Fourth Fitna: al-Amin against al-Ma'mun and the siege of Baghdad
Less than two years after Harun al-Rashid’s death his sons went to war over the succession: the caliph al-Amin in Baghdad removed his half-brother al-Ma'mun, governor of Khorasan, from the line of succession, and al-Ma'mun’s general Tahir ibn al-Husayn routed the caliph’s far larger army at Rayy in 811 and then besieged Baghdad for more than a year. The city fell in September 813 and al-Amin was put to death; al-Ma'mun entered his capital only in 819.
- Date
- January 811 – September 813month known · duration: ≈ 3 years
- Place
- Baghdadtoday: Baghdad, Iraq · Middle East and Egypt
- Route
- Merv → Rayy → Hamadan → Hulwan → Baghdad
- Participants
- Al-Amin, Al-Ma'mun, Abbasid Caliphate
- Threads
- Middle East and Egypt (6th–10th c.)
- Also known as
- Great Abbasid Civil War; Fourth Muslim Civil War; War between the brothers; Siege of Baghdad (812–813); Battle of Rayy (811); Война аль-Амина и аль-Мамуна; Осада Багдада (812–813)
The two brothers were born six months apart in 786–787. Al-Amin, son of the Abbasid princess Zubayda, was named first heir in 792, and al-Ma'mun, the elder but the son of a concubine from Badghis, second heir in 799. On the pilgrimage of 802 Harun fixed the arrangement at Mecca: al-Amin was to reign in Baghdad, while al-Ma'mun remained his heir and was to govern an enlarged and practically independent Khorasan — terms recorded at length by al-Tabari, though perhaps coloured later by al-Ma'mun’s apologists. Behind the brothers stood rival interests: the abna’, descendants of the Khorasani army settled in Baghdad, and the local elites of Khorasan. After Harun’s death in March 809 al-Amin recalled the army and treasury from the east; in November 810 he removed al-Ma'mun from the succession in favour of his own sons, and in January 811 he sent Ali ibn Isa ibn Mahan against Khorasan with an army that, by various estimates, numbered 40,000–50,000 men.
Al-Ma'mun’s only force — by various estimates 4,000 to 10,000 men under Tahir ibn al-Husayn — met Ali ibn Isa near Rayy in 811; Ali was killed and his army scattered. Tahir defeated a second army near Hamadan, reached Hulwan by the winter and in 812, reinforced by Harthama ibn A'yan, took Khuzistan, Basra, Kufa and al-Mada'in, while Egypt, the Hejaz and Mosul went over to al-Ma'mun. From August 812 Baghdad was under siege. Most of its people lived in unwalled suburbs, and the siege became more than a year of street fighting in which the poor of the city fought on for al-Amin, catapults on both sides — some mounted on boats on the Tigris — struck the civilian quarters, and famine set in; Hugh Kennedy called it ‘the nearest early Islamic history saw to an attempt at social revolution’. In September 813, after wealthy citizens cut the pontoon bridges over the Tigris, the besiegers broke in; al-Amin, trying to reach Harthama by boat, was captured and killed on Tahir’s orders.
The regicide shocked contemporaries: in the words of the historian Elton Daniel, for the first time an Abbasid ruler had been humiliated and put to death by rebellious subjects. Al-Ma'mun stayed in Merv, and Iraq fell into disorder — an Alid revolt at Kufa in 815, al-Ma'mun’s choice of the Alid Ali al-Rida as heir in 817 and the proclamation of his uncle Ibrahim ibn al-Mahdi as caliph in Baghdad — until he entered Baghdad in August 819 and abandoned the Alid succession. The war ruined the abna’ and the old Arab families that had served the dynasty; power passed to new men such as Tahir, whose descendants governed Khorasan for some fifty years, and to the Turkish slave soldiers of al-Ma'mun’s brother, the future al-Mu'tasim. Al-Mansur’s Round City was partly ruined in the siege and never recovered; after 813 its Golden Gate Palace was no longer used as the home of the caliphs.
