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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 June 2019
Literary sources from the Abbasid period record few descriptions of courtly masquerades and plays called samāǧa, which closely resemble sumozhe plays from eighth-century China. On the basis of these samāǧa descriptions, the present paper argues that it is possible to understand how samāǧa plays were carried out. Moreover, I argue that samāǧa performances were a Central Asian custom imported to the Abbasid court with the establishment of the Turkish corps, and that its disappearance after the caliphate of al-Muʿtaḍid signals a substantial shift in the nature of the Turkish presence in the Abbasid heartland, marked by the establishment of the mamlūk system.
1 I sincerely thank the anonymous reviewers for their invaluable corrections and bibliographical indications, which significantly expanded the horizons of the present article and even opened new avenues for future research. I am also indebted to Kelly Carlton for her comments and proofreading on an earlier version of this paper. All errors are, of course, my own.
2 Moreh, Shmuel, Live Theatre and Dramatic Literature in the Medieval Arab World (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1992), 45–54Google Scholar.
3 Hamdan, Mas'ud, Poetics, Politics and Protest in Arab Theatre: The Bitter Cup and the Holy Rain (Brighton and Portland: Sussex Academic Press, 2006), 32–46Google Scholar.
4 Ahsan, Muhammad Manazir, Social Life under the Abbasids (London and New York: Longman Group, 1979), 270Google Scholar.
5 Moreh, Shmuel, “Performing artists”, in Meri, J. W. (ed.), Medieval Islamic Civilization: An Encyclopaedia, vol. 1 (New York and London: Routledge, 2006), 599–601Google Scholar.
6 Moreh, Live Theatre, 45–54.
7 See, for instance, the description of a Nawrūz gift-giving celebration in first/seventh-century Kaskar related by al-Tawḥīdī. According to this report to the Umayyad governor ʿAmr b. Saʿīd al-Ašdaq (3–70/624–690), received on the day of Nawrūz, a highly symbolic gift from a local: a dome plate under which a few small birds where entrapped. The local man, after reciting a few verses inviting ʿAmr al-Ašdaq not to devour the birds, proceeded to set them free, arguably in an apt comparison with the ambition of political freedom of the governor himself, who was later to revolt against the caliph in Damascus. Al-Tawḥīdī, , Kitāb al-Baṣāʾir wa-l-Ḏaḫāʾir (Bayrūt: Dār Ṣādir, 1408/1988), 9, 110Google Scholar; Morony, Michael G., Irāq after the Muslim Conquest (Athens, GA: Georgia University Press, 2006; reprinted from Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 454Google Scholar.
8 Kennedy, Hugh, “Great estates and elite lifestyle in the fertile crescent from Byzantium and Sasanian Iran to Islam”, in Fuess, Albrecht and Hartung, Jan-Peter (eds), Court Cultures in the Muslim World: Seventh to Nineteenth Centuries (London and New York: Routledge, 2011)Google Scholar. While correlation does not imply causation, it is noteworthy that Nawrūz had long been an important date for the empire as the day of iftitāḥ al-ḫarāǧ, or the “opening of the fiscal year”. Cristoforetti, Simone, Izdilāq: miti e problemi calendariali del fisco islamico (Venice: Cafoscarina, 2003)Google Scholar; and A. Shapur Shahbazi, “Nowruz i. In the Islamic period”, in Encyclopædia Iranica, online edition (2009): http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/nowruz-i. It is plausible that the growing relevance of Nawrūz celebrations is linked to these socioeconomic developments.
9 Rothschild, Norman H., “Sumozhe suppressed, Huntuo halted: an investigation into the nature and stakes of the Sogdian festal dramas performed in early eighth century Tang China”, Frontiers of History in China 12/1, 2017Google Scholar.
