• 1 I am grateful to Maya Maskarinec, Ryan Rittenberg and BEO’s anonymous reviewer for their helpful co (...)

1Some time after the founding of Baghdad in 145/762, Abū Ǧaʿfar al-Manṣūr, the second caliph of the Abbasid dynasty (r. 754-775), granted an audience to a Byzantine ambassador from the emperor’s court at Constantinople¹. When the caliph asked for the visitor’s opinion of the nascent capital, the latter did not hesitate to point out its most serious flaw, namely that the presence of the markets within Baghdad’s administrative core – the walled “Round City” – posed a serious threat to security. Though initially hesitant to act on the Greek’s criticism, al-Manṣūr eventually responded resolutely by ordering that the markets be transferred outside the walls to al-Karḫ, a district to the south which predated the caliph’s city.

• 2 Ṭabarī, Tārīḫ, vol. 3, p. 323.
• 3 Ibn al-ʿibrī, Tārīḫ, p. 212.
• 4 Baġdādī, Tārīḫ, vol. 1, p. 80.
• 5 Baġdādī, Tārīḫ, vol. 1, p. 78-79. I have not encountered this episode elsewhere. It is absent from (...)

2So, in any case, we are told. This account appears in at least four versions, each taking up about half of a printed page or less. The first appears in the chronicle of al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923) in a collection of reports concerning the planning, building, funding and organization of Baghdad, all under the heading of the year 146. This version, in which the ambassador is given a tour of the city and explicitly asked for his opinion, is plain in style; in particular, the ambassador’s critique is simply stated: “your enemies are with you in your city”, he says, these enemies being “the market-rabble” (al-sūqa).² The version appearing in the abbreviated history of Bar Hebraeus (d. 685/1286) is a simple abridgment of al-Ṭabarī’s account and will not be treated here in detail.³ The last two versions both appear in the introduction to the History of Baghdad, a voluminous biographical dictionary by the preacher and ḥadīṯ professor al-Ḫaṭīb al-Baġdādī (d. 463/1071). The plainer of the two is quite similar to al-Ṭabarī’s version, with the same tour at the beginning, although the market critique is now two-fold and more specific: “the markets are in (the city), and no one is barred from the markets, so the enemy enters as if he wants to shop. As for the merchants, they travel to remote regions and discuss news about you.”⁴ Finally, al-Ḫaṭīb’s alternative version, which he tells first, is greatly expanded to include three distinct criticisms of al-Manṣūr’s handiwork: insufficient water supply, the lack of gardens, and the dangerous proximity of his subjects (i.e., the need, yet again, to move the markets).⁵

• 6 Kennedy 1992, p. 136.
• 7 Ibid., 136.
• 8 Emperor Leo III’s triumph over an Umayyad siege of Constantinople in 718 turned out to be decisive, (...)
• 9 Kennedy 1992, p. 136.

3This incident is somewhat anomalous since the Arabic sources mention few Byzantine visits to the caliphate in the mid–8^th century. While reports of diplomatic contacts between the two empires abound for the early Umayyad period, they decline in the decades leading up to the Abbasid revolution and into the late 8^th century.⁶ This decline in reports has been ascribed to the switch away from Greek as the Umayyad administrative language in the late–7^th century, the violence of the Abbasid revolution, the transfer of the capital from Syria to Iraq, and the decade of internal struggles which followed the revolution.⁷ The end of any realistic possibility of capturing Constantinople in 718, and the outburst of two pre-Abbasid rebellions, in 740 and 744, may also have encouraged the caliphs to direct their attention towards internal affairs.⁸ At the same time, the scarcity of embassy accounts for the 8^th century does not definitively demonstrate a paucity of official contact between the empires, since it may simply indicate our 9^th-century Arab sources’ predominant interest in the internal affairs of the Islamic empire for this period.⁹ However that may be, the account of the critical ambassador stands out as one of the few reports of a Byzantine’s visit to a caliph during this time.

• 10 For example, the ambassador’s brazenness is not unlikely in itself. It was a standard practice for (...)
• 11 Robinson 2003, p. 50-52.
• 12 The isnād: Ṭabarī, Tārīḫ, vol. 3, p. 322. Al-Ṭabarī used terms like ḏakara/ḏukira when he did not h (...)

