Amir of Amirs) assumes the supreme command, demanding of al-Mustakfi that the Buyids be recognized as the sole rulers of the territory they control.

The Caliph makes abject submission to the Amir, whose name, in addition to al-Mustakfi's, is now by his command stamped upon the coinage, and recited in the public prayers; but it is all in vain.