10 The pivotal role played by Sogdia in connecting East and West Asia in Late Antiquity is not new. See, for instance, Compareti, Matteo, Samarkand the Center of the World: Proposals for the Identification of the Afrāsyāb Paintings (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda, 2016)Google Scholar; Di Cosmo, Nicola and Maas, Michael (eds), Empires and Exchanges in Eurasian Late Antiquity: Rome, China, Iran, and the Steppe, ca. 250–750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316146040; de la Vaissière, Étienne, Sogdian Traders: A History (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 Scholarship offers a few descriptions of samāǧa performances on the Indian subcontinent that allow us to connect them with Abbasid samāǧāt. Most notably, Arthur Berriadale Keith describes it as a “festival on a hill-top” marked by a drama featuring, among others, a buffoon (Vidūsaka). Regarding this character, he further notes that the name of Vidūsaka is not only “connected with a real Brahminic family, but it obeys the rule that the name of the character should indicate a flower, the spring &c., for it means literally the offspring of the Lotus-smelling” – Keith, Arthur Berriadale, The Sanskrit Drama in Its Origin, Development, Theory, and Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), 84–5Google Scholar. Varadpande defines samaja (or saman) as a “festive gathering, dramatic performance, place of entertainment, theater, pavilion erected to watch games, etc.” that is at least as old as the Vedas (Varadpande, M.L., Ancient Indian and Indo-Greek Theatre (New Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 1981), 84–7, 135Google Scholar). In these festivals, “men and women used to participate in gay abandon. Poetry recitation, archery and horse races were held and winners were honoured with suitable rewards. Beautiful courtesans used to visit the carnival to earn money by exhibiting their skill in dancing and singing while bashful but alert eyes of young maidens searched for prospective grooms” (Varadpande, Ancient Indian and Indo-Greek Theatre, 8). While samaja festivals were deemed necessary to lift the spirits of the subjects, they were banned by Asoka on a rock edict because the king saw “many evils in such gatherings”, probably referring to “provocative dances in near nude and semi-nude conditions” (Varadpande, Ancient Indian and Indo-Greek Theatre, 39–40). This concern resembles later objections by Tang Confucian officials and Abbasid Muslim men of law. I owe these references to Rothschild.
12 The word appears in al-Ṭabarī’s Taʾrīḫ, to describe the “grotesque figures” (ar. ṣuwar al-samaja) owned by al-Afšīn at the time of his arrest. Al-Ṭabarī lists these figures, or possibly paintings, among more or less incriminating items found at al-Afšīn's residence, such as books of his “majūsī” faith, idols and some rafts made of inflatable skin that he had prepared as part of a plan to escape arrest. De Goeje translated the term as imagenes obscenes, and it may be that they had some connections to the masks worn during samāǧa performance, but the possibility that the term is here used in its literal sense should not be discarded. Abū Ǧaʿfar Muḥammad b. Ǧarīr al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīḫ al-rusul wa-l-mulūk: Annales quos scripsit Abu Djafar Mohammed ibn Djarir at-Tabari, vol. 3, ed. de Goeje, M. J., Photo-mechanical Reproduction of Leiden: 1879–1901 edition (Leiden: Brill 1964), 1318Google Scholar.
13 Hartman, Charles, “Stomping songs: word and image”, Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 17, 1995, 22 n. 63Google Scholar.
14 Rothschild, “Sumozhe suppressed, Huntuo halted”, 281–2.
15 Abū al-Faraǧ al-Iṣfahānī, Maqātil al-ṭālibiyyīn, ed. Aḥmad Ṣaqr (Cairo: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Kutub al-ʿArabiyya). As the title transparently suggests, the Kitāb maqātil al-Ṭālibiyyīn is a collection of anecdotes and notices on descendants of ʿAlī killed or otherwise oppressed under the Umayyads and the Abbasids. The short book covers individuals up to the caliphate of al-Muqtadir (r. 295–320/908–932). Sebastian Günther, Quellenuntersuchungen zu den aṭ-Ṭālibiyyīn, Maqātil des Abū ’l-Faraǧ al-Iṣfahānī (gest. 356/967) (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1991), 13–16Google Scholar.
