Iconoclasm revived
Since
setting aside his ledger and taking up his sword the emperor Nicephorus I had
not met with much success. Having been humiliated by Harun al Rashid,
Nicephorus could heave a sigh of relief at the caliph’s demise. When his sons
soon fell to fighting each other Byzantium could enjoy a respite from trouble
on the eastern frontier. In the west however there was trouble aplenty. The
rise of the Bulgars under their charismatic and warlike leader Krum would prove
to be the greatest challenge for the house of Nicephorus and would ultimately
bring about its downfall.
Krum had
succeeded in uniting his people as never before, bending petty warlords to his
will in order to assemble an unprecedented level of military might. Nicephorus
had faced the challenge head on, but his pre-emptive strike against the Bulgars
in 809 had ended in the slaughter of his army and the sack of the imperial city
of Serdica. Dusting himself down, Nicephorus soon struck back, leading his
armies in person against the Bulgar capital Pliska and razing it to the ground.
Two years later in 811 he returned with a greater army still and repeated the
exercise, pursuing Krum’s forces into the mountains.
Satisfied
with the lesson, Nicephorus turned for home, not imagining that his enemies
were far from vanquished. Krum however was a wily adversary and he had laid his
trap well. As the emperor’s forces encamped in the pass of Verbitza, Krum’s
forces moved into place. Occupying the heights all about the imperial camp and
constructing barricades to bar the escape of any fleeing troops, the Bulgars
prepared to take their revenge. As dawn broke on the fateful morning the
Bulgars fell upon the camp of Nicephorus, howling out of the hills from all
directions. The result was slaughter as the emperor found his army unprepared and
encircled by the Bulgars, with his soldiers fighting desperately for survival. Most
of the Byzantines were slaughtered. Nicephorus himself was killed in the
fighting and Krum later had the emperor’s skull fashioned into a drinking cup
in celebration of his victory.
Some
bloody and shaken survivors fought clear, carrying with them the emperor’s
mortally wounded son and successor Stauracius. Incapacitated and in constant
agony, Stauracius lingered on for six months, paralysed by his wounds until he mercifully
succumbed.
Such an
ignominious defeat, leading to the deaths of two Emperors of the Romans could
not be allowed to go un-avenged, but the rule of the empire had now passed to
Nicephorus’ son-in-law Michael, incidentally the first Byzantine ruler to bear
a Jewish Christian name. Michael however was no soldier. Plagued by doubts and
uncertainties, he was man deeply uncomfortable with the greatness that had been
thrust upon him and his soldiers knew it. Nevertheless Michael determined to do
his duty but having failed to inspire his mutinous troops to follow him in a
campaign against Krum, he returned to Constantinople. Krum, seeing that the
fight had altogether gone out of his enemy, sent envoys to the emperor to
discuss peace terms but Michael could not bring himself to agree to peace with
the Bulgar Khan. Un-phased, Krum returned to the offensive and promptly laid
siege to and then captured the city of Messembria on the Black Sea.
It seemed
that the military fortunes of the empire were at an all-time low. The
depredations of Harun al Rashid had been ended only by the caliph’s
death and the ensuing civil war and now a barbarian chieftain was rampaging across imperial
territory with impunity, swigging his wine from a dead emperor’s skull. It was
to their sins that the people of the empire must look for the reason for their
misfortune and many concluded that it was the resumption of the veneration of
icons that had so displeased the almighty and caused him to turn his face from
the Romans. During a service in the Church of the Holy Apostles a mob of
veterans surrounded the tomb of Constantine V; loudly imploring the iconoclast
emperor to rise from his tomb and lead them in battle against the Bulgars.
The
message was clear and in the absence of the risen Constantine, the task fell to
Michael. Summoning his courage, the
emperor duly led his armies out once more to meet the Bulgars on the plain of
Versinicia in the summer of 813. Krum, it seemed however, was not his most
dangerous enemy. One man who could read the writing on the wall very clearly
and knew that the time was ripe for the pendulum of the iconoclastic struggle
to swing back in favour of the destruction of the icons, sweeping a new man to
power with it, was Leo, who commanded the emperor’s right wing. As battle was
joined the Byzantine left wing pressed forward with gusto and soon they were
driving the Bulgars opposite them back. On the right wing however, Leo held
back from engaging the enemy and then, at some pre-arranged signal, his men
turned tail and fled the field. The Byzantine right had consisted entirely of iconoclastically
minded Anatolian troops, who were loyal above all to their commander Leo who was
one of their own. In the centre, Michael was aghast at the desertion of his
troops, although their commander Leo was conspicuously the last to leave the field,
remaining long enough to evade the taint of cowardice. With the day lost, the emperor
was left with little choice but to follow them. This left the Byzantine left
wing isolated and swiftly surrounded and slaughtered by the jubilant Bulgars
who then halted in their pursuit of the Byzantine army and contented themselves
with plunder.
In the
aftermath the hapless Michael could take no more. Convinced by events that he
had lost the backing of both God and his people, the emperor was soon persuaded
to abdicate and retired gratefully to a monastery. It will doubtless come as no
surprise, Dear Reader, that the throne was now seized by none other than Leo,
the commander of the treacherous right wing.
Following
up his victory at Versinicia, Krum advanced to the walls of Constantinople but
one look at the massive fortifications persuaded him as it had many before him
that any assault upon them was doomed to failure. He therefore sought to parley
with Leo but should have been well aware that the new ruler of Byzantium, with
whom he had probably colluded before the battle, was as crooked as a barrel of
snakes. No sooner had negotiations been opened between the two rulers then from
the nearby undergrowth an arrow flew; slaying Krum’s standard bearer. The Khan,
furious at this betrayal, dug in his heels and fled the trap. Having escaped the
assassination attempt, Krum returned to his forces and embarked on a campaign
of devastation, burning every last hovel right up to the walls of
Constantinople but with no hope of assaulting the city itself he was forced to
return impotently home and within a year he was dead.
All
Constantinople breathed a sigh of relief at the death of this fearsome enemy. What
further proof could be needed of the support of the Almighty for the regime of
Leo than this change in imperial fortunes? Iconoclasm was firmly back on the
agenda and Leo, finding that the Patriarch refused to cooperate with his plans,
had him arrested. Leo then summoned a synod dominated by iconoclastically
minded bishops who deposed the Patriarch and condemned the findings of Irene’s Second
Council of Nicaea. Those churchmen who sought to oppose the motion were beaten
up and spat upon. The emperor then let it be known that
any holy image could be destroyed with impunity, sparking another orgy of
destruction as more precious artwork was reduced to firewood. Irene was no
doubt turning in her grave.
Brothers up in arms
If Al
Amin the son of the Commander of the Faithful should attempt to remove Al Mamun
the son of the Commander of the Faithful from his right of succession after himself
or if he should attempt to remove Al Mamun from the governorship of Khurasan,
or if he should attempt to dismiss any of his military commanders whom the
commander of the faithful attached to al Mamun’s side, or if he should attempt
to deprive him of either a small or a great part of what the Commander of the
Faithful has granted to him, in any manner whatsoever or by any stratagem
whatsoever, be it insignificant or momentous, then the Caliphate shall pass
directly to Al Mamun and he shall come before Al Amin and be the one invested
with power after the Commander of the Faithful.
Harun al Rashid could not have
made it clearer. His dispensations regarding the succession were inviolable.