4This paper is not about the tale’s veracity, but I should nevertheless mention the need for caution in assessing its historical value. Although there is no reason with regard to its content to discard the tale as fiction,¹⁰ the long interval between the 8^th-century event and the production of accounts depicting it – over one hundred years at the least –makes it difficult to determine their reliability, a typical problem for this early period.¹¹ Furthermore, al-Ṭabarī’s version of the account of the critical ambassador demands special caution because of the historian’s own uncertainty as to the report’s credibility, expressed by the absence of a firm chain of transmission between himself and his source (the isnād is of the form : “ḏukira ʿan [so-and-so] anna…”), as well as his inclusion of two additional alternative explanations for the ejection of the markets from the Round City.¹²

• 13 As part of her monograph on Arab Muslim perceptions of the Byzantines, El Cheikh (2004, p. 150-152)(...)

5Regardless of the incident’s historicity, later accounts of it allow for an understanding of the writers’ perceptions of al-Manṣūr and Baghdad’s early history. I will now examine the three versions of the Byzantine ambassador’s conversation with al-Manṣūr found in al-Ṭabarī and al-Ḫaṭīb al-Baġdādī, addressing two interrelated questions. First, why was it significant to the writers of the accounts that the reason for the market transfer was an ambassador? Second, why was it significant that he was a Byzantine ambassador? Addressing these questions will shed light on later generations’ interpretation of the role of Arab-Byzantine interactions during the crucial and formative years of al-Manṣūr’s caliphate.¹³

• 14 Al-Ṭabarī: “One of the Patrikioi of the Byzantines approached (al-Manṣūr) as an envoy”; Ṭabarī, Tār (...)

6We begin with the first question. All versions emphasize that it was an ambassador, a high-ranking foreign official, who confronted the caliph with his city’s flaws.¹⁴ Why does it matter that an ambassador and not, for instance, one of al-Manṣūr’s advisors provided this criticism? In addressing this question, I will focus on al-Ṭabarī’s text since it seems most clearly to explain the narrative importance of this foreign criticism.

• 15 Ṭabarī, Tārīḫ, vol. 3, p. 319: “wa-mimmā kāna fī-hā min ḏālik istitmām Abī Ǧaʿfar madīnata-hu Baġdā (...)
• 16 Ṭabarī, Tārīḫ, vol. 3, p. 319: “ṣifat bināʾi-hi iyyā-hā.”
• 17 Ṭabarī, Tārīḫ, vol. 3, p. 379: “ḥawwala al-Manṣūr al-aswāq min Madīnat al-Salām ilā Bāb al-Karḫ wa- (...)
• 18 Ṭabarī, Tārīḫ, vol. 3, p. 323: “wa-lammā inṣarafa al-bitrīq amara bi-iḫrāǧ al-sūq min al-madīna.”

7Al-Ṭabarī’s version is reported as part of a collection of accounts relating to the main theme for the year 146, declared in its opening lines: “Among the events of that year was Abū Ǧaʿfar (al-Manṣūr)’s completion of his city Baghdad.”¹⁵ Al-Ṭabarī then promises “a description of al-Manṣūr’s construction of Baghdad.”¹⁶ However, the account of the critical ambassador does not concern the construction of Baghdad but rather the market transfer. Along with the two other explanations for the market transfer which follow, it forms a discussion which would seem most suited to the entry for the year in which the markets were, in fact, transferred. But according to al-Ṭabarī himself, this event did not occur in the year 146 but instead a decade later: under the year 157, he narrates that “al-Manṣūr transferred the markets from the City of Peace (i.e., Baghdad’s Round City) to the Gate of al-Karḫ and other locations,” adding, “and we have already mentioned the reason for that.”¹⁷ This “mentioning,” of course, is the discussion under the year 146. Such extreme foreshadowing requires some sort of explanation, especially since the account of the critical ambassador gives the impression that the caliph did not wait long before acting on the ambassador’s suggestion: “when the Patrikios departed, (al-Manṣūr) ordered that the market be expelled from the city.”¹⁸ Even if we are supposed to imagine a significant delay between al-Manṣūr’s decision and the expulsion, or between the advice and his decision, we are still left to wonder: why did al-Ṭabarī place the three accounts explaining the market expulsion in the entry for a year which preceded the actual event by a decade?