16 Al-Iṣfahānī writes that it was Nawrūz of 219/834–5. Since we know that Farwardīn 1st fell on 27 April between 832 and 835, the exact date of Muḥammad b. al-Qāsim's ordeal, according to al-Iṣfahānī, is Rabīʿ II 13 219/27 April 834. See Cristoforetti, Simone, Forme neopersiane del calendario zoroastriano tra Iran e Transoxiana (Venice: Grafiche Biesse, 2000), 125Google Scholar.
17 An area of Baghdad, located on the east bank of the Tigris River, northeast of the Madīnat al-Salām. See Lassner, Jacob, The Topography of Baghdad in the Early Middle Ages: Text and Studies (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1970), 200, 203Google Scholar.
18 Al-Iṣfahānī, Maqātil, 389–90.
19 Literally, the aṣḥāb al-samāǧa are its companions or leaders, so they should be understood as the main performers.
20 Nawrūz celebrations in the Abbasid period consisted of bonfires and water games – as they still are today in countries of Iranian culture. Sources on this important Abbasid festival are countless. See Borroni, Massimiliano and Cristoforetti, Simone, An Index of Nayrūz Occurrences in Abbasid Literary Sources (Florence: Phasar Edizioni, 2016)Google Scholar. Here it will suffice to cite Kušāǧim's (d. about 360/970–1) verses describing the effect these practices had on himself: “When I saw Nawrūz, whose custom are the sprinkling of water and the sparking of fire | I celebrated it too; and excitement shook me, as fire was in my heart and water incited me” Kušāǧim, , Dīwān, ed. Šaʿlān, Al-Nabawī ʿAbd al-Wāḥid (Cairo: Maktabat al-Ḫanǧ, 1405/1985), 386Google Scholar.
21 Ibn al-Muʿtazz, Dīwān, ed. Karam al-Bustānī (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, without date), 120.
22 Moreh, Live Theatre, 52. The term deployed by Ǧarīr was meant to mock his fellow poet al-Farazdaq, with whom he had a well-studied social and professional rivalry.
23 See Moreh, Live Theatre, 27–37, 44; Guthrie, Shirley, Arab Women in the Middle Ages: Private Lives and Public Roles (London: Saqi, 2000), 62–3Google Scholar; Gaudefroy-Demombynes, M., “Sur le Cheval-Jupon et Al-Kurraj”, in Mélanges offerts à William Marçais par l'Institut d’études Islamiques de l'Université de Paris (Paris: G.-P. Maisonneuve, 1950), 155–60Google Scholar; Baumel, Jean, Le Masque-cheval et quelques autres animaux fantastiques: étude de folklore, d'ethnographie et d'histoire (Paris: La Grande Revue, 1954), 138Google Scholar; Shiloah, Amnon, “Muslim and Jewish musical traditions of the middle ages”, in Strohm, Reinhard and Blackburn, Bonnie J. (eds), Music as Concept and Practice in the Late Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 11–12Google Scholar. Amnon Shiloah, who revised scholarship on the kurraǧ until the early 1960s, mentions that “La transformation des chevaux en Kurrag est le résultat tout à la fois d'un raffinement et d'une simplification de la représentation dans les palais. À ceci s'ajoute un autre élément de divertissement, celui de la participation de danseuses. D'autre part, l'adoption d'un vocable persan pour désigner les jeux et les danses du masque-cheval permet de supposer une influence persane. Certains indices nous laissent croire à l'existence d'une danse ou d'un jeu équivalent pendant la fête du printemps (Newrûz). Si nous arrivions à confirmer cette hypothèse, le problème serait résolu, et nous rejoindrions les conclusions de J. Baumel” (Amnon Shiloah, “Réflexions sur la danse artistique musulmane au moyen âge”, Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 5, n. 20, 1962, 474, https://doi.org/10.3406/ccmed.1962.1248. I believe the Abbasid samāǧa to be the answer to Shiloah's question.
