The succession to the caliph Musa al-Hadi.

• Author: Kimber, Richard
• Position: Harun al-Rashid

Harun al-Rashid succeeded his elder brother Musa al-Hadi to the caliphate in confused circumstances. It is clear that Musa had not wanted his brother to succeed him, but not whether in his short caliphate Musa had formally replaced Harun as heir apparent with his own young son. The open question is whether Harun succeeded to the caliphate by virtue of being heir apparent, or owing to a military intervention after Musa's sudden death. Al-Tabari clearly manipulates his textual evidence to prove the former case, and is greatly helped by an influential Barmakid tradition making the same point. If al-Tabari's editorial intervention can be discounted, it is arguable on the basis of both textual and numismatic evidence that Harun's caliphate was as much the creation of the army as was that of the first Abbasid caliph, [Abu'l-.sup.[subset]]Abbas.

THE MANNER IN WHICH Harun al-Rashid succeeded his brother Musa al-Hadi in the caliphate in 170/786 has been of great interest to both medieval and modern historians. The evidence of the medieval texts has been studied in detail by Sabatino Moscati, Nabia Abbott, and Hugh Kennedy, and important contributions based on numismatic evidence have been made by Michael Bonner. (1) Also now relevant in the light of Bonner's work is a discussion by Patricia Crone of the slogan al-rida min al Muhammad. (2) This present article is, in the main, a re-examination of the textual evidence, with the benefit of these later studies. It focuses especially on one question, whether al-Hadi in his short caliphate did or did not formally replace his brother Harun as heir apparent with his own young son [Ja.sup.[subset]]far. The question is important for our understanding of exactly how Harun eventually became caliph, but it has not, to my knowledge, been clearly addressed before. It has been obscured in our principal textual source by the entire ly synthetic issue of how al-Hadi died.

Moscati's account of the succession crisis in al-Hadi's caliphate is mainly an accurate, though uncritical, reading of al-Tabari. It is al-Tabari, however, who obscures the question of Harun's replacement as heir apparent, and Moscati does not raise the question either. (3) Abbott had the advantage over Moscati of knowing a report provided by Ibn Abi [Usaybi.sup.[subset]a that claims Harun actually was replaced. She accepts this evidence, but does not comment on al-Tabari's efforts to create the strong impression that he was not. (4)

Kennedy relates the succession crisis to the wider issue of a power struggle under al-Hadi between the state bureaucracy and the military establishment. Al-Hadi is seen as favoring the military at the expense of the bureaucracy, and the Barmakid Yayhya ibn Khalid appears as the leading representative of the latter. Whether al-Hadi's eventual successor would be his brother Harun or his son [Ja.sup.[subset]]far was a question of which faction would prevail--Yahya ibn Khalid who supported Harun or the military who wanted [Ja.sup.[subset]]far. Kennedy too relies mainly on al-Tabari, and he believes that the formal replacement of Harun with Ja[subset]far never actually took place. (5)

Bonner is substantially in agreement with Kennedy's overall analysis, although he sees a danger of reading into this early conflict a pattern of the later Abbasid period. (6) He notes that not all the army commanders were opposed to Harun or, as both he and Kennedy see it, to the Barmakids. (7) In his view, court intrigue has received more than its fair share of attention and he emphasizes instead that the struggle over the succession was not confined to Baghdad and that Harun's accession was more than "a neatly executed coup d'etat pulled off in Baghdad by the Barmakids and al-Khayzuran." (8) Harun--or again as he sees it, the Barmakids--had a provincial power base in the north and west of the empire, where they had the support of several military commanders including the leading Khurasani officer Khuzayma ibn Khazim. It was this Khuzayma who intervened forcefully and decisively in the capital when alhadi died, to ensure that it was Harun who succeeded him. (9) As to whether Harun had been formally replaced as heir apparent, Bonner argues that he had, and he adduces the correspondence of textual and numismatic evidence on this point. He does not, however, deal with it as an issue within the textual sources. (10) In order to do so now, we shall begin with an account of how both Musaal-Hadi and his brother Harun al-Rashid acquired title to the succession from their father Muhammad al-Mahdi.

