Why were medieval Islamic states so unstable?
The Caliphates were at least using provincial systems which from modern perspective should be more advanced than feudal system in Europe since provincial titles weren't theoretically supposed to be inheritable. Yet the Arabs made it de-facto inheritable with far more political struggles than other regions.
Like in Al-Andalus there were literally 50 years of balkanization every 100 years, and even within the 100 years's 75% of the time the taifa governors didn't give much shit towards the central Cordoba caliph.
Not to mention the modern states' structures and the modern-ish Chinese bureaucracy, even the contemporary European feudal states seemingly had less frequent power struggle and succession crisis. literally wtf had they done?
Should've posted this tho
>>823764
1) MUH FEUDAL RIGHTS being a very legal justification for not obeying the king's shit.
2) Strong Local Governments like Cities. Which even in European Kingdoms governed theirfuckingselves.
3) An arbiter for interstate struggles in the form of the pope.
4) And you're wrong. You've drank into the Nation-State narrative that appropriated medieval kingdoms of Europe as continuations of current nation states in the region.
Take for example the Kingdom of England and France during the Angevin period. Was it really two separate kingdoms? Furthermore there's >H >R >E that's a warring mess of competing houses. Oh and about that, was the French king of the 900's-1300's even in control of his whole fucking kingdom? Seems his writ doesn't extend to very powerful nobles like Burgundian ones.
Not to mention succession wars are a very common thing in Europe. Hell succession wars even got worse AFTER the medieval ages.
>>823764
As Whickham points, compartimentation of the peninsula is related with the problems of forming unitarian states in Iberia.
>>823764
how was medieval europe any more stable?
Anyways, my pet theory is that the catholic church had a mediating effect on Western Europe giving the various monarchs a higher power to appease. Meanwhile the Caliph was the de facto religious and state leader causing huge problems when he died.
>>823825
>competing houses, states, princedoms, towns, what the fuck have you*
fix'd
>>823825
Don't forget the Imperial Villages.
>>823764
More advanced doesn't necessarily mean more stable. Unlike the Germanic kingdoms and their Salic law, the Arabs and Berbers were using Imperial Roman administrative practices, and we all know how stable that was.
>>823764
Mandate of Heaven. Meaning Chinese culture is very mean to failing governments.
Also China happens to rule over shit larger than what medieval European kingdoms could manage, give them a break. Yes it's centralized but there's so little a pre-modern centralized state can do governing over a hugeassfuck realm.
Not to mention even if it was centralized, a lot of decisions were still done on the ground by Imperial Governors, Jiedushi, and Viceroys. Just take for the fact that rural chinese are responsible for their own policing and must have weapons, with only a single legal officer sent to ensure their gathering of the town posse is legal.
>>823825
>Europe wasn't better
Ok, I'm fixing my question to "How did the Islamic provincial system end up equally as bad as the European feudal system?"
And would you please elaborate on the muslim local government mechanism?
>>823896
>governnors, Jiedushi and viceroys
You mean before the Song transformation when they started to take back local power from the governors by replace them every 3 or 5 years from imperial examination laureates. After that the capital-province relation had been quite stable. Other than a few kings as the compromise to found new dynasties who were removed within the first few decades of the new dynasties, almost all rebels were peasants and aboriginals.
>>823920
Local governors and entities were always powerful. The replacement guy has the same power as the cunt he replaced.
They were also empowered to make on-the-ground decisions anyway.
>>823897
Not him, but European feudalism was unstable in a different sort of way from the Arab or Byzantine model state. The European Kingdom was a decentralized confederation of intermarried aristocrats whose king was a sort of arbiter in disputes between families. The Caliphate or Empire however were highly centralized governments where the ruler was the strongman who rose to power by promising this or that to a core group of supporters. Once the ruler or his descendants were no longer powerful enough or benevolent enough another would be raised against him.
A king was less powerful, but more useful to the kingdom as an important tool keeping the balance of power between factions in check. The Emir, Caliph, and Emperor however had more power and actively balanced power as the prime antagonist against all his subjects. The king didn't have to do much of anything but arbitrate a dispute now and then for a kingdom to keep going, and shit only hit the fan when one faction got powerful enough to use the king against their rivals consistently, but the caliph or emperor had to constantly empower or humiliate others to maintain his reign, and mistakes are easily made.
>>823929
And once their terms were finished, they would have to fuck off anyway. On the other hand they were almost always assigned to places far away from home where they have no connections. I think when you said "local governors" you messed up the unofficial town authorities (Xiangxian) with the ones assigned from the capital. Yes they were quite autonomous but it was largely limited works of letters thus unless during the period when peasants and nomads were causing social instability those folks were impossible to arm themselves.
