Practice question · Multiple choice
The Abbasid revolution of 750 moved the capital from Damascus to a new city on the Tigris. Why is that more than a change of address?
Hints
- Ask who was excluded from power under the Umayyads and who was not afterwards.
- The new capital was built in a Persian administrative world rather than a formerly Roman one.
Show the answer
B. It shifted power east and opened the elite to converts of any origin, ending the Arab monopoly
Why
The Umayyad state was an Arab caste ruling a mostly non-Arab, mostly non-Muslim population, and the resentment of non-Arab converts was one of the forces the revolution rode. Baghdad drew on Persian bureaucratic practice and on a mixed elite, which is the precondition for the translation movement that followed.
Practise The Making of an Islamic World
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