Middle East (909 BCE – 819 CE) Early Iron and Antiquity — Urartu, Achaemenids, Parthians, Sasanian Frontiers

Geographic and Environmental Context

The Middle East includes Iraq, Iran, Syria, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, eastern Jordan, most of Turkey’s central/eastern uplands (including Cilicia), eastern Saudi Arabia, northern Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, the UAE, northeastern Cyprus, and all but the southernmost Lebanon.

• Anchors: the Tigris–Euphrates alluvium and marshes; the Zagros (Luristan, Fars), Alborz, Caucasus (Armenia–Georgia–Azerbaijan); northern Syrian plains and Cilicia; Khuzestan and Fars lowlands; the Arabian/Persian Gulf littoral (al-Ahsa–Qatar–Bahrain–UAE–northern Oman); northeastern Cyprus and the Lebanon coastal elbow (north).

Climate & Environment

• Continental variability; oases survived by canal upkeep; Gulf fisheries stable; Caucasus snows fed headwaters.

Societies & Political Developments

• Urartu (9th–6th c. BCE) fortified Armenian highlands;

• Achaemenid Persia (6th–4th c. BCE) organized satrapies across Iran, Armenia, Syria uplands, Cilicia; Royal Road linked Susa–Sardis through our zone.

• Hellenistic Seleucids, then Parthians (3rd c. BCE–3rd c. CE) and Sasanians (3rd–7th c. CE) ruled Iran–Mesopotamia; oases prospered under qanat/karez and canal regimes.

• Transcaucasus (Armenia, Iberia/Georgia, Albania/Azerbaijan) oscillated between Iranian and Roman/Byzantine influence; northeastern Cyprus joined Hellenistic–Roman networks.

• Arabian Gulf littoral hosted pearling/fishing and entrepôts (al-Ahsa–Qatif–Bahrain).

Economy & Trade

• Irrigated cereals, dates, cotton, wine; transhumant pastoralism; Gulf pearls and dates.

• Long-haul Silk Road and Royal Road flows; qanat irrigation expanded in Iran.

Technology & Material Culture

• Iron plowshares, tools, and weapons; fortifications; qanat engineering; road stations (caravanserais earlier variants).

• Arts: Urartian bronzes; Achaemenid stonework; Sasanian silver; Armenian and Georgian ecclesiastical arts (late).

Belief & Symbolism

• Zoroastrianism, Armenian/Georgian Christianity, local cults; Jewish and early Christian communities in oases/ports; syncretism in frontier cities.

Adaptation & Resilience

• Canal/qanat redundancy, pasture–oasis integration, distributed entrepôts (northeastern Cyprus, Gulf) hedged war and drought.

Transition

By 819 CE, the Middle East was a layered highland–oasis–Gulf system under Sasanian–Byzantine frontiers giving way to Islamic polities.

Caliph Al Mamun, son of and successor to Harun ar Rashid, is favorably disposed toward the descendants of Ali and their followers during the late eighth century.

He invites Ali al-Ridha, known as Imam Reza, the Eighth Imam (765-816), to come from Medina to his court at Marv (Mary in present-day Turkmenistan).

While Reza is residing at Marv, Al Mamun designates him as his successor in an apparent effort to avoid conflict among Muslims.

Reza's sister, Fatima, journeys from Medina to be with her brother but takes ill and dies at Qom, in present-day Iran.

A major shrine develops around her tomb, and over the centuries Qom will become a major Shia pilgrimage site and theological center.

Al Mamun takes Reza on his military campaign to retake Baghdad from political rivals.

On this trip, Reza dies unexpectedly in Khorasan.

Reza is the only Imam to reside in, or die in, what is now Iran.

A major shrine, and eventually the city of Mashhad, grows up around his tomb, which is the major pilgrimage center in Iran.

Several theological schools are located in Mashhad, associated with the shrine of the Eighth Imam.

Reza's sudden death is a shock to his followers, many of whom believe that Al Mamun, out of jealousy for Reza's increasing popularity, had had the Imam poisoned.

Al Mamun's suspected treachery against Imam Reza and his family tend to reinforce a feeling already prevalent among his followers that Sunni rulers are untrustworthy.

Baghdad is second in size only to Constantinople by the reign of Mansur's grandson, Harun ar Rashid (786-806).

Baghdad is able to feed its enormous population and to export large quantities of grain because the political administration had realized the importance of controlling the flows of the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers.

The Abbasids reconstruct the city's canals, dikes, and reservoirs, and drain the swamps around Baghdad, freeing the city of malaria.

