Abbasid–Carolingian alliance
gigatos | January 30, 2022
Summary
An Abbasid-Carolingian alliance was attempted and partially formed during the eighth and ninth centuries through a series of embassies, rapprochements, and joint military operations between the Carolingian Frankish empires and the Abbasid caliphate or pro-Abbasid Muslim rulers in Spain. These contacts followed the intense conflict between the Carolingians and the Umayyads, marked by the battle of Poitiers in 732, and aimed at establishing a counter-alliance with the distant Abbasid Empire. A little later, another Abbasid-Carolingian alliance was attempted in a conflict against Byzantium.
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Embassies
Contacts began shortly after the establishment of the Abbasid caliphate and the concomitant fall of the Umayyad caliphate in 751. The Carolingian ruler Pepin the Short had a powerful enough position in Europe that an alliance with him was valuable to the Abbasid caliph of Baghdad, al-Mansur . The former supporters of the Umayyad caliphate were firmly established in southern Spain under Abd al-Rahman I and posed a strategic threat to both the Carolingians on their southern frontier, and to the Abbasids at the western end of their empire.
Embassies were exchanged in both directions, with the apparent aim of cooperating against the Umayyads of Spain: a Frankish embassy that visited Baghdad in 765 returned to Europe three years later with many gifts, and an Abbasid embassy of Al-Mansour visited France in 768.
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Commercial exchanges
Trade took place between the Carolingian and Abbasid kingdoms, and Arabic coins are known to have been circulated in Carolingian Europe during this period. Arab gold would have circulated in Europe during the ninth century, apparently as part of payments