• 19 Ṭabarī, Tārīḫ, vol. 3, p. 320: “Ḫālid b. Barmak ḫaṭṭa madīnat Abī Ǧaʿfar la-hu.” Ḫālid was from Bal (...)
• 20 For the nuanced usage of the term ḫaṭṭa, see Akbar 1989, esp. p. 24.
• 21 Elsewhere, al-Ṭabarī reports that two men appointed by al-Manṣūr – al-Ḥaǧǧāǧ b. Arṭāt (not to be co (...)

9At the beginning of the first report, we learn that the caliph’s influential Khurasanian advisor Ḫālid b. Barmak was responsible for “marking out” (ḫaṭṭa) the city.¹⁹ In the narratives of al-Ṭabarī and other contemporary writers, “marking out” unclaimed land was an important prequel to building upon it.²⁰ Furthermore, not all accounts of this “marking out” of Baghdad give the role to a Persian; often al-Manṣūr or other Arabs are said to do the job, even in reports from other chapters of al-Tabarī’s book.²¹ Thus, with several accounts of the “marking out” of Baghdad at his disposal which did not involve a foreign element, al-Ṭabarī chose for inclusion here the one in which a Persian is distinguished as the caliph’s agent.

• 23 Ṭabarī, Tārīḫ, vol. 3, p. 320: “hayhāt yā Ḫālid! abayta illā al-mayl ilā aṣḥābi-ka al-ʿaǧam!”
• 24 Ṭabarī, Tārīḫ, vol. 3, p. 320-321: “fa-ammā iḏ faʿalta fa-innī arā anna tahdim al-ān ḥattā talḥaq b (...)
• 25 Al-Masʿūdī writes of al-Manṣūr, “it is said he was the stingiest of people (yuqāl huwa abḫal al-nās(...)

11But al-Manṣūr sees through this justification to Ḫālid’s ulterior motive, replying with derision, “How preposterous, Ḫālid! You insist on sympathizing with your fellow men (aṣḥāb) the Persians (ʿaǧam, lit. non-Arabs)!”²³ And he orders for the spoliation to commence. Then, when it becomes clear that the costs of spoliation will be more than the cost of quarrying the building material, the caliph once again turns to Ḫālid, who reminds him of his previous advice, adding, “But now that you’ve done it (i.e., begun razing), I think you should raze it until you reach its foundations; otherwise it will be said that you were unable to raze it.”²⁴ Again the caliph rejects Ḫālid’s advice, ordering that the spoliation cease. In this account, then, Ḫālid presents the remains of Ctesiphon as a symbol of Islam’s dominance over ancient empires, even though al-Manṣūr, consistent with his common depiction as a “penny-pincher,” maintains a more pragmatic attitude towards the historical monuments in his backyard.²⁵ Nevertheless, his mocking rejection of Ḫālid’s initial advice reveals that he too sees in the ruins a meaningful symbol – not of Islam’s triumph, but of the great civilization of the Persian ʿaǧam – which, as successor to Sassanian kings, he feels free to dismantle, incorporating its pieces into the new symbol of his own glory, Baghdad. Whether a symbol of Persian glory or Persian defeat, the ruins of Ḫusrō’s palace are treated here as a vehicle for al-Manṣūr to relate to those who ruled before him.

• 26 Ṭabarī, Tārīḫ, vol. 3, p. 321.
• 27 On the “carrying off of city gates in antiquity,” see Wendell 1971, p. 114.