24 Isḥāq b. Ibrāhīm al-Ṭāhirī is usually described by al-Šābuštī as a very strict man, especially with Abbasid princes and caliphs. For example, he imparted a flogging upon prince Abū ʿAlī b. al-Rašīd when he found the latter still drunk near a monastery not far from Baghdad. He received praise for the harsh punishment from the then caliph al-Muʿtaṣim, who exhorted him to keep an equally severe eye on other members of the caliphal family. See al-Šābuštī, The Shabushti's Book of Monasteries: Al-Diyarat, ed. Awwad, George (Piscataway, NJ: Georgia Press, 2008), 34–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
25 Al-Šābuštī, Al-Diyarat, 39–40.
26 The image of an absolute sovereign scolded by his own official for his participation in such an unruly performance bears a fascinating resemblance to the objections of Han Chaozong to the behaviour of his Crown Prince, who put himself in danger by enjoying the Sogdian “cold-splashing plays”. Rothschild notes that Han Chaozong was concerned “that the rulers of the empire were not mere spectators, but participants in the wild festivities”. This is his translation of Han Chaozong's grievances: “Your Majesty, please reconsider: think of all that this matter entails. Also, the roads and thoroughfares are abuzz with rumours of the Crown Prince going to watch the festival incognito. The common people place their trust in him. If casually allowed to gallop abroad recklessly, might he not stumble and fall? Moreover, the residence's high officials are teeming with barbarians (Xiongnu 匈奴). They have secretly sent out assassins (cike 刺客). Why further imperil matters by courting danger? They could ambush him unprepared and waylay him with a surprise attack. The danger, then, lies in not fathoming their designs. Like the white dragon who took the guise of a fish and was caught by Yu Qie 豫且.” Rothschild, “Sumozhe suppressed, Huntuo halted”, 273.
27 Massimiliano Borroni, “Iranian festivals and political discourse under the Abbasids”, Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie Orientale 51, 2015, 5–24, https://doi.org/10.14277/2385-3042/15p.
28 Muḥammad Ḥamīdullāh, editor of the 1959 Arabic edition based on the only extant manuscript of Kitāb al-Ḏaḫāʾir wa-l-Tuḥaf, identified the author in the Egyptian qāḍī al-Rašīd b. al-Zubayr, but more recently Ghada al-Hijjawi Qaddumi, who published an annotated English translation of the text, questioned this attribution and the book title. Scholarship on the matter agrees that the anonymous author belonged to high Egyptian society in the fourth/tenth century. Qaddūmī, Ghāda al-Ḥijjāwī, Book of Gifts and Rarities (Kitāb al-Hadāyā wa-l-Tuḥaf) (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1996), 5–20Google Scholar.
29 It may well be that this passage is not referring to a traditional Nawrūz falling on the first day of Farwardīn. In 282/895 Farwardīn 1st fell on April 12th, too early for a celebration that marked the “opening of the fiscal year as well”. This was due to the lack of an intercalary system in the traditional Iranian calendar – at least in its form known to caliphal administration. The complexity of the subject cannot be exhausted here. For a recent and detailed treatment, see Cristoforetti, Simone, “Cycles and circumferences – the tower of Gonbad-e Kāvus as a time-measuring monument”, in Borders: Itineraries on the Edges of Iran, ed. Pellò, Stefano, Eurasiatica Quaderni di studi su Balcani, Anatolia, Iran, Caucaso e Asia Centrale 5 (Venice: Edizioni Ca’ Foscari, 2016), 99–101, n. 21–24Google Scholar. This meant that Nawrūz in the caliphal age regressed through the solar seasons so that even though Muslim conquest found it falling on 9 June, at the end of the third/ninth century it was already in early spring. In Muḥarram 282/March 895, caliph al-Muʿtaḍid, in Mosul during a military campaign to reassert direct Abbasid control over Ǧazīra al-Ṭabarī, sent word to Baghdad for dispatches to be sent to the provinces, permanently delaying Nawrūz from Farwardīn 1st to June 11th. Since the reform was issued before Farwardīn 1st, we can safely assume that al-Muʿtaḍid would have preferred to receive gifts on his Nawrūz, rather than celebrating a festival he was trying to reform. Taʾrīḫ, vol. 13, 2134; Rainer Glagow, Das Kalifat des Al-Mu'tadid Billah (892–902) (Bonn: Unpublished PhD Thesis, 1968), 37–54; and Cristoforetti, Izdilāq, 130–40.