>>823949
Thanks but I'm still quite confused. Did the islamic laws even bother mentioning anything about the governmental structures like how provincial governors should be replaced and the taifa governors simply corrupted the system, or there weren't actually any codified procedures for how an islamic state should work with its provinces?
>>824016
Wait I think I confused Iqta with Taifa
>>823764
I'd like you to take a look at Visgothic Spain before calling Al-Andalus unstable. Look at what they had to adopt.
>>824016
Contrary to what people like to say about Islamic Law, no. Like the Germanic tribes the Arabs had their own tribal laws which you see reflected in things like seniority succession and appanage that sees brothers and brother-in-laws taking over an emirate while their sons divide up the rest into local power bases.
But it's not succession that was the issue for Medieval Islamic states - in this they were more stable compared to Western Europe with their wars of succession, though that's not to say the brothers and sons didn't try and conquer each other to reunite the old realm. It's the Roman government they adopted that was the cause of their headaches and which regularly saw the end of these kingdoms by usurpation or conquest by a rebel from within.
>>824111
>It's the Roman government they adopted that was the cause of their headaches and which regularly saw the end of these kingdoms by usurpation or conquest by a rebel from within.
Elaboration please. I'm not so familiar with Roman history.
>>824168
Basically the Arabs conquered territory that was under Roman control the longest, and could adopt their system of laws and taxation almost wholesale complete with native bureaucrats just a generation removed at most from Byzantine control. Roman bureaucracy was very developed and allowed a central court to pull strings in the form of taxes, tributes, appointments, and professional militias directly. This bureaucracy was run by an educated urban class who needed a leader that could dominate the provinces through diplomacy or military might to function, making them send their tributes and accept orders in timely fashion in order to maintain this bureaucracy and the state along with it.
So in feudal states wealth was mostly kept by local landholders and barons who held their estates in exchange for loyalty to their lords. In the Caliphates however a larger share of wealth was delivered directly to the capital which then redistributed it in order to secure loyalty.
>>824213
And what happened was that every 50 years or less the provincial tax collectors started to keep the tax revenue for their own instead of sending it to the capital of the caliphate, if not openly fighting with other provinces.
How come this happened so often? Was the Roman empire like this?
>>823764
They where alot stabler then their norther counterparts i can tell you that much
>>824234
Not exactly. What usually happens is that a provincial governor, due to isolation maybe, manages to gather enough personal power in his region to challenge central authority. Or court politics begins to shift to the advantage of a faction that pushes out another, who then agitate in a province.
This happens about every 50-150 years as a result of failure to balance the two above scenarios. The latter ends up with a rebel army marching on the capital and overthrowing the regime, the former sees a party close to the ruler such as a trusted lieutenant or captain of his personal guard or eunuch of his private household suddenly grab power by reducing the ruler to a puppet or expelling all their court rivals to the provinces or outright exile from the realm. Eventually one of these two wins out and a new dynasty arises to begin the cycle again.
>>824234
>Was the Roman empire like this?
All the time. You could barely go a century without at least three emperors getting overthrown violently by a palace coup or some governor rushing in with a private army to take the throne.
>>823896
Don't buy into the PRC propaganda of "5000 years of history!" While China had several long lasting dynasties they were in no way continuous with each other. Of all the numerous Chines empires only the Han, Tang, Song, Ming and Qing lasted long, and the Tang and Qing were not even Chinese. Do you consider the modern Spanish Romans because Rome once occupied the Iberian peninsula? The Han were also co-temporal with the Roman empire which was just as stable as them. To say all the various Chinese powers were part of some thousand year history is like saying the European Union is the same culture and nation as the Roman Empire.
>>824466
its more a continuation of Chinese civilization
>>824466
>Tang not Chinese
Xianbei shill please leave
>>824466
The Tang was Chinese...
>>824466
You're right. 5000 years is hyperbole. But 3500 years isn't. Compare to the next longest lasting civ, Egypt, 2700 years.
Honestly went to shit as soon as Orm took the Bell of St. James from Almansur tbqcachwyf.
>>824774
But what does Ocean Master want with a bell?
>>824786
Fuck off with your capeshit.
>>823764
because easterners by nature are all conniving shits that make a grab at power at every chance possible. Look at how many civil wars were fought by the Byzantines
I may be wrong on this one, but isn't there something about primogeniture being less established in Islam?