12Al-Ṭabarī follows this with another account (in a new report) concerned with Baghdad’s predecessors. This one narrates the origins of five of the eight gates of al-Manṣūr’s Round City: the biblical king Solomon, son of David, obtained five iron gates, “which no one today could imitate”, from “devils (šayāṭīn)”, for his city al-Zandaward. Then, much later, al-Ḥaǧǧāǧ, governor of Iraq under ʿAbd al-Malik, took the gates to his new city of Wāsiṭ. Finally, when al-Manṣūr needed gates for Baghdad, he requisitioned the demonic portals for his own purposes.²⁶ The spoliation of gates was a common symbol of conquest in antiquity.²⁷ In the case of al-Manṣūr’s use of Solomon’s gates, it should be understood to signify inheritance more than conquest. Although recognizing the practical imperative of supplying gates for the city, a Muslim living in Abbasid Baghdad a century and a half later would surely have seen this story as emblematic of the caliphate’s succession to the pre-Islamic prophets, of which Solomon was one.

• 28 As evidence of Baghdad’s decay, al-Ḫaṭīb’s section on the topography of Baghdad is particularly len (...)
• 29 Al-Ḫaṭīb notes that Baghdad’s famous green dome, whose importance he emphasizes as an emblem of the (...)

14This, then, allows us to suggest an answer to the first question: advice from an ambassador was seen as part of the foreign influence that was crucial to Baghdad’s origins. The ambassador, like other representatives and material symbols of foreign entities, directly affected the caliph’s construction. Writing from a different vantage point, al-Ḫaṭīb al-Baġdādī described a distant, glorious beginning to a city which in his time looked very little like al-Manṣūr’s Baghdad; then, as in al-Ṭabarī’s time, the account of the critical ambassador continued to form part of the city’s lore.²⁸ Just as stones from Khusro’s palace came to form part of the Round City, the criticism from the mouth of an emperor’s representative was imprinted upon the city’s internal organization in the form of a market-free ‘downtown,’ a mark which, alongside the green dome which once stood out above the Abbasid capital, was to be remembered long after it had ceased to exist.²⁹

• 30 Baġdādī, Tārīḫ, vol. 1, p.  78.

15We can now pose the second question with which this paper is concerned: if the ambassador’s role signifies direct foreign influence on Baghdad, then why was it significant that he was a Byzantine ambassador? At least from al-Ḫaṭīb al-Baġdādī’s text, we are left with the impression that there are a number of “delegations from kings” waiting at the caliph’s door. Why, in our tale of the critical ambassador, did it matter that the emissary admitted to the caliph’s presence turned out to be “an envoy from the court of the Byzantine king?”³⁰

• 32 The Buyids were generally indifferent to discussions concerning caliphal legitimacy, as long as the (...)
• 33 Additionally, in al-Ṭabarī, before the account of the critical ambassador, but in the same ḫabar, t (...)

18Al-Ṭabarī’s telling may merely hint at this, but in al-Ḫaṭīb al-Baġdādī’s text, written at a time when the caliph’s subjection to his Buyid emir allowed for the more open criticism of the Abbasids, the suggestion has become more apparent.³² The first version of the account in al-Ḫaṭīb’s history, as mentioned above, closely resembles al-Ṭabarī’s version, so much so that it is clearly based on al-Ṭabarī’s text, or at least upon a version which was closely related to it: the opening is a paraphrase of al-Ṭabarī’s opening, and the end expresses the same basic idea, that the markets were “ejected” from the city, with the overlap of a few key words.³³ It is in the middle section, the advice itself, that al-Ḫaṭīb’s telling differs most significantly, for rather than issue a blanket condemnation of all the market-goers as the caliph’s “enemies”, the ambassador now provides a more nuanced assessment of the security situation:

• 37 Lassner (1980, p. 200-201), for example, interprets the cow as an indication of security risk. This (...)

22The criticism which the Byzantine offers, although depicted here as a direct response to what he learns about the runaway cow, is not actually explicitly related to what he has just heard. The cow may be understood as a prompt for the ambassador to voice critiques that have been on his mind, possibly suggesting to him (as to the reader of the account) the security risk of the markets’ proximity (if a cow can wander right up to the palace window, what might an enemy do?),³⁷ but the narrative does not make the connection clear. Instead, the cow prelude, while emphasizing the ambassador’s foreignness by showing him to have difficulty understanding Arabic, serves primarily as a neat rhetorical parallel to the tripartite criticism which the ambassador now offers.

