Court Culture and Intellectual Life in the Abbasid Caliphate; Abbasid Decline and Persian Renaissance; Shahnameh

Where does the Capital move to? And after?

Kufa in Iraq, and then Baghdad

What is never again capital to a major Muslim state?

Syria

Tastes influenced by …

Byzantine and Sassanid worlds

Where is Baghdad located

On parkland of the late Sasanian state

When is the classical period, after which the Caliph’s power diminishes?

750-9th CE

What splits away in the 780s

Morocco

What family, from modern Afghanistan, grows to heights? Administering what?

Barmakid family. Land Tax.

What was a new Abbasid invention?

Position of Vizier, chief minister to the Caliph

Who prompt more translations?

al Mansur and al Mahmun

What is the literary academy in Baghdad called?

House of Wisdom

What ancient Greek texts were translated into Arabic?

Everything except history, poetry, and drama

Name the regional law school which is now mainly Turkey-based?

Hanafi (Abu Hanifa d.767)

Name the regional law school associated with Jordan Syria, and Egypt?

Shafi’i (attributed to al-Shafi’i d.820)

Name the regional law school from North Africa

Maliki (attributed to Malik b. Anas d.795)

Name the regional law school whose modern form is Wahhabism

Hanbali (attributed to Ahmed b. Hanbal d.8755)

Who implement the Mihna, and when?

Caliph al-Ma’mun in 833

Who led the traditionist party, who opposed the mihna?

Baghdad preacher Ahmad b. Hanbal

By the later ___ century, Caliph loses what power?

9th century. Secular

What dynasty does al-Ma’mun’s general Tahir found

Tahirids (821-73) in Khurasan

Ya’qub the Coppersmith founds what dynasty?

Saffarids (861-1003) in Sistan and briefly Khurasan.

What is founded in Transoxiana and post-873 in Khurasan?

The Samanids (819-99)

What is founded in Central Iran, and then Caspian until 1043?

Ziyarids (927-35)

What dynasty was founded in Iran and Iraq by Ali b. Buya?

Buyids or Buwayhids (935-1055)

What was founded by Ahmad b. Tulun in Egypt?

Tulunids (868-905)

Name another dynasty founded in Egypt?

Ikhshidids (935-969)

Dates for the Fatimid Caliphate

909-1171. After 969 moves to Egypt, then Syria, then Yemen.

What was the 10th century also called?

‘the Shiite Century’

What prompts the murder of al-Muttawakii? What then begins?

Not enough money to pay Turkish troops. Anarchy at Samarra.

What building in Cairo reflected Iraq’s influence?

Mosque of Ibn Tulun echoed the buildings of Samarra

What aids the switch of the lingua-franca to New Persian?

Eastward migratios of settlers from Khurasan

Regional difficulties of the Iranian Caspian

Wet and mountainous

In what is Iran split between two brothers? What does the youngest achieve?

Buyid Emirates in 970. In 945 the youngest conquers Iraq and makes Baghdad his capital

Buyids did what, despite being Shi’i?

Maintained the Caliph

What remains, evidenced from where?

Sasanian titles, evidenced by Achaemenid Capital Perspeolis, where Arabic inscriptions were left by Buyid ‘Adud al-Dawla’ with a zoroastrian priest

When was Firdowsi’s epic completed

1010 AD, during the reign of Muhammad I

How many rhyming couplets of SH

50,000

How large was Shah Tahmasp’s SH

Approx 48 ×32 cm

How many folios of text, how many illustrations for Tahmasp’s SH

759 folios of text, 258 illustrations

How many illustrations in the first half of the SH? How many for the second half?

201.57

Subject matter includes:

81 battle scenes

48 enthronement

30 negotiation/embassy/war

20 death

19 monster

How many romances or wonders?

None

When does production of the SH flourish again?

Mongol Period

Of the 50 folios how many are part of the Sekander cycle?

8 or 9

What echoed Chinese landscape paintings

Great Mongol Shahnameh

From when is the oldest surviving manuscript of the SH, and what is remarkable?

Dated to 1217 CE, and had no paintings or illustrations

What helps to illustrate the popularity of these texts?

The 12th century Seljuk beaker