Once al-Mahdi succeeded his father Abu [Ja.sup.[subset]]far al-Mansur to the caliphate in 158/775, he moved quickly to appoint his own son Musa as his heir apparent. Musa was already just about old enough to succeed to the caliphate if necessary and the oath of allegiance was sworn to him as heir apparent (wali [al-.sup.[subset]]ahd) in 160/776. (11) Dirhams minted at Basra from 164/780-81 onwards and at al-Muhammadiyya (al-Rayy) in 167/783- 84 and 168/784-85 bear the inscription mimma amara bihi Musa wali [ahd.sup.[subset]] al-muslimin. (12) It is not recorded specifically that Musa received the title al-Hadi together with the oath of allegiance in 160/776, but al-Tabari clearly associates this title with Musa's new status. (13) Occasional reports give the impression that al-Mahdi had the oath of allegiance sworn to both Musa and his younger brother Harun at the same time, but this is almost certainly a retrospective telescoping of events. (14) Even so, that it was already al-Mahdi's intention in 160/776-77 to have the oath of a llegiance sworn eventually to Harun is suggested by the appointment in that year of a secretary and vizier to look after Harun's affairs. (15) Also a dirham issued in Ifriqiya in 160/776-77 bears the inscription mimma amara bihi Harun ibn amir almu[contains]minin. (16) This inscription appears regularly on the dirhams of Ifriqiya from 164/780-81 onwards. (17)

In 163/779-80 al-Mahdi appointed Harun to a large governorship referred to as "the whole of the West" (almaghrib kulla-hu), together with Armenia and Azerbaijan. (18) This gave Harun nominal responsibility for the Muslims' three main border regions in the western half of their empire--North Africa, the Byzantine frontier, and the Caucasus. (19) Al-Mahdi was renewing a policy begun by his father towards the end of his caliphate. In 154/770-71 Abu [Ja.sup.[subset]]far had dispatched a large army to restore order in Ifriqiya and decided in the same year to build a new base at al-Raqqa for the war with Byzantium. Construction of the base began in 155/771-72 under the auspices of his son al-Mahdi, who was then his heir apparent. This was a practical demonstration of the new dynasty's commitment to the defense of the western as well as the eastern empire, and Abu [Ja.sup.[subset]]far traveled in person to Jerusalem to inaugurate the new arrangement. (20) Al-Mahdi as caliph did the same in 163/780, after taking Harun to the Byzan tine frontier and sending him across the frontier to raid. (21)

In 165/782 Harun led a second and unusually bold incursion into Byzantine territory, after which both sides agreed to a three-year suspension of hostilities. This was seen by the Muslims as a great success. In 166/782-83 al-Mahdi had his commanders swear the oath of allegiance to Harun "after Musa," and gave him the title al-Rashid. (22) Dirhams issued in Ifriqiya continue to bear the inscription mimma amara bihi Harun ibn amir [al-mu.sup.[contains]]minin, and the same inscription also appears on dirhams issued by the mint of Harunabad/al-Haruniyya on the Byzantine frontier in 168/784-85 and 169/785-86. (23)

The numismatic evidence and some of the textual evidence suggests that, despite the oath of allegiance to Harun, the office and title of wall [al-.sup.[subset]]ahd remained exclusively Musa al-Hadi's. Wali [al-.sup.[subset]]ahd, in other words, remained strictly the one individual who would automatically become caliph in the event of the actual caliph's death. (24) This interpretation of al-Mahdi's policy has not held up well in the Arabic sources. (25) A series of highly tendentious reports in al-Tabari is clearly designed to represent Harun specifically as wall [a1-.sup.[subset]]ahd under al-Mahdi and, moreover, from at least as early as l63/779-80. (26) Other sources commonly make no distinction between Musa and Harun in respect of the wilayat [al-.sup.[subset]]ahd. (27)

Al-Mahdi now turned his attention to the heir apparent, Musa al-Hadi, and to the east. In 167/783-84 Musa was sent to lead a large military expedition against the strategically important and still unsubdued mountain principality of Tabaristan. Substantial reinforcements were sent in the following year, l68/784-85. (28) The importance of this expedition is somewhat obscured by its premature abandonment when al-Mahdi died soon afterwards, but it was in fact a high-profile military response to a serious uprising in which many Muslims had been killed. (29) Al-Mahdi was again following a precedent set by his father Abu [Ja.sup.[subset]]far, who had sent al-Mahdi himself to take charge of a similar invasion of Tabaristan in 141/758-59. (30) Al-Mahdi had stayed on in the east as governor of Khurasan, and Musa might well have done the same if his father's caliphate had not been cut short. (31) As a further distraction from Musa's campaign, the truce that Hakrun had agreed upon with the Byzantines in 165\782 broke down and t he western border war that was still nominally his responsibility began again to intensify. (32)

This was the situation in 169/785 when al-Mahdi died suddenly in Mgsabadhan in western Persia, most probably in a hunting accident. (33) Al-Tabari reports that al-Mahdi was just about to promote Harun as heir apparent ahead of Musa when he died, and adds by way of corroboration another report that al-Mahdi set off for Masabadhan in a great hurry. (34) However, it may be...