• 39 For example, the Kharijites referred to all the caliphs following the first four “rightly-guided” c (...)
• 40 For example, in a narrative of the early conquests ascribed to al-Wāqidī (9^th c.) but probably comp (...)
• 41 Kennedy 1992, p. 133-136. For several “cultural” embassies to Umayyads and other Muslim potentates, (...)
• 42 For example, the Umayyad palace Quṣayr ʿAmra was patronized between 715 and 750, most likely by Yaz (...)
• 43 Crone 2004, p. 44.
• 44 Mottahedeh 1989, p. 83.
• 45 Masʿūdī, Tanbīh, p. 342: “yasūs siyāsat al-mulūk.” Al-Manṣūr’s panegyrists, on the other hand, insi (...)
• 46 For the claim to restore the righteous caliphate, see, e.g., Kennedy 1981, p. 58.

25Secrets are what the standard autocrat is expected to have. The Prophet and his four “rightly-guided” successors were distinguished from “kings” by their justice and the importance of consensus in their decision-making.³⁹ Legends of the early conquests depict the Muslims and their leaders as just, frank, willing to consult others, and far from the tyranny to be found in their Byzantine enemies.⁴⁰ By contrast, the Umayyads – who themselves were culturally influenced by Byzantine emissaries,⁴¹ who were geographically, and for a time linguistically, in close proximity with the Byzantine empire, and whose interest in Byzantine culture continued through the end of their rule⁴² – were frequently denigrated with accusations that they were “kings,” a claim also supported by pointing to filial inheritance of the caliphate and the liberal use of the tools of autocracy, such as jails and bodyguards.⁴³ Abbasid revolutionary ideology promised to topple the tyranny of kingship and return to just rule, but by al-Ṭabarī’s day, it was abundantly clear that the Abbasids were as autocratic as the Umayyads, if not more so. Early consultative government was contrasted with arbitrary Abbasid rule.⁴⁴ In his own time, al-Manṣūr’s ruthlessness was noticed – he was said to have “governed like a king”⁴⁵ – and criticized, especially in view of Abbasid claims to restoring the righteous caliphate after the impious, illegitimate Umayyads.⁴⁶

• 47 For example, only reluctantly did the second caliph ʿUmar, a companion of the Prophet who was known (...)
• 48 Lassner 1980, p. 200: “the development of the island [ʿAbbāsiyya] was an ambitious commercial ventu (...)
• 49 Given that water conduits existed before the walls of the city were built, Lassner (1970, p. 246) a (...)
• 50 The translation movement began in the days of al-Manṣūr (Gutas 1998, p. 28ff.) and ended “around th (...)
• 51 Rosenthal 1975, p. 10.
• 52 Yaʿqūbī, Buldān, p. 243 (9^th c.): “al-raḥā al-ʿuẓmā yuqāl la-hā Raḥā al-Biṭrīq wa-kānat māʾat ḥaǧar (...)

27In a similar vein, al-Manṣūr’s decision to provide his city with a better water supply and “greenery” in response to the Byzantine’s first two pieces of advice shows him betraying the very ascetic ideals he hypocritically claimed to uphold earlier when he denied the need for more water and rejected “amusement and play.” These ideals, like conceptions of good leadership, had their origins in the beginnings of Islam and the pre-Islamic Arab past.⁴⁷ Although not a historically plausible explanation for the decision to cultivate ʿAbbāsiyya, nor for the decision to provide Baghdad with waterworks, nevertheless this story may well have seemed plausible to al-Ḫaṭīb’s contemporaries. The cultivation of ʿAbbāsiyya was probably a commercial enterprise,⁴⁸ and the infrastructure for transporting water into the city seems to have been in place before the ambassador’s visit.⁴⁹ However, the placement of these critiques in a Byzantine’s mouth correlates well with the widespread perception (often true) that technical expertise came from books found in Byzantine lands. To writers living during and after the Greek-Arabic translation movement of the 8^th, 9^th and 10^th centuries⁵⁰ – in which Greek books on scientific and technical subjects were particularly favored with translation⁵¹ – it would have seemed plausible that Baghdad’s water supply system and public landscaping were improved by a Greek. Moreover, the presence in Baghdad of a highly productive mill-complex with its own tale of Byzantine origins – it was known as “the Mill-Complex of the Patrikios” and was said to have been “designed by a Patrikios who came to (al-Manṣūr) from the Byzantine king” – gave further reason to believe that the Abbasid capital’s infrastructure might have developed under direct Byzantine influence.⁵²

• 53 Fowden 2004, p. 57-79.