30 al-Zubayr, Pseudo-Ibn, al-Rašīd, Al-Qāḍī, Kitāb al-ḏaḫāʾir wa-l-tuḥaf, ed. Ḥamīdullāh, Muḥammad (Kuwayt: Al-Turāṯ al-ʿArabī, 1959), 38–9Google Scholar.
31 Her father was Ḫumārawyh b. Aḥmad b. Ṭulūn, who ruled over Egypt and al-Šām after his father, the founder of the Ṭulūnid dynasty. He led the army that defeated a young al-Muʿtaḍid in the Battle of the Mills, even though both commanders had fled the battlefield. He rose to power after his father was unsanctioned by al-Muʿtamid, who was caliph at the time, in 270/884. Nevertheless, he opted for a rapprochement policy towards the Abbasids. The marriage of his daughter Qaṭr al-Nadā, first proposed to the al-Muʿtaḍid's son ʿAlī, then given to the caliph himself, was probably part of this long-term strategy. Haarman, U., “K̲h̲umārawayh”, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., ed. Bearman, P. et al. (Leiden: Brill, 1960)Google Scholar: http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_4328.
32 On the history of Egyptian Nawrūz, or Nayrīz, see Michel Cuypers, “Le Nowrūz en Egypte”, Luqmān 10, n. 1, 1993, 9–36. His main sources are al-Qalqašandī (m. 821/1418), al-Maqrīzī (m. 845/1442), and the lesser-known fourth/tenth-century author Ibrāhīm b. Wāṣif-Šāḥ, who traces the origins of this festival back to ancient Egypt, adopting it as an element of his own (specifically Egyptian) šuʿūbī claims. A few clarifications concerning the relation between the Iranian Nawrūz and its Egyptian Nilotic counterpart were presented by Cristoforetti in Izdilāq, 66–70 and by Cristoforetti, Simone, Persiani intorno all'Africa e vicende calendariali (Venice: Cafoscarina, 2003), 20–23Google Scholar. Mention of an Egyptian samāǧa that would have taken place in Cairo's streets, despite the ban on 364/975 Nawrūz celebrations issued by Fatimid caliph al-Muʿīzz li-l-dīn Allāh (r. 341–365/953–975) from Maqrīzī (actually a quote from Ibn al-Zūlāq), is taken into account by Moreh, Live Theatre, 48–9. In the present article we will focus on Abbasid ʿirāqī performances.
33 Cristoforetti, Simone, Il natale della luce in Iran: una festa del fuoco nel cuore di ogni inverno: ricerche sul sada: occorrenze, rituali e temi mitologici di una celebrazione cortese tra Baghdad e Bukhara, secc. 9.–12 (Milan: Mimesis, 2002), 244–5Google Scholar.
34 Krasnowolska, Anna, “Some heroes of Iranian calendar mythology”, in Fragner, B.G. et al. (eds), Proceedings of the Second European Conference of Iranian Studies Held in Bamberg, 30th September to 4th October 1991 by the Societas Iranologica Europaea (Rome: Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1995), 245Google Scholar.
35 Cristoforetti, Il natale della luce, 249–50.
36 Cristoforetti, Il natale della luce, 249.
37 Cristoforetti, Il natale della luce, 253–4.
38 Kennedy, Hugh, The Armies of the Caliphs: Military and Society in the Early Islamic State (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 125–6Google Scholar.