Connections
Causes and preconditions
- Reign of Harun al-Rashidbetween 14 September and 17 September 786 – 24 March 809 · Middle East and EgyptHarun’s succession settlement of 802 divided the empire between his sons
Related events
- Founding of Baghdad: al-Mansur’s Round Citybetween 30 July and 2 August 762 – between 766 and 767 · Middle East and Egyptal-Mansur’s Round City was partly ruined in the siege and never recovered
- Georgios of Makuria’s embassy to the caliph and the revision of the baqt835 – between 836 and 837 · Africathe payments had lapsed while Egypt was torn by the turmoil that followed the war of al-Amin and al-Ma'mun
- Al-Mu'tasim founds Samarra, the new Abbasid capital836 · Middle East and Egyptthe civil war broke the old Baghdad army, and the Turkish corps of al-Ma'mun’s brother, the future al-Mu'tasim, took its place
- The House of Wisdom and the translation movement in Baghdadc. 800 – c. 900 · Middle East and Egyptthe victor, al-Ma'mun, became the great patron of the House of Wisdom
- The rise of the Samanids in Transoxiana819–900 · Central and Northern Asiain 819, after al-Ma’mun’s victory, his governor of Khurasan gave Samarkand, Ferghana, Shash and Herat to the grandsons of Saman Khuda, who had helped against the rebel Rafi ibn al-Layth
Same participants
- Harun al-Rashid’s elephant Abul-Abbas reaches Aachen20 July 802 · Western and Central Europevia Abbasid Caliphate
- Al-Khwarizmi writes the book of al-jabrc. 820 · Middle East and Egyptvia Al-Ma'mun
- Andalusian exiles found the Emirate of Cretebetween 824 and 828 · Balkans and Anatoliavia Abbasid Caliphate
Same place
- Reign of Vologases I51–78 · Middle East and Egypt
- Trajan’s Parthian campaign114–117 · Middle East and Egypt
- Roman–Parthian War of 161–166161–166 · Middle East and Egypt
- Reign of Vologases IV147–191 · Middle East and Egypt
- Mani begins his mission240 · Middle East and Egypt
- Reign of Shapur II309–379 · Middle East and Egypt
- Julian’s Persian expedition and the Peace of 3635 March 363 – July 363 · Middle East and Egypt
- Council of Seleucia-Ctesiphon410 · Middle East and Egypt
- Reign of Bahram V Gurbetween 420 and 421 – 438 · Middle East and Egypt
- Suppression of the Mazdakitesbetween 524 and 529 · Middle East and Egypt
- Reign of Khosrow I Anushirvan531–579 · Middle East and Egypt
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- Indian astronomy in Arabic: the Zij al-Sindhindbetween 771 and 773 · Middle East and Egypt
- Paper comes to Baghdadbetween 794 and 795 · Middle East and Egypt
- The mihna: the Abbasid inquisition over the createdness of the Qur’an833 – between 848 and 852 · Middle East and Egypt
- Siege of Baghdad29 January – 10 February 1258 · Middle East and Egypt
- Capture of Baghdad by Suleiman Ibetween November and December 1534 · Middle East and Egypt
Meanwhile in the world
Other regions, within a year of this event
Eastern Europe
- The Khazar rulers adopt Judaismbetween 740 and 861
- Saltovo-Mayaki culturec. 750 – between 900 and 950
- Volyntsevo culture: the Slavs of the Dnieper Left Bank in the Khazar agebetween 700 and 750 – between 813 and 833
Balkans and Anatolia
- Battle of Pliska: Krum destroys the army of Nikephoros I26 July 811
- Byzantine Iconoclasmbetween 726 and 730 – 11 March 843
Africa
- Ifriqiya under the Aghlabids800 – March 909
- Igbo-Ukwu: bronze casting in the West African forest800–899 – 1100–1199
South Asia
- Dharmapala founds the monasteries of Somapura and Vikramashilabetween 770 and 821
- The tripartite struggle for Kannaujbetween 783 and 790 – between 915 and 918
Southeast Asia and Oceania
- Building of Borobudurc. 780 – c. 833
North America
- Pueblo I: villages of surface rooms on the Colorado Plateauc. 750 – c. 900
- Plum Bayou Mounds: a planned ceremonial centre in the Arkansas valleyc. 650 – c. 1050
- The Late Woodland period in eastern North Americac. 500 – c. 1000
Latin America
- Wari culture and the Middle Horizon state in the Central Andesc. 600 – c. 1000
- Tiwanaku culture at its height by Lake Titicacac. 600 – c. 1000
- Cacaxtla and Xochicalco: the Epiclassic cities of central Mexicoc. 650 – c. 900
- Classic Maya collapse in the southern lowlandsc. 800 – c. 950
- Rise of Chichén Itzá in northern Yucatánc. 800 – between 900 and 1000
The same period
Sources
- Wikipedia (English): Fourth Fitna
- Wikipedia (English): Siege of Baghdad (812–813)
- Wikipedia (English): Al-Amin
- Wikipedia (English): History of Baghdad
- Wikipedia (Russian): Четвёртая фитна
- Wikipedia (Russian): Мухаммад аль-Амин
- The History of al-Ṭabarī. Vol. XXXI: The War between Brothers / trans. M. Fishbein. — Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992.
- Kennedy H. The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates: The Islamic Near East from the Sixth to the Eleventh Century. — 2nd ed. — Harlow: Pearson Longman, 2004.
- Wikidata: Q3778593