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In some ways, the fall or disintegration of empires1 is a more problematic subject for historians than their rise. Why is it that the ruling élite, be it ideological or ethnic in basis, seems to lose the capacity or will to assert a dominance that had existed for generations and with which its fathers and grandfathers had grown up? In the case of the Muslim empire of the early caliphate, the question is given added poignancy by current political anxieties. The loss of "Arab unity" is the subject of near-universal lament among Arab thinkers about politics. If only, they cry, we could return to this prelapsarian world where all Arabs were brothers and where Arab rule extended throughout the Middle East, the Arab and Muslim people would regain their status as a world power, to rival and defy West and East alike. Investigation of the reasons for the breakup of the caliphate brings us face-to-face with one of the major political challenges of our time.
Let us begin by considering the trajectory of the Muslim empire. The story begins with the great Muslim conquests of the seventh century. In the years after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 11/632, Muslim armies spread out and conquered the Middle East, with the exception of most of modern Turkey, with breathtaking speed. By 20/641 Iraq, Syria and Egypt were under Muslim rule, by 30/651 most of Iran had acknowledged Arab authority. North Africa and Spain (from 92/711), Transoxania and Sind followed until the Arab empire reached its maximum extent by about 101/720
After 40/661 the prophet's capital at Medina was abandoned as a centre of power, and Mu'awiya, first of the Umayyad caliphs, moved the capital to Damascus in Syria. The Umayyads ruled as caliphs from their Syrian power base until they were overthrown by the 'Abbasids in 132/750. The 'Abbasids chose Iraq as their power base and in 145/767 founded an entirely new capital at Baghdad, which rapidly became the largest city and cultural capital of the Muslim world. But the same period saw the first territorial losses when, from 138/756, Spain became independent, though still of course in Muslim control, under the rule of a branch of the Umayyad family. After the death of the...