If that's the case, then that would probably go a long way towards explaining the many succession crises.
>>823764
Literally all governments before the Early Modern era were unstable by our standards. Our modern age of relative peace is probably the first of its kind.
>>823764
Lots or male heirs because of harems.
>>825075
>what is pax romana
>>825110
the pax romana was maintained by an unprecedented hegemony, the collapse of which provided the very context for the sort of crises the Andalusians were dealing with.
Muslims were never the majority of the population during that time period. They were mostly just the ruling class, military, and hanger ons.
>>825138
*hangers on*
>>825124
How can you even assume that there won't be a hegemony collapse in our near future? Nearly every sovereign government today is very young even by historical standards. Compare the ages of the governments of Germany, Russia, USA, India, UK, France, etc. with just the Republic, which didn't even lose its hegemony, just underwent metamorphosis, after 500 years.
>>825221
>hangers on
people not soldiers or part of the ruling elite. That traveled with the muslim armies as they conquered their way across the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, and India.
>>825700
I know, I was correcting the grammar.
>>824466
>Don't buy into the PRC propaganda of "5000 years of history!"
Indeed. The Chinese Empire is roughly around 2000 years of history.
>Of all the numerous Chines empires only the Han, Tang, Song, Ming and Qing
Indeed, because Chinese history considers the breaks between these dynasties as warring states. Han (3 Kingdoms, Nanbeichao) T'ang (5 Dynasties, and 10 Kingdoms) Song for example. Congrats with listing the dynasties that represent unified Chinese rule brah.
>Do you consider the modern Spanish Romans because Rome once occupied the Iberian peninsula?
False Analogy. Cunts from Han to Qing referred to themselves as Chinese, with the exception of the Yuan (Mongol AND Chinese). Kek, the Manchu Qing called itself Chinese in their own language (rulers of an empire called "Dulumbai Gurun" = Middle Kingdom). They also all kept the same centralized bureaucratic state based increasingly on Confucian values.
Finally, don't buy into the 19th Century bullshit that "race = state!" or "race = culture!" as "Chineseness" was a cultural phenomena rather than ethnic.
>a thread about dynastic circles
>no one mention Ibn Khaldun and Asabiyyah
>/his/
>>823764
>The system lasted for 1292 years
>Unstable
Sure, OP.
You are focusing on an atypical example. The Iberian Peninsula was a nest of political intrigue since the Alans crossed the Pyrenees. The Saracen conquest changed very little the dispute among the aristocracy; Al-Andalus governments had to perform a painful juggling to get the minimum necessary governance.
The Caliphate the system itself, in general, fell apart for mass decentralization. The state - and the central authority - had a very thin presence, and the military authority had a very sound influence. The Ottomans tried to even unite the military authority with secular authority in one person - Sultan and Caliph - but the standard of excessive decentralization was maintained.
>>827462
Excellent point. At the time of Ibn Khaldun, the fall of the Mamluks was predictable, and the fall of Granada was a matter of time. Its competitors were more primitive peoples with a higher cohesive standard. But even these were eventually doomed to senility, despite the Ottoman dream of building the "eternal state".
>>825138
False, at the height of the Caliphate of Cordoba, the majority of the population was probably Muslim in Al Andalus, mostly due to Berber migrants though
>>828251
If they were majoritary muslim it was most likely from locals conversion.
>>823827
Would you mind expanding on this? As a Spaniard I am interested in this theory.
>>828268
He just points that Iberia is very compartmentalized peninsula, composed mostly by high plateaus which are cut by mountains with a great ecologic/landscape variety and without great rivers liking the area.
That means that is really hard to hold the whole country united without modern technology, he notes that the interior of the Tarraconense, outside of the coast and the Ebro basin is one of the most isolated regions of the whole Roman Empire. And claims that the great success of the Visigothic state is that it was the court of Toledo managed to became the key point around the whole power revolved. Once the unifying Gothic power disapeared, Iberia divided herself once more. The work of Corduba would be need to merge the new states once more (and it only lasted while it was a strong power on Corduba, shattering again when it weakened).
>>825138
*Bedouin Arabs were never the majority of the population
A few thousand Muslims from the Maghreb and Syria emigrated to Spain at the behest of the Umayyad Caliph, and a lot of these people married into local proto-Spanish families and had Muslim children.
By the time of the Reconquista, most of the Taifas' subjects were Muslim.
>>828346
Thank you.
>>828567
You are welcome.
Its mentioned in his "Framing the Early Middle Ages"