If his heir Al Amin interfered in any
way with the rights of his brother either in regard to the succession or to the
governance and control of the eastern provinces then his right to the caliphate
was forfeit. All military commanders and indeed all Muslims in general would be
released from their oaths of loyalty to Al Amin and would be expected to
support the claim of Al Mamun. His sons had both written out declarations,
swearing to uphold their obligations to each other and to the their younger
brother Qasim, who was third in line. These were displayed on the walls of the
Kabaa in Mecca. The caliph had written to every governor in the caliphate with
a proclamation to be read out to all the people so that they understood what
had been agreed and solemnly sworn to in Islam’s most sacred space. The oaths
were awesome, binding and permanent. Those who broke even the smallest part of
them would suffer the righteous anger of the Almighty himself. They were also
unfortunately, as it turned out, not worth the paper they were written on.
Incidentally, the oaths probably were written out on paper as the knowledge of
paper production had by this time made its way from China to the Arab world,
brought westwards from Khurasan with the Abbasids.
Harun, who died in March 809, was
not long in his grave before the two brothers began moving inexorably towards
conflict. Responsibility for the war must be laid at the door of Al Amin, the
ruling caliph, who soon demanded the handing over of territory and revenues
from his brother in direct contravention of the terms of the succession. As was
his right, Mamun refused his brother’s demands. From their respective courts in
Baghdad and Merv the increasingly strained diplomatic correspondence flew back
and forth by the efficient state postal
service known as the Barid, whose riders could carry messages along the
Khurasan highway at a rate of 400km a day. If there is a true villain of the
piece it is Fadl ibn Rabi, likely architect of the downfall of the Barmakids,
who had found himself in Baghdad as Amin’s chamberlain. With a eye to his own
and his family’s fortunes, Fadl had no stake in a future with Mamun as the next
caliph. From the first he worked to remove Mamun from the succession and
encouraged Amin to this end. Having successfully provoked disagreement between
the brothers, Fadl continued to raise the stakes until war was inevitable.
Mamun meanwhile, taking advice
from the hawks in his own court, decided to test the extent of his brother’s
hostility. He wrote to request that his sons and their mother be sent to him in
Khurasan along with a large sum of his own money. Both were refused and the
worst fears of Mamun and his supporters were confirmed further when news
arrived that his brother had excluded his name from the Friday prayers in
Baghdad. Towards the end of 810 Amin took the final fateful steps. The
proclamations were torn down from the sacred walls of the Kabaa and brought to
Baghdad, where the caliph publically ripped them up, before declaring that his
own son Musa would succeed him as caliph.
Soon moves were afoot to depose
Mamun from the governorship of Khurasan by force and a large army of some fifty
thousand men was assembled. The commander of this force was none other than the
formally disgraced governor of Khurasan, Ali ibn Isa, whose misconduct had
prompted Harun al Rashid to take his last fatal journey east. Ali was a key
member of Amin’s inner circle but his appointment was a double edged sword. In
Khurasan he was a hated figure from his years of corrupt administration and the
prospect of his return at the head of a conquering army encouraged the people
of the region to throw their support firmly behind Mamun against his brother
the caliph.
On paper, of which as mentioned
there were plentiful supplies, Mamun did not have much of a chance. A small
force of just five thousand men was all that could be mustered for the defence
of the east and was dispatched to the city of Rayy which stood in the path of
Ali’s advance. Rayy, situated close to modern Tehran, presented a formidable
bastion guarding the only route to Khurasan between the Elburz mountains and
the Iranian desert. In command of the defenders was one Tahir ibn Husayn, a
young aristocrat from the Afghan city of Herat. Mistrusting the citizens of
Rayy to remain loyal if he garrisoned the city and allowed himself to be
besieged, Tahir instead elected to face Ali in the field. If the numbers given
for the respective forces are correct then Tahir faced odds of ten to one. On a
sandy plain a day’s march from Rayy, which offered no advantages of terrain to
the defending force, the two armies met. Tahir must have either had a yearning to
enter paradise or supreme confidence in the quality of his small force but if
it was the latter then his faith was not misplaced. An initial cavalry assault
by Ali’s army was seen off by the defenders before they made an attempt to
negotiate by citing the late Harun al Rashid’s now defunct proclamations. Ali’s
response was to put a price on the negotiator’s head. Battle was rejoined and
in the furious fight that ensued, the hated Ali was a marked man. He was cut
down and beheaded and with the death of their commander his army’s morale and
discipline collapsed despite their superior numbers and they were routed.
Most commanders would have
remained on the defensive following such a fortunate victory but once he had
dispatched the news of his victory to Merv, Tahir immediately once again showed
his exceptional boldness and initiative by marching westwards along the Khurasan
highway with his small force. The army of Ali had broken up in disarray and
offered no further resistance and a new force had been hastily assembled and sent
out from Baghdad when news of the defeat had arrived. Tahir was able to defeat
this force outside Hamadan and marched on to seize the town of Hulwan, which
lay on the far side of the Paytak pass through the Zagros mountains. Having
cleared the mountains, Tahir was now just a hundred miles from Baghdad and now
he waited. The odds were still stacked against him but following the two shock
defeats, things were falling apart for Amin. Having lost both the moral high-ground
and the strategic initiative the caliph’s stock was falling and only large
payments and promises of rewards in Khurasan when the war was won served to
keep the army of Baghdad (Abna) and the tribal chiefs of Iraq onside. Tahir was
showing himself to be a strategist of genius, dispatching agents to sow
dissension amongst his enemies and circulating derogatory rumours of a
homosexual relationship between Amin and Fadl on the streets of Baghdad. A new
force of some forty thousand made up of the soldiers of the Abna and Arab
tribesmen was dispatched towards Hulwan but such were the divisions and
jealousies between the two groups, encouraged by Tahir’s agents, that they fell to fighting each other before
they were able to bring Tahir to battle.
Just as
Caesar had crossed the Rubicon and swept down upon a panic stricken Rome with only
a single legion and plenty of audacity, so Tahir now capitalised on the chaos
and marched at the head of his tiny army into Iraq. His position in Hulwan was
taken over by Harthama; Harun al Rashid’s most trusted general who had pledged
his loyalty to Mamun. Harthama had arrived from Khurasan with reinforcements,
releasing Tahir to go back on the offensive. Avoiding Baghdad for the time
being, Tahir marched into the south and met with minimal resistance. Basra
surrendered without a fight. In the holy cities of Mecca and Medina where there
had been shock and dismay at Amin’s disregard for the sacred oaths that had
been sworn, the people declared their allegiance to Mamun, as the wronged
party, keeping to the letter of Harun al Rashid’s instructions.
In the
summer of 812 Tahir and Harthama laid siege to Baghdad, where Amin remained
holed up, now deserted by the majority of his troops and dependent upon the
ordinary citizens for the defence of his capital. Despite having only
rudimentary weapons and makeshift armour, the civilian militia raised from the
poorest inhabitants, known as the ‘naked ones’ due to their lack of proper
military equipment, put up a fierce resistance and the siege dragged on for a
whole year whilst conditions in the city became increasingly worse. Vicious
fighting ensued as the war for control of the city was fought street by street.
Siege artillery was brought up and whole districts of the city of peace were
battered into rubble. Law and order broke down as supplies ran low in the city
and criminal gangs roamed the shattered streets. Many innocents were caught in
the cross fire of arrows, stones and flaming missiles that rained down upon the
stubborn defenders. The middle classes meanwhile tried to keep their heads down
and protect their property as best they could.