28In short, these first two criticisms (scarcity of water and greenery) serve the narrative purpose by plausibly emphasizing al-Manṣūr’s willingness to follow all of the ambassador’s suggestions – demonstrating the foreigner’s sway over him – and by accusing al-Manṣūr (or the Abbasids in general) of casting off the ideals associated with just leadership. Perhaps it was understandable that the Umayyads, perched as they were in an old Roman city in an old Roman province, had chosen to adorn their bathhouses with images of voluptuous human forms,⁵³ but after the Abbasid revolution, one might have expected new vigor in enforcing Islamic moral ideals. Instead, implies our tale, Byzantine taste was imported anew, directly from the emperor’s court.

• 54 So Yāqūt, writing only half a century before the ignominious end of the Abbasid caliphate, begins h (...)
• 55 E.g., Ṭabarī, Tārīḫ, vol. 3, p. 272-277; Yaʿqūbī, Tārīḫ, p. 373 (practical only); later, Yāqūt, Muʿ(...)
• 56 Tārīḫ 238: “fa-l-ḥamdu li-llāh allāḏī ḏaḫara-hā lī wa-aġfala ʿan-hā kulla man taqaddamanī… la-takūn (...)
• 57 For examination of some of the folklore surrounding Baghdad’s origins, Wendell 1971. Horoscope: Baġ (...)
• 58 Dār al-salām; Qur’ān 6.127, 10.25; cited in Duri 1960.

31The origins of the Abbasid dynasty and Baghdad remained highly relevant as long as Abbasid caliphs ruled from “the mother of the world, mistress over the nations.”⁵⁴ This maternal city was in its first centuries a marvelous, prosperous capital, its origins tightly linked to al-Manṣūr, its destiny tied to the Abbasid caliphate. Origin myths for Baghdad abound, and al-Manṣūr is personally involved in choosing the site of the new glorious city, in at least one account setting out alone to find the site. While some accounts ascribe the choice of the site to practical considerations, like its optimal location for trade and its fine climate, in more marvelous accounts, the site is chosen for the caliph by divine decree in the form of a prophecy.⁵⁵ Then, having found the site, the caliph was said to have thanked God for saving the site for him and keeping all who came before him ignorant of it, declaring in his excitement, “It will be the most prosperous city on earth!”⁵⁶ The founding of Baghdad was a legendary event, and its existence was to be an everlasting boon to the caliphate, for according to the city’s horoscope, no caliph would ever die within its walls.⁵⁷ Its official name, “City of Peace,” referred to a Qurʾanic name for paradise.⁵⁸ Baghdad was the city of the great Abbasid caliphs, of whom al-Manṣūr was, if not the very first, then the first to consolidate the dynasty’s power and anchor it firmly on the throne. Any story related under the Abbasids concerning the origins of Baghdad would have carried considerable political and cultural significance.

• 59 Found in Bar Hebraeus (d. 1286) but not found in Yāqūt (d. 1229), as mentioned above.

32Thus we should understand the meddlesome ambassador’s appearance in al-Ṭabarī’s influential chronicle, and again in later works, as a reflection of how later generations, who were familiar with Greek cultural influence on their society, viewed Byzantine influence on Abbasid origins. This account, though not indispensable to a narrative of Baghdad’s early days, nevertheless continued to be repeated even in the 13^th century.⁵⁹ Both al-Ṭabarī’s version and al-Ḫaṭīb al-Baġdādī’s three-pronged alternative provide insight into Arab perception of Byzantine influence in the beginnings of Abbasid customs, most importantly their king-like behavior. If one asked, in the centuries that followed Baghdad’s legendary beginnings, why al-Manṣūr and his successors elevated themselves so far above their subjects, surrounding themselves by wall upon wall, no better in this regard than the Umayyad usurpers before them, this account provided a plausible answer: it all began when al-Manṣūr welcomed into his presence “an envoy from the court of the Byzantine king.”