39 Ismail, Osman Sayyid Ahmad, “Muʿtasim and the Turks”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 29/1, 1966, 14–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
40 In this respect, the farāġina would be to Abbasid samāǧāt what “Arabs” and “Turks” are to some European Carnival masquerades, where such characters traditionally take part in parades without any correspondence to the provenance or personal background of the interpreter. Baroja, Julio Caro, Il Carnevale (Genoa: Il Melangolo, 1989), 275–8Google Scholar.
41 The farāġina corps were an elite troop of the Caliphal army. Sources frequently lump them together with Turks and we know from al-Yaʿqūbī that they enjoyed a similar position in the military. Hugh Kennedy identifies them as “clearly distinct from the Turks”, probably speaking “an Iranian language” even though “some at least of the Turks may have been obtained from the Farghāna valley”. According to Matthew Gordon, they “were perceived to stand, like the “steppe” Turks, at a sociocultural remove from the surrounding society”. Kennedy, The Armies of the Caliphs, 124–5; Gordon, Matthew S., The Breaking of a Thousand Swords: A History of the Turkish Military of Samarra, A.H. 200–275/815–889 C.E. (New York: State University of New York Press, 2001), 58–60Google Scholar.
42 As noted by Pelliot, the iranicized Turkic Tokharians “living in Turfan and Kuča performed a so-called Pomozhe festival known under other names, such as Poluozhe (婆羅遮) or Sumozhe (蘇摩遮). The latter name could be compared to Somakusa (蘇莫者), a festival which was introduced from the west through China into Japan to be celebrated by musicians and dancers wearing animal and monster masks” (cited in Compareti, Matteo and Cristoforetti, Simone, The Chinese Scene at Afrāsyāb and the Iranian Calendar (Venice: Cafoscarina, 2007), 19Google Scholar). In this regard, Matteo Compareti further noted that “The annual festival among the Iranians and the Tokharians could have coincided with the New Year's celebration, when people played music and danced while actors performed wearing animal masks”, Compareti and Cristoforetti, The Chinese Scene at Afrāsyāb, 19–20. Moreover, he identified a depiction of these Tokharian sumozhe on a Buddhist Kuchan casket from Subashi. Matteo Compareti, “The painted vase of Merv in the context of Central Asian pre-Islamic funerary tradition”, The Silk Road 9, 2011, 30–1.
43 Gordon, The Breaking of a Thousand Swords, 26–66; and de la Vaissière, Étienne, Samarcande et Samarra: Élites d'Asie centrale dans l'empire abbasside (Paris: Association pour l'avancement des études iraniennes, 2007)Google Scholar.
44 Abū Naṣr Muḥammad, son of the great leader Buġā, was a pivotal element in Samarran political life as a member of one of the most important Turkic military families. In 256/870 he was called upon by al-Muhtadī to answer the accusation that his brother, the well-known Mūsa b. Buġā, had not upheld his duties. His angry reaction prompted the caliph to punish him; Mūsa b. Buġā was incarcerated, beaten, and then executed.
45 al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīḫ al-rusul wa-l-mulūk, vol. 3, 1833.
46 Beckwith, Cristopher I., “Aspects of the early history of the Central Asian guard corps in Islam”, Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 4, 1984, 29–43Google Scholar.
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48 de la Vaissière, Samarcande et Samarra, 270.
49 According to a few sources collected by de la Vaissiére, the founding of Samarra was prompted by constant clashes between the Turkish newcomers and old residents of Baghdad, notably the progeny of early Abbasid supporters (abnāʾ al-dawla).
50 de la Vaissière rejects the idea, held most notably by Patricia Crone in Slaves on Horses, that the mamlūk system was established at the beginning of the third/ninth century.
51 de la Vaissière, Samarcande et Samarra, 275.