Finally
the attackers fought their way to the Eternity Palace where Amin was hiding,
deserted by all but a few loyal supporters. Even Fadl ibn Rabi had abandoned
his caliph and gone into hiding. As the palace crumbled and burned from the
bombardment of Tahir’s siege artillery, Amin fled first to the old round city
and then took to the river in a desperate attempt to avoid capture or at the
very least surrender to Harthama, who he believed would spare his life. His
escape failed when the boat sank in the Tigris and the bedraggled caliph was
taken prisoner by Tahir’s men as he made his way to the bank. Locked in a store
room in a nearby house, Amin was attacked by a mob of soldiers on Tahir’s
orders later that same night. Wrestled to the floor, his throat was cut and his
head was then struck off and taken to Tahir. His body was unceremoniously
dumped. The caliphate belonged to Mamun, but its capital was in ruins and
untold misery had been brought upon its people.
For the
next six years, Mamun attempted to run the caliphate from his base in Merv. In 816,
in what may have been a cynical gesture to garner a new base of support in Iraq
or a genuine attempt to heal the breach in the Muslim community, Mamun declared
that his successor as caliph would be not his younger brother Qasim nor any
member of his family but the Alid imam Ali al-Ridha. Directly descended from
the Prophet in the eighth generation, Ali’s pedigree was unquestionable. He was
also the focus of pro-Alid rebellion. A revolt against Abbasid rule led by
al-Ridha’s brother had broken out in Kufa, that perennial nest of
troublemakers, in the previous year and been put down only with difficulty by
the ever-loyal Harthama. Appeasement of the Alids made political sense
therefore and Ali had joined the caliph in Merv and had even publically chastised his brother for
the blood that had been shed on his account. In the erstwhile corridors of
power in Baghdad however, there was deep consternation at the thought of the
Abbasid dynasty being replaced by an Alid one and all of the privileges of the
incumbent ruling elite being stripped away. Mamun’s absentee rule had caused
disquiet but this latest move provoked outright rebellion and Ibrahim, the
hedonistic poet brother of Harun al Rashid was thrust somewhat unwillingly into
power in Baghdad as a rival caliph.
Enough
was enough and Mamun now moved decisively and ruthlessly to regain control. It
was time to move to Baghdad with his entire entourage. In his policies he had
been guided from the beginning by his vizier Fadl ibn Sahl. Ibn Sahl
accompanied the caliph as he finally made his way westwards to Baghdad but
along the way he was murdered in his bath. When he reached Tus, Mamun paused to
visit the grave of his father Harun al Rashid. Whilst here, perhaps with
thoughts turning towards matters of succession, he also rid himself of Ali al
Ridha, abandoning his policy of appeasement of the Alids. Almost certainly
poisoned on Mamun’s orders, Ali was buried in the same garden beside Harun al
Rashid Today a magnificent shrine
complex marks the burial place of this Shia martyr, whilst the grave of the
famous caliph is entirely forgotten.
Mamun
finally reached Baghdad in 819 and was rapturously received by the populace. Tahir
rode at his side and would be richly rewarded with a palace in Baghdad and the
governorship of Khurasan which he and his descendants would rule over as a
virtual fiefdom for the next half century. It was no less than this brilliant
general deserved. His son was raised to high command and given charge of
bringing Syria and Egypt, which had descended into rebellious chaos, back into
the fold.
In ditching his pro-Alid policy, coming west
and taking his proper place in his capital the caliph was quickly able to
silence the dissenters. He had adopted green as his official colour in
accordance with his new Alid alliance but dropped this within days of his
return to the capital in the face of widespread disapproval and resumed the
traditional Abbasid black. Reconciliation was the order of the day and even
Fadl ibn Rabi, the principle architect of the civil war, was forgiven and
reinstated. Zubayda, mother of the murdered Amin, was reconciled with the
caliph and was treated with honour for her remaining years. Fearing the worst,
Mamun’s uncle Ibrahim had gone into hiding when his supporters had cast him
aside and pledged their loyalty to the approaching Mamun. He was arrested in
Baghdad whilst trying to escape disguised as a woman and brought before Mamun.
In a scene remembered in the Arabian nights, the poet did his best to excuse
himself in florid verse and Mamun spared him, accepting that Ibrahim had in truth
had no desire to usurp him, although he was kept under house arrest.
With all
set to rights, Mamun set about the process of rebuilding his city and he would
see it become the cultural and intellectual powerhouse of the age. In the
remainder of his reign Baghdad would reach its apogee. In a grand gesture
symbolising the return of the good times Mamun married Buran, the niece of his
murdered vizier Fadl ibn Sahl, in the most expensive wedding perhaps of all
time. The celebrations were truly magnificent and the occasion is said to have
cost 50 million dirhams with members of the ruling family spending millions
more on additional ostentation. Zubayda, taking centre stage as the grand
dowager of the dynasty, spent 35 million and poured a thousand pearls over the
bride by way of expensive confetti. The wedding favours were balls of musk,
each of which contained a slip of paper with the details of a magnificent gift
written thereon, including estates and palaces. If Carlsberg did weddings, they
would be just like this one. It was a particularly good day for Mamun’s uncle
Ibrahim who won his freedom at the bride’s request and was restored to a place
of honour. For the ruling elite happy days were here again, but for how long
would they last?
Of Prophecy and Treachery
It is an
oft repeated lesson of history that those who usurp the royal power often show
the way to those who would usurp them in turn. With the overthrow of a dynasty
somehow a spell is broken and the crime of regicide loses its awesome gravity.
So it was with Leo.
The
Byzantine chroniclers would have us believe that the events to come were all
mapped out long before. Christian though they may have been, the Byzantine
writers still liked to look to the touchstone of the pagan past for
inspiration. The pages of Plutarch and Livy are filled with purported
prophecies foretelling the rise and fall of great men, all of them doubtless
safely composed with the benefit of hindsight. In the Byzantine sources, who
sought to emulate the style of these ancient writers, in the place of the
Pythia or Sibyl we find the holy man. The utterings of these ascetic hermits,
we are given to believe, often foretold events to come. It is a contrivance
easily enough reconciled with Christianity, for after all, were there not
prophets in the Old Testament?
A story
is told by the anonymous continuator of the chronicle of Theophanes the
Confessor of how, many years earlier, back in the reign of Nicephorus, three
men accompanied the would be rebel Bardanes Turkos to seek the advice of just
such a hermit as he plotted his revolt. The hermit is said to have advised
Bardanes against his rebellion but prophesised that his three companions; Leo,
Michael and Thomas would all attain the purple, although Thomas, he warned,
would never sit upon the throne. Bardanes’ revolt against Nicephorus failed and
he was blinded and stripped of his property just as the old hermit had
predicted.
If Leo
gave any credence to this prophesy, if such a prophesy there was, then it did
not prevent him from elevating the two men who had accompanied him that day to
high office under his rule. Michael, known as the Stammerer, was appointed
Count of the Excubitors; commander of the imperial bodyguard and one of the
most senior military positions within the empire. More than one former
incumbent of this position had risen to claim the throne in the past. Thomas,
known as the Slav, was appointed to Leo’s former command of the elite regiment
of the Foederati.
Michael,
not content with his station, soon began plotting to seize the throne for
himself but proved to be loose tongued and incautious in company when drinking
and drunkenly declared his intentions in the hearing of those who would report
his words back to the emperor. On Christmas Eve 820, Michael was arrested and charged with
plotting against his friend the emperor. Placed under guard in chains, Michael
was left to await a truly terrible fate. He was to be executed by being thrown
into the furnace beneath the baths of Zeuxippos the next day. It was the
empress Theodosia, we are told, who fatefully interceded for Michael, imploring
Leo not to taint his rule with such a savage act on the sacred feast of
Christmas day. Leo too was troubled by the judgement he had passed upon his
former friend and spent a sleepless night. He agreed to put off the execution
until after the Christmas festivities. It would prove a fatal delay. During the
night, Michael’s supporters put a conspiracy into action. Under the pretext of
the prisoner wishing to confess his sins, a priest was sent for from the city.
