One of the legacies of Patricia Crone was the creation of the series Makers of the Muslim World, published by Oneworld Academic. Thanks to the work of Khaled El-Rouayheb and Sabine Schmidtke, the series continues, with over forty volumes published so far. A major attraction of the series is the breadth of coverage, from well-known individuals such as Abd al-Malik b. Marwan to lesser-known ones such as Nazira Zeineddine. In each case, the editors seek an appropriate, highly qualified scholar to write the volume. The author of this biography of Ahmad ibn Tulun, Matthew S. Gordon, established his scholarly reputation with his mastery of the complex history of the relations between the Abbasid caliphs and their Turkish troops in the 9th century CE in his book The Breaking of a Thousand Swords: A History of the Turkish Military of Samarra (A.H. 200–275/815–889 C.E.) (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2001).
Gordon's current title, Ahmad ibn Tulun: Governor of Abbasid Egypt, 868–884, is a political history of one of the most important figures to come to prominence after the “decade of anarchy” (c. 866–74) in Samarra had triggered the dissolution of the unitary caliphal state and heralded the rise of regional powers throughout the Islamic world. Ahmad b. Tulun, the son of an Uighur slave soldier who served in Muʿtasim's new model army, was raised in Samarra and spent time as a pious mujtahid in Tarsus before being dispatched by his Turkish patron to govern Egypt in 868 A.D. In the first years of his governorship, Ibn Tulun established himself as the power in the land: he brought an end to the recurring rural revolts against tax abuses, seized control of the fiscal apparatus, recruited a huge army that he deployed internally and in Syria, and boosted the Egyptian economy. He eventually made a name for himself as a ruthlessly successful ruler who managed to hand over the reins of power to his son before his death. Gordon's aim is to explain the contradictions of his tenure as governor. Although committed to maintaining the Abbasid order, he nevertheless recalibrated the relationship between governor and caliph to achieve his goal of establishing and maintaining the right to run his own affairs as the first de facto autonomous ruler of Egypt of the caliphal era. As the first “Samarran Turk” to defy the centripetal pull of the capital and stake out a claim in the provinces, his career offers a comparative lens through which to view the other regional powers that emerged after caliphal authority had entered a period of steep decline.
The book begins with a helpful introduction which sets out its themes clearly, followed by two chapters that cover the details of Ibn Tulun's early life as well as the chronology of his governorship. The heavy burden of names and dates is lightened by Gordon's concise style and apposite choice of illustrative anecdotes. The next two chapters offer a thematic approach, first, to the practicalities of governing Egypt in the second half of the 9th century (relations with the Abbasid administration, family and household, army and police, economy and administration); and second, to the role of public performance in the political economy of the Tulunid capital (construction of al-Qataʾiʿ, urban architecture, processions and celebrations of military victory, oath-taking ceremonies, deployment of religious symbols and rhetoric). A short concluding section reviews the causes of the downturn in Ibn Tulun's fortunes prior to his death and the legacy of the state inherited by his son and successor, Khumarawayh.
This biography provides a much-needed replacement for Zaky Hassan's outdated study, Les Tulunides (1933). An exceptionally well-written, tightly constructed, and immersive study of a leading Abbasid personality, Gordon's work makes the reader think about the social and political environment in which he acted and the nature of the surviving evidence of his life. It addresses the knotty problem of the source material for Ibn Tulun's life, noting the lack of archival materials as well as physical evidence (the one exception being Ibn Tulun's mosque), as well as the difficulties of using the two important biographies of Ibn al-Daya and al-Balawi. Constructed mainly from anecdotal testimony, these biographies present a mostly favorable view of their subject, praising him for his moral commitment and piety, as well as his determination and energy. But too little is known about their authors to judge how far their largely positive endorsement reflects the realities of his rule. As for the wider historical context, Ibn Tulun's biography prompts us to wonder how was it that the Turkish ghilman corps, to which Ibn Tulun's father belonged, had come to dominate the caliphal court by the time that Ibn Tulun set out for Egypt. What happened to the eastern Iranian noblemen and their Transoxanian soldiers that al-Muʿtasim had billeted alongside the Turkish military slaves in the barracks of Samarra less than three decades earlier? Second, where (and who) were the Egyptian elite in this story of the emergence of Egypt's first independent Islamic governorate? The first opponents whom Ibn Tulun faced on his arrival were mostly expatriate members of the Abbasid elite, with strong connections to the caliphal court. The absence of local power brokers and militias at the center of power in Greater Fustat is striking, and provides a marked contrast to the politics of emergent regional polities elsewhere. The notion of a Tulunid “dynasty,” itself a product of the taxonomic imperatives of earlier scholarship, is rightly called into question by Gordon's exposure of the fragility of ties that held the Tulunid household together after its founder's death. Although the restricted format of the series in which the book appears precludes extensive contextualization, some reference to the wider issue of the emergence of contemporary “successor” states (Aghlabids, Saffarids, and Samanids) would have been helpful, in highlighting both the uniqueness of Ibn Tulun's situation (in that he remained throughout his governorship a fully engaged member of the Samarran Turkish elite) and the diverse origins of contemporary regional governors. That apart, Gordon's careful and judicious reconstruction of the career of Ibn Tulun provides a model for the kind of fine-grained biography that needs to be replicated for other rulers of emergent regional polities, before the causes and consequences of the decline of Abbasid authority and power in the later 9th century CE can be properly assessed.