Harun ar Rashid, the caliph of the Arabian Nights, actively supports intellectual pursuits, but the great flowering of Arabic culture that is credited to the Abbasids reaches its apogee during the reign of his son, Al Mamun (813-33).

After the death of Harun ar Rashid, his sons, Amin and Al Mamun, quarrel over the succession to the caliphate.

Their dispute soon erupt into civil war.

Amin is backed by the Iraqis, while Al Mamun has the support of the Iranians.

Al Mamun also has the support of the garrison at Khorasan and thus is able to take Baghdad in 813.

The Abbasids, although Sunni Muslims, hope that by astute and stern rule they will be able to contain Shia resentment at yet another Sunni dynasty.

The Iranians, many of whom are Shias, hope that Al Mamun will make his capital in their own country, possibly at Merv.

Al Mamun, however, eventually realizes that the Iraqi Shias will never countenance the loss of prestige and economic power if they no longer have the capital.

He decides to center his rule in Baghdad.

The Iranians, disappointed, began to break away from Abbasid control.

The second Abbasid caliph, Al Mansur (754-75), decides to build a new capital, surrounded by round walls, near the site of the Sassanid village of Baghdad.

Within fifty years the population outgrows the city walls as people throng to the capital to become part of the Abbasids' enormous bureaucracy or to engage in trade.

Baghdad becomes a vast emporium of trade linking Asia and the Mediterranean.

Baghdad during the reign of its first seven caliphs becomes a center of power where Arab and Iranian cultures mingle to produce a blaze of philosophical, scientific, and literary glory.

This era is remembered throughout the Arab world, and by Iraqis in particular, as the pinnacle of the Islamic past.

North Africa after the Arab conquest is governed by a succession of amirs (commanders) who are subordinate to the caliph in Damascus and, after 750, in Baghdad.

In 800 the Abbasid caliph Harun ar Rashid appoints as amir Ibrahim ibn Aghlab, who establishes a hereditary dynasty at Kairouan that rules Ifriqiya and Tripolitania as an autonomous state that is subject to the caliph's spiritual jurisdiction and that nominally recognizes him as its political suzerain.

The Aghlabid amirs repair the neglected Roman irrigation system, rebuilding the region's prosperity and restoring the vitality of its cities and towns with the agricultural surplus that was produced.

At the top of the political and social hierarchy are the bureaucracy, the military caste, and an Arab urban elite that includes merchants, scholars, and government officials who had come to Kairouan, Tunis, and Tripoli from many parts of the Islamic world.

Members of the large Jewish communities that also reside in those cities hold office under the amirs and engage in commerce and the crafts.

Converts to Islam often retain the positions of authority held traditionally by their families or class in Roman Africa, but a dwindling, Latin-speaking, Christian community lingers on in the towns until the eleventh century.

The Aghlabids contest control of the central Mediterranean with the Roman Empire and, after conquering Sicily, play an active role in the internal politics of Italy.

Al-Mansur, by his political and military measures, has firmly established the 'Abbasid caliphate.

Furthermore, he had arranged the succession in favor of his son, al-Mahdi, who at the former’s death in October 775 becomes the third 'Abbasid caliph.

Al-Mahdi has two sons, al-Hadi and Harun.

Harun, four years younger than al-Hadi, has as tutor Yahya ibn Khalid (the Barmakid), a loyal supporter of his mother al-Khayzuran, a formerly enslaved girl from Yemen and a woman of strong personality who greatly influences affairs of state in the reigns of her husband.

Al-Mahdi actively persecutes the Manichaeans, whom he defines as heretics to deny them status as a protected community.

He also tries to identify Manichaeans who have joined the Muslim community without abandoning their previous ideas and practices.

Caliph al-Mahdi, in retaliation for the Romans' post-battle slaughter of his army in 778, has assembled a large force of Mesopotamians, Syrians, and Khorasanians, which he leads northwards in late 780 Aafter the death of Emperor Leo IV, who had campaigned against the Arabs in Anatolia and Syria since 777.

Empress Irene, acting regent for her young son Constantine VI, orders the imperial forces to annihilate the invading Muslims.

The caliph's teenaged son, Harun al-Rashid, has led a number of charges against the Romans, his several victories enabling the Muslims' westward advance.

Reaching the Bosporus in 783, the Muslims defeat the Romans at Nicomedia (Izmit of Kocaeli).

Trapped on his return march, he is rescued by the defection of the imperial general Tatzates, with many of his men.

His defection, however, is kept secret for a while, allowing Harun to seize the imperial envoys, Staurakios among them, who had come to negotiate a truce.

The Abbasid commander was thus able to dictate harsh terms to Empress-regent Irene of Athens, who promises tribute.

Harun appoints Tatzates as governor of Armenia.