The servant sent to bring the priest summoned a number of conspirators who,
disguised as monks, made their way into the Daphne palace complex and entered
the chapel of St Stephen, where the emperor would celebrate a dawn mass.
As the
emperor arrived for morning prayers the conspirators drew swords from under
their habits and set upon him. In the confusion the priest was almost struck
down instead of the emperor, who grabbed a large golden cross from the alter
and wielded it desperately against his attackers. It was to no avail however
and a mighty blow severed Leo’s arm, with his hand still gripping the cross.
Falling to the floor, the emperor was beheaded.
Michael
was carried from his prison cell and then sat upon the throne to receive oaths
of loyalty with the fetters still upon his legs. Not until mid day was he
released from his chains in order to make his way to St Sophia where a
scandalised but compliant Patriarch placed the crown of empire upon his head.
When news
of Michael’s usurpation reached the ears of Thomas the Slav, he gave no heed to
any doom-mongering predictions of his ultimate failure that he may have
received in the past and immediately raised the standard of revolt in the
eastern provinces of the empire. It is difficult to separate the truth of
Thomas’ motives from the propaganda put about by himself and his enemies. It
seems probable however that Thomas sought to be all things to all people in order
to gain for himself the widest possible base of support.
At times Thomas
is said to have claimed to be the murdered emperor Constantine VI back from the
dead, although surely he would have been too well known a figure in his own
right to pull this subterfuge off with any but the most credulous of peasants
and it is likely to be a later fabrication. In the east he presented himself as
the avenger of the murdered Leo and the champion of the poor and oppressed. In
the west, where anti-iconoclast opinion prevailed, his supporters hinted that
he would be sympathetic to the cause of the restoration of the icons. Despite
the fact that Thomas’ base of Amorion in the Anatolian heartland of the empire
was the home town of Michael, supporters flocked to his side. Thomas was by all
accounts a charismatic leader and soon almost every Anatolian theme, as
Byzantine military provinces were known, had thrown their lot in with the
rebel.
In 821
Thomas marched into Syria at the head of his considerable forces in a show of
strength calculated to impress. Here too, the chameleon-like Thomas presented
himself to best effect to gain the friendship of the caliph Mamun. His emissary
to the caliph was sent with extravagant promises to make. Allowing for
propaganda intended to blacken his name as a traitor to the empire, Thomas is
variously credited with signing away frontier provinces or perhaps even
undertaking to en-fief the entire empire to the caliphate in exchange for an
alliance which would safeguard his rear whilst he turned his forces against
Constantinople. The caliph accepted with alacrity and provided Thomas with a
substantial contribution to his war chest. The rebel was even permitted to
celebrate his coronation as Emperor of the Romans in the city of Antioch. Mamun
would have been advised to remain sceptical of the bargain. Thomas, after all,
was not the first Byzantine rebel commander to promise much and deliver nothing.
Leo III had struck a similar bargain a century before.
At any
rate Thomas’ friendly overtures were well timed for the caliph had his hands
full already with continuing unrest in Syria and Egypt and a rebellion by the Khurramite sect, centred
on present day Azerbaijan, which had sprung up during the civil war. The
Khurramites followed a belief system which fused ideas from the Zoroastrian
cult of Mazdakism with Shia Islam and like earlier movements they revered the
memory of Abu Muslim. The leader of the revolt was Babak, who claimed descent
from Abu Muslim and also claimed rather interestingly to have inherited the
soul of the previous Khurramite leader, which had fused with his own.
In
true guerilla style Babak had taken to the mountains and a succession of
governors of Azerbaijan had failed to deal with him. By using the terrain to
his advantage he had been able to win many victories over the Abbasid forces
sent against him, falling upon and slaughtering his enemies in bad country and
then melting away once more. His successes had brought more support for the revolt
and pockets of Khurramite resistance were springing up all over the Persian
territories of the caliphate. More trouble on the north-western frontier
therefore, was the last thing the caliph wanted.
With
peace secured and having defeated a loyalist army from the Armeniakon Theme,
Thomas turned his vast polyglot army, which may have been as large as 80,000
men, against Constantinople. The fleets stationed along the eastern shore of
the Marmara also declared for Thomas and so he was able to ferry his troops
across the straits and lay siege to the land walls at Blacharnae. The defences
here proved too strong for the attackers however and the massive catapults
stationed on the towers wrecked destruction on every engine of war that Thomas
was able to send against them. Just as it had seemed that the resolve of the
defenders was weakening and the emperor Michael had appeared upon the walls in
person to deliver a heartfelt plea for peace to the besiegers, lulling them
into a false sense of security, a sortie launched from the gates fell upon the
disorganised rebels and inflicted much slaughter upon them. At sea too Thomas’
forces were bested by the loyalist fleet and many of his ships were destroyed
by Greek Fire. The siege dragged on through 822 and the besiegers endured a
second miserable winter outside the walls before in the following spring came
the fatal blow. From out of the west, falling like a hammer blow upon the rebels’
rear, came the army of Ormortag, son of Krum, who had been unable to resist the
lure of easy plunder and had come to Michael’s assistance. The Bulgar attack
shattered Thomas’ army which withdrew westwards with the emperor’s forces hot
on their trail. Michael himself was at their head.
Thomas
placed his final hopes of victory in the favourite Byzantine tactic of offering
battle and then feigning flight, calculated to draw the imperial forces on in
disorganised pursuit before turning upon them. In the event however the morale
of Thomas’ army was in tatters. Pretended rout swiftly turned to the real thing
as the rebels lost all heart and as Thomas fled for his life, his remaining
forces surrendered in their droves. Run to ground in the Thracian city of
Arcadiopolis, Thomas and his remaining followers held out through the summer as
provisions ran short and at last, in October, all loyalty was exhausted. Handed
over to the emperor by his treacherous companions in exchange for clemency,
Thomas was flung at Michael’s feet whilst the emperor placed a purple booted
foot upon his neck and pronounced a terrible sentence of death. Thomas’ hands
and feet were cut off and he was then impaled outside the city. If only he had
heeded the words of the hermit.
Michael
had survived the great challenge to his reign but his remaining years brought
little glory as freebooting Arab raiders fell upon imperial territory in the
Mediterranean. In 825 Crete was overrun by invaders who had originally fled
Andalusia following an unsuccessful rebellion. Having been ousted from
Alexandria, these rebels-turned-pirates seized control of the island, founding
the settlement of Candia, today known as Heraklion. Thereafter they would use
it as base to harass Byzantine shipping and launch raids against the coastal
settlements of the empire. An expedition sent to the relieve the island ended in
dismal failure and the pirates would long remain a thorn in the side of the
empire.
Two years
later worse was to follow when a disgraced admiral in Sicily by the name of
Euphemius provoked the wrath of the governor by eloping with a nun. The penalty
for his offence was rhinocopia and
rather than be deprived of his nose, Euphemius launched a revolt against
imperial power. When his plans began to unravel, Euphemius escaped to North
Africa and plotted with the Emir of Kairouan to conquer the island between them.
The province of Ifriqiya had by this
point become a virtually independent territory, which paid no taxes to Baghdad
and whose governorship was the hereditary possession of the Aghlabid family,
who had succeeded in finally pacifying the region for Harun al Rashid. Having
gained their independence, the Aghlabids had developed imperialist pretentions
and Euphemius undertook to rule Sicily as the Emir’s vassal. The rebellious
admiral returned to Sicily backed by an Aghlabid invasion force of ten thousand
Arab and Berber fighters.
Euphemius,
with pretentions aplenty of his own, dressed himself in imperial regalia on his
return to Byzantine soil and styled himself emperor. He came to a swift and sticky
end however, as his forces advanced on Syracuse, undone by his own hubris.
Arriving to accept the surrender of the town of Castrogiovanni, Euphemius was
approached by a welcoming committee of two young men of the town, who
prostrated themselves before him. As he bent his head to bestow a sovereign’s
kiss upon the brow of one of the men, Euphemius was summarily beheaded by the
other, reflecting perhaps in his last moments on the irony of his fate. The
course that he had taken to avoid the loss of his nose had led in the end to
the loss of his head. Another usurper had been despatched but the damage was
done. The Arab invaders were not so easily removed and with a firm foothold
established in Sicily they would continue to gain ground on the island over the
ensuing half century until they made it their own.
A New Golden Age?
Emperor Michael
II died from dysentery in 829. He was succeeded by his son Theophilus who had
ruled alongside him as his co-emperor from the age of seventeen. This was a
rare return to stability in the Byzantine succession, for if we exclude the
unfortunate Stauracius, the last time that the imperial crown had passed from
father to son without the need for a regency had been over half a century
before when Leo IV had succeeded his father Constantine V. At just sixteen
years of age, Theophilus promised to be a vigorous young ruler. He is
remembered for many things, not least for being the last of the iconoclast
emperors. He is remembered both for his love of justice and his love of pomp
and ostentation. Like many an absolute ruler he could be capricious or merciful
as the mood took him. He is also, as it happens, the only Byzantine emperor to
have a crater on the moon named after him.
Upon his
accession Theophilus gave a stark and unmistakable demonstration of his
commitment to the rule of law. Summoning the great and the good to appear
before him in the audience hall of the Magnaura, Theophilus declared that he
wished to reward those who had loyally supported his father. He called forth
those who had participated in the murder of Leo nine years before and proudly the
men stepped forward, eagerly expecting the new emperor to bestow gifts and honours upon them.
Instead Theophilus called upon the Eparch of the city, responsible for
maintaining law and order, to have the men seized and have them rewarded
according their deeds, ‘Not only for
having stained their hands with human blood, but also because they slew the
lord’s anointed within the sanctuary.’
It was a
remarkable act. From the unlikeliest of quarters, the hands of the son of the
man who had usurped him, Leo V had received his justice. For Theophilus
perhaps, it was an act without which he could not feel that his accession to
the throne was legitimate, tainted as it was by the heinous crime of Leo’s murder.
Having seen justice done, he could set about ruling his empire with his hands
washed clean.
Theophilus
cultivated the image of the righteous ruler and probably apocryphal tales have
come down to us of his legendary approachability as he rode through the city,
giving ear to the complaints of little old ladies, upholding the rights of the
small folk and seeing justice done to the mighty if they had overstepped the
bounds of the law. These tales no doubt contain a grain of truth but clearly the
young emperor’s PR machine worked well for him in the same way that the common
touch and popularity of the younger British royals today, in contrast to the
rather stuffy image of their elders, has done wonders for the image of the
royal family.
Image was
very important to Theophilus and it was his good fortune to come to the throne
at a time when the imperial finances were in rude health. The recent opening of
gold mines in Armenia had brought a flood of precious metal into the imperial
coffers whilst a ten percent tax on all trade goods passing through imperial
ports also bolstered his income. The emperor therefore had money to spend and
spend it he did. By the Ninth Century the older parts of the
Great Palace were becoming run down and had fallen out of regular use. In the
open space between the old palace and the sea walls Theophilus created a new
palace complex called the Bucoleon. It featured a series of magnificent new
halls built in marble and was served by its own private harbour.
Theophilus was particularly concerned with
outdoing his opposite number the Abbasid Caliph in Baghdad. The emperor had
dispatched a delegation to the Abbasid court upon his accession, bearing
precious gifts and scattering gold coins in the streets. Upon their return they
described the incredible opulence of the caliph’s riverside palace, menagerie
of wild beasts and sumptuous throne room, including his remarkable collection
of automata. Not to be outdone, Theophilus commissioned his own. They included
a golden organ which played to itself and was set up in the Chrysotriklinos and a golden plane tree
filled with gilded bronze and silver birds which moved and ‘sang’. The golden
tree was set up beside the so called ‘Throne of Solomon’ in the Magnaura upon which more birds were arrayed.
Here foreign delegations were received. A concealed mechanism allowed the
throne to be lifted into the air, so that the emperor looked down from on high
upon any suppliants who came before him. It was guarded by a pair of gilded
lions who moved and ‘roared’ at the emperor’s command, presumably similar to
the famous Tiger of the Tippoo Sultan now in the V&A.
The emperor did not spend all of his money on
palaces and baubles for his own amusement but also looked to the empire’s
defences. In addition to strengthening the
Sea Walls of the capital and adding new defensive towers, Theophilus also
looked further afield. Early
in his reign Theophilus took considerable steps to protect the empire’s trading
interests on the northern shore of the Black Sea. Ongoing hostilities between the Byzantines and the Abbasids
would ensure that the route by which luxury goods reached Constantinople from
the east would shift increasingly to the Caspian Sea and thence via the great
rivers of the Volga and the Don to the Black Sea. Trade with the peoples to the
north would therefore grow in importance. The major power in the region between
the lower reaches of the Dnieper and the Volga were the Khazars; a Turkic
people who had been on good terms with the Byzantines for two centuries whilst
staving off attempts at conquest from the Arabs. The Khazar Khagan had astutely
adopted Judaism as his religion in order to resist efforts from both empires to
convert his people and thereby place him in a position of being seen as
antagonistic to one or the other. The Khazar capital of Itil at the mouth of
the Volga was a trading enclave from which ships set out across the Caspian Sea
to trade furs, slaves, honey and wax with Abbasid merchants and return with
silks and spices from as far afield as India and China as well as pocketfuls of
jingling silver dirhams. Heading northwards from Itil, boats could make their
way up the Volga and then turn westwards, making use of smaller waterways and
where necessary portage to enter the Don and then turn south for the Black Sea
and the ports of the Byzantine Empire.
It was to
protect this trade that Theophilus took action in 833, establishing a new
province in the Crimea known as the Klimata which incorporated the previously
independent city of Cherson at the mouth of the Dnieper under direct Byzantine
control. A permanent force of 2000 troops was dispatched to the new province
under the command of a military governor. At the same time Theophilus sent a
task force of engineers and soldiers under the governor of Paphlagonia to build
a new fortification close to the mouth of the Don. Known as Sarkel, the ‘white
house’. This construction served to protect the Khazar controlled town of
Tamatarkha which was dominated by a Jewish merchant community. It is believed
that Sarkel anchored a line of earthworks and fortifications stretching between
the Volga and the Don. The scale of this undertaking clearly demonstrates the
level of threat faced by the region from potentially aggressive newcomers to the
north. The most potent threat was believed to be posed by the Rus.
Itil was
home to communities of merchants including a sizable contingent of Rus, who
represented the southern terminus of a commercial network stretching all the
way back to Scandinavia. Approximately 200,000 silver coins have been found
throughout Scandinavia dating from the Viking period. Of these around half were
turned up on the island of Gotland and 40,000 of these were Abbasid dirhams. It
is an eloquent illustration of the extent and importance of the trade links
established by the intrepid Rus.
The first
permanent Viking presence in what is now Russia was established in the form of
fortified settlements along the shores of Lake Ladoga during the mid Eighth
Century. Setting out from their Swedish homeland, the first colonists came both
as warriors and as traders, as the presence of both a sword and a set of scales
as grave goods for the same individual testifies. They had the capacity to
fight for land or plunder and to defend and keep it and to take slaves in large
numbers from the native population to be sold down the river. They could
however also offer protection to the native population and they set out to put
down roots and establish peaceful and profitable trade. Indeed, so welcome did
the Viking presence become that in the end a legend was born that the natives,
tired by ceaseless infighting, had actually invited them to come and rule over
them. Such is the tale of Rurik, eldest of three Viking brothers who is
credited with establishing his rule in the town of Gorodisce, known as Holmgard
in the Icelandic sagas, on Lake Ilmen, near the headwaters of the Volga.
Tenuous
evidence for the earliest known contact between Rus and Byzantines comes from
the Hagiography of St George of Amastris. Its author gave these Vikings who had
made their way down the Dnieper into the Black Sea to raid the communities on
its shores, about as good a write up as they received from the monkish
chroniclers who had recorded the 793 raid on Lindesfarne in very similar language. Amastris, a
prosperous town on Paphlagonian coast, was saved by a miracle, for when the
raiders tried to break into the saint’s tomb, they were struck down by the
power of God and became weak and helpless. Whilst there is considerable debate
about the date of this raid it is clear that by the early Ninth Century, the
Rus were viewed as a significant threat.
The major threat however remained the
caliphate. Mamun had regained a firm grip on his territories with Syria and
Egypt having been entirely pacified by the son of Tahir and returned to
obedience by 826. The rebellion of the Khurramites was still ongoing but the
tide seemed to be turning. In
830 an army of Khurramite rebels holding out in the Zagros Mountains of western
Iran led by a Persian nobleman by the name of Nasr was heavily defeated by the
Caliph’s forces. Seeing the writing on the wall for the Khurramite cause, Nasr
chose to lead his surviving troops through Armenia out of harm’s way and sought
refuge within the Byzantine Empire.
The arrival of
Nasr with some fourteen thousand armed followers who professed themselves
willing to fight for the empire against the caliphate was greeted rapturously
by Theophilus. The new arrivals were given land and incorporated into the
Byzantine military under the command of Nasr himself, upon whom the emperor
bestowed Patrician rank. Nasr and his followers agreed in principle at least to
embrace Christianity and were baptised. Nasr now took a new Christian name and
became Theophobos. As Christians, the former Khurramites were now permitted to
marry and Theophobos was given the emperor’s own sister-in-law as a bride. The
fugitive rebel had landed on his feet.
The provocation
was too much for Mamun who decided that the time had come for the caliph
himself to lead an expedition against the infidel as his father had done. In
the summer of 830 he launched a limited invasion of Anatolia, with his son
Abbas also leading a column. Little was achieved aside from symbolism but in
the following year Theophilus retaliated against the raid by invading Muslim
held Cilicia and sacking Tarsus. Elated by his success, Theophilus returned to
Constantinople and celebrated with an elaborate triumphal procession followed
by races in the hippodrome in which he himself participated. Mamun meanwhile
had retired to Damascus. The first Abbasid caliph to visit the city, he was
making a point of showing his face in recently re-pacified Syria. Retaliating
in turn to Theophilus’ campaign, Mamun once more led his forces across the
border and captured the town of Heraclea, which his father had also
successfully taken.
In 832 a tenuous peace was negotiated between
the two empires whilst Mamun, who must have been the most well travelled of all
the caliphs, decided to visit Egypt and show his face there too. Whilst in the
land of the pharaohs, the ever curious caliph decided to investigate the
pyramids and had an exploratory tunnel dug into the side of the Great Pyramid.
This tunnel intersected the interior passages within the pyramid and the caliph
was able to venture inside and make his way up to the burial chamber of Khufu,
only to find the sarcophagus empty and the tomb looted in distant antiquity.
With his Egyptian efforts frustrated, the
caliph set out once again in the summer of 833 in what promised to be a more
sizable campaign against the Byzantines. As he relaxed beside a stream during
his advance from Tarsus however, the caliph suddenly took ill and his fever
soon proved fatal. He had named no successor, realising perhaps the futility of
such actions. His younger brother Qasim moved swiftly to seize the reins of
power as caliph Al-Mutasim. Mamun was laid to rest in Tarsus and his tomb
survives to this day.
In overall
assessment Mamun, for me at least, emerges as a more impressive figure than his
more famous father Harun al Rashid. He had shown himself a good judge of
character in the men he had chosen to trust and had displayed a willingness to
accommodate, reconcile and compromise in his policies and his exercise of mercy
where possible. He was nevertheless prepared to be utterly ruthless when a
change of policy demanded it. He was, above all, a pragmatist.
Mamun’s greatest
legacy is as a patron of scientific enquiry. Whereas every anecdote about Harun
seems to involve dancing girls and drunken poets, Mamun appears to have taken a
serious interest in the scholarship being pursued in Baghdad under the auspices
of the caliphs. The institution that would come to be known as the Bayt al-hikma or House of Wisdom was
first established in Baghdad under the auspices of Mansur as a safe repository
for his growing collection of scientific and philosophical manuscripts. This is
imagined as a centrally organised and officially controlled research facility
but in truth no such control or organisation existed and individual scholars
carried out their work independently with funding from wealthy patrons. The
term House of Wisdom in this period is better thought of as an idea or a
movement rather than a place. The effort to translate works from Greek, Indian
and Persian into Arabic was given particular impetus by the Barmakids. Yahya
the Barmakid is said to have commissioned the first Arabic translation of
Euclid and he and his sons numbered many pet scholars amongst their clients.
Mamun of course
was raised as the protégé of Jaffar the Barmakid and perhaps gained his eager
curiosity and love of scientific enquiry from the scholars patronised by
Jaffar. Under Mamun’s caliphate the pursuit of scientific knowledge received a
massive boost from the personal interest that the caliph took in such matters. Mamun
made enquiries as to his scholars’ needs and progress, sourced new manuscripts,
scholars and scientific instruments during his visits to Damascus and Egypt and
oversaw the construction of a new observatory in Baghdad. Stepping into the
shoes of the Barmakids came three brothers known as the Banu Musa who had
accompanied Mamun westwards on his return from Khurasan. Like the Barmakids
they were an old Persian family, wealthy, cultured and well connected. Working
for the Banu Musa, a good translator could earn five hundred dinars a month.
Foremost of all
the scholars of Baghdad during Mamun’s reign was Muhammad ibn Musa
Al-Khwarizmi. This great polymath was another who had made his way westwards
from Khurasan to the City of Peace. His contribution to modern mathematics,
astronomy and geography is formidable. Even the Western corruption of his name
is preserved in the term algorithm. Al
Khwarizmi was responsible for the production of three great works of
translation and further scholarship, whose transmission to the west have
cemented his reputation as the greatest of oriental sages. The first was a
distillation of all Indian mathematical and astronomical knowledge which had
been transmitted to the Arab world within a corpus of work called the siddhanta. To this Al Khwarizmi added
star tables known as the zij al sindhind whose
accuracy would be unsurpassed for centuries and the earliest known description
of the use of the astrolabe. Al Khwarizmi also needed to include an explanatory
treatise on the Indian system of calculation using the numbers 1-9 along with
the concept of zero.
If like me you
hated maths at school then you have reason to curse Al Khwarizmi for his next
work, the book of restoring and balancing, Kitab
al jabr wa’l-muqabala, from which we take the term algebra. The book detailed the use of equations in solving the
problems of the day; calculating tax or inheritance, partitioning land and
regulating trade. His third great work the al-majisti
was a translation and commentary on the works of Ptolemy, known as the Almagest in the West.
Upon perusing the Almagest, Mamun demanded a practical
demonstration of the theory within. In a study commissioned by the caliph to
determine the accuracy of Ptolemy’s estimate of the circumference of the Earth,
a party of astronomers set out into a flat area of desert and measured the
altitude of the pole star. Driving a pole into the ground they fixed a piece of
cord of known length to it and then walked north in a straight line, taking
measurements of the altitude of the pole star as they went, driving in more
posts and running out the cord behind them. Once they had reached a point at
which the altitude of the pole star had risen by one degree, they retraced
their steps along the posts they had driven into the ground and measured their
distance travelled from the length of cord they had paid out. I can only assume
that someone was following on behind on the way out to recycle the cord already
used, unless they were carrying 66 miles of cord with them, for that was the
measured distance travelled; 66.6 miles to be precise. Proceeding south from
their original start point they then continued until they had covered the same
distance at which point they observed that the altitude of the pole star was
one degree lower than at their start point. The entire experiment was then
repeated in a second area of desert and the measurements found to be the same,
at which point the caliph declared himself satisfied with their observations.
The distance corresponding to a degree of latitude was found to be 32.2 farsakhs or 66.6 miles. From this it was
concluded that the circumference of the Earth was eight thousand farsakhs, or 24,000 miles, impressively
close to the modern figure.
Such was the
standard of intellectual enquiry taking place on Mamun’s watch. It would be
three centuries before anyone in the West even started to catch up. None of his
successors would match his passion but the touch paper had been well and truly
lit and would continue to burn brightly.
Rise of the
Ghulams
The new caliph Mutasim
was an entirely different prospect to his cultured brother. He had little time
for scientists and would rather go out for a vigorous horse ride than peruse a
treatise on astronomy. He liked the military life and his primary diversion
before coming to power had been the creation of his own private army. In the
long term Mutasim’s actions in creating a new military class of powerful men
would prove the undoing of the institution of the caliphate but in the short
term it had made him a man to be reckoned with. Mutasim’s collection of imported
Turkish slaves, known as ghulam, young
men all, obtained from the markets of Khurasan grew from a bodyguard into a
formidable force of several thousand mounted archers, who owed loyalty only to
their master Mutasim. Their leaders, men of humble beginnings, were at a stroke
amongst the most powerful in the caliphate with the ear of the caliph himself.
The possession of this private army had strengthened Mutasim’s hand in claiming
the caliphate and dissuading Mamun’s son Abbas and his supporters from mounting
a challenge.
As might be
expected, the caliph’s swaggering new Turkish entourage did not make many
friends in Baghdad, where they were sneered at by the bureaucrats as illiterate
barbarians, hated by the existing military as new-comers and foreigners and feared
by the populace as brutal enforcers of the caliph’s rule. There were many
violent clashes and complaints to the caliph increased but in the end Mutasim
preferred his loyal Turks and decided that if they were not welcome in the
capital, then he would build a new one.
In 835 the caliph decided
to withdraw to a new purpose-built capital at Samarra. Large quantities of land
were cheaply bought up on this virgin site on the east bank of the Tigris close
to the Nahrawan canal
eighty miles north of Baghdad. Much of this land was later sold on at a great profit as men of means looked to move north and obtain property close to the new seat of power. A new city of broad streets and open spaces took shape at Samarra, where the caliph settled down the following year, accompanied by his court and protected by his ghulam.
Once ensconced in
Samarra, Mutasim turned his mind to military matters. First on the agenda was
the crushing of the Khurramite revolt. The caliph entrusted the destruction of
Babak to another outsider who had gained his trust. Far from being a nobody he
was the former ruler of a small Soghdian principality named al-Afsin. Appointed
as governor of Azerbaijan, al-Afsin would prove equal to the task of rooting
the rebel out of his mountain stronghold. He adopted a methodical approach and
moved forward steadily into the mountains, taking control of one rebel
stronghold at a time. Babak attempted to counter the invasion by targeting
al-Afsin’s supply lines but al-Afsin succeeded in inflicting a series of
significant defeats upon Babak who retreated back to his seemingly impregnable
mountaintop fortress of Badd.
Al-Afsin confronts Babak
Babak’s revolt
came to its bloody end in 837. Despite the difficulties of reaching the
fortress of Badd which could only be approached in single file through a narrow
defile, al-Afsin’s soldiers succeeded in storming the stronghold and overcoming
its defenders. Babak and his few remaining followers slipped away into the
forests but he was ultimately betrayed and run to ground. Paraded through the
streets of Samarra on an elephant, Babak had his hands and feet cut off before
being beheaded. His body was then publically displayed on a gibbet.
Whilst he had been
consolidating his power, moving to his new capital and dealing with Babak, Mutasim
had been intially receptive to Theophilus’ overtures for peace that had fallen
on the deaf ears of his brother. Theophilus had made use of the truce to renew
hostilities with the Bulgars, launching a successful raid to repatriate
Byzantine captives who had been forcibly abducted and resettled in the days of
Krum. Having achieved this however, the emperor had decided once more to go on
the offensive. Theophilus had crossed the frontier in the summer of 837 at the
head of an invading army. The former Khurramite rebel Theophobos and his
Persian brigade marched with the emperor. Theophilus was eager to avenge his
humiliation at the hands of Mamun and may also have been responding to
a call for aid from Barbak, although his intervention came too late to
save the doomed rebel leader. The emperor’s forces reached the upper Euphrates
and put the cities of Arsamosata and Zosopetra to the sack. Following this
victory and in the aftermath of Babak’s defeat another sixteen thousand
Khurramites fled to the empire and were both converted to Christianity and
enrolled in Theophobos’ Persian brigade, bringing its total strength to
thirty thousand men.
Mutasim vowed revenge upon Theophilus and in
the following year led his armies in a campaign of reprisal, aimed at the
destruction of the emperor’s ancestral home town of Amorion. Whilst the caliph led
his forces towards his target of Amorion, a second army under al-Afsin, fresh
from his victory over Babak which had seen him showered with honours by the caliph,
marched into Cappadocia.
The armies of
Theophilus and al-Afsin met in battle at Anzen. Theophilus was accompanied by
Theophobos and his Persian troops and probably outnumbered al-Afsin. Having
disregarded advice from Theophobos to mount a night attack, feeling such
tactics to be beneath his honour, the emperor led his troops into
battle at dawn. At first the battle went the way of the Byzantines as their
right wing made progress and forced their enemies back. Theophilus and
Theophobos now led a contingent of troops from the right wing behind their army
to their left in order to reinforce this wing and complete the victory. A well
timed counterattack by Afsin’s Turkoman horse archers however threw the
Byzantine right wing into chaos and, thinking themselves abandoned by their
emperor, they routed. Theophilus found himself isolated and retreated to a hill
top protected by those soldiers of the imperial Tagmata who had not fled along
with some of the troops of Theophobos. Al-Afsin brought up his siege engines to
batter at the defenders who were also showered by arrows by the horse archers.
The wretched Byzantines were saved by the elements as it began to rain and at
last night fell.
The chronicler
John Skylitzes, himself writing some two centuries later and compiling his
account from various surviving sources, tells two stories of the events of the
night which show Theophobos in differing lights. In one version we are told
that during the night the Domestic of the Scholae Manuel, Theophilus’ senior
commander, persuaded the emperor that the troops of Theophobos could not be
trusted. They must flee, he told the emperor, before the Persians sold the
emperor out to the forces of al-Afsin. The emperor, accompanied by Manuel and
his loyal troops succeeded in breaking through the enemy lines in the night and
fled westwards. In another version however it is Theophobos who saves the
emperor by the stratagem of ordering his troops to shout and sing joyfully as
if they were being reinforced by friendly troops, causing the encircling enemy
to withdraw and allowing the emperor to escape.
Mutasim meanwhile
had advanced to his primary objective of Amorion, which he placed under siege. The
victorious Al-Afsin joined him later. The city was well defended by a
determined garrison and protected by a substantial moat. Mutasim ordered each
soldier to kill a sheep and then stuff the skin with earth and rocks before
hurling them into the moat. The soldiers enjoyed the roast mutton but were less
keen on the barrage of missiles from the walls as they completed their task as
swiftly as possible. The resultant filling in of the moat was somewhat
haphazard and Mutasim’s siege engines sank into the ground when they attempted
to approach the walls, to the delight of the defenders who promptly burned
them. The caliph then received intelligence from a treacherous element within
the city of a stretch of wall which had been poorly repaired with rubble and
was not as solid as it appeared from the outside. Concentrating his artillery
fire on this section the caliph soon had his victory as the wall crumbled
despite the defenders’ efforts to reinforce it. Amorion was brutally sacked,
with some of the terrorised citizens burned alive in the church where they had
sought refuge. On the long march home, laden down with booty and with the extra
burden of thousands of captives taken as slaves from the populace, the army ran
short of supplies, especially water. Six thousand low value captives are said
to have been executed, whilst many more fell by the wayside and were abandoned.
These poor buggers of little account were largely forgotten by posterity
although another group of higher status prisoners who survived the death march
but were later beheaded beside the Tigris for refusing to convert to Islam
would be celebrated by the Byzantines as the 42 Martyrs of Amorion.
As the army made
its way back into Syria details emerged of a plot against the caliph and his
Turkish favourites Itakh and Ashinas. The plan had been hatched amongst a
number of commanders in the existing military to kill Mutasim and his Turkish
commanders and to place Mamun’s son Abbas on the throne in his place. The
conspirators took too long to act and their plot was betrayed to the caliph who
took delight in having them all rounded up and given slow and unpleasant
deaths; burying alive, drowning and starvation all featured. Abbas himself died
of thirst in captivity. It was a bad business and the Turks, having had a
narrow escape, appear to have resolved to get rid of anyone else who might pose
a threat to them. This included Al Afsin; defeater of Babak, victor over the
emperor himself. A man of such standing and reputation. A whispering campaign
of rumours and accusations was started against him: He planned to murder the
caliph, he planned to steal a vast sum of money and return to the east, he
planned to overthrow the Tahirids in Khurasan and set himself up in their
stead. In all likelihood none of it was true but the Turks finally turned the
caliph against his best general. With no real evidence of any wrong-doing
against him Al-Afsin was accused in 840 of apostasy; a capital crime. As a
foreigner and recent convert to Islam it was an easy slur to make stick and
Al-Afsin was found guilty despite demolishing the prosecution case. He died in
custody and his body was exhibited on a gibbet outside the main gate of
Samarra, another victim of poisonous intrigue at the Abbasid court.
The fate of
Theophobos is a parallel illustration from the Byzantine side of the frontier
of the dangers faced by outsiders who climbed high within the echelons of
power. Like Al-Afsin Theophobos had given excellent service to the emperor he
had come to serve. Also like Al-Afsin he had provoked the jealousy of others
within the military hierarchy. After the battle of Anzen, Theophobos and his
troops had withdrawn to Sinope on the Black Sea coast, where rumours reached
them that they had lost the confidence of the emperor. Fearful now of the
consequences of the emperor’s wrath, the Persian brigade proclaimed their
commander as emperor of the Romans. Arriviste
though Theophobos may have been he was nevertheless a member of the imperial
family and may well have been seen as a suitable candidate by those who longed
for a restoration of the veneration of icons. At any rate Theophobos had no
wish to be raised to the purple and appealed to the emperor, declaring that his
usurpation had been forced upon him by his troops. Whatever reservations
Theophilus may have had, he pardoned his friend and recalled him to
Constantinople where he was received with honour. As for the Persian brigade,
although pardoned for their actions, they nonetheless found themselves
scattered throughout the forces of the empire in units of two thousand men so
that they no longer represented a threat to the stability of the empire.
Theophilus chooses his bride
In late 841 the
emperor began to sicken with dysentery and soon it was apparent that he would
not be long for this world. Once again the potential of Theophobos as an
imperial candidate was feared by those in the emperor’s inner circle. He posed
a threat to the succession of Theophilus’ infant son Michael and this time
although he had done nothing to warrant it, he was shown no mercy. Arrested and
imprisoned, Theophobos was executed on the emperor’s orders. Skylitzes tells us
that when the emperor was brought Theophobos' head he wept and held it in his
hands. The emperor’s grief was scant consolation to poor
Theophobos.
Theophilus
and Mutasim died just two weeks apart in January 842. Their legacies differed.
Mutasim died aged forty six. He was succeeded by his thirty year old son Harun
who would rule isolated from his subjects in the new capital, dependant for his
security upon the Turks, who would grow ever more powerful. Theophilus had been
just twenty eight at the time of his death and it was the empire’s misfortune
that he was taken so young. In war he had suffered mixed fortunes. In peace he
had ruled firmly and fairly and with panache. In matters of religion he had
tried to steer a middle course. In dying so young he left the empire with a two
year old child on the throne.
It is
interesting to speculate whether Theophilus would have reversed his
iconoclastic stance had he ruled longer. That for the most part the second
succession of iconoclast emperors practiced a greater degree of tolerance
towards their icon venerating subjects than had Leo III and Constantine V is
perhaps an indication that they had little choice. If the first iconoclastic
movement was a crusade against idolatry, the second was far more a reaction to
prevailing public opinion and as a result the iconoclasts trod more carefully
amongst a population which still harboured a great many icon lovers. The cause
of the icons was championed by the venerable Abbot Theodore of the Studium who,
having endured torture and imprisonment under Leo V, was at liberty to appeal
for their restoration under his successors. Theophilus was tolerant of icon
worship in private, even within the palace itself where under the emperor’s
very nose, his wife and mother made little secret of their practice of
venerating icons. Nevertheless he made examples when his authority was
challenged. Two subversive monks who defied an order of exile had their
sentences tattooed on their faces by imperial command whilst the celebrated
icon painter Lazarus, later canonised, had his hands branded by being forced to
grasp white-hot horse shoes after refusing to destroy an icon he had painted,
again on Theophilus’ orders.
Despite
the emperor’s efforts to hold the line, slowly but surely, the tide began to
turn in favour of the veneration of images once more. This may in part have
been due to the resurgence of the forces of Islam. Under Michael II, Crete and
much of Sicily had fallen to freebooting Arab invaders. Theophilus had been
obliged throughout his reign to wage war against the Abbasid caliphs and his recent reverses were cause for
many to wonder if the displeasure of the Almighty was being manifested in
Byzantine defeat at the hands of the infidel. Given the pressure from without and within the imperial palace and
given his own relatively moderate stance Theophilus may at some point have
taken the decision to change course but his early death has seen him go down in
history as the last of the iconoclasts.
No comments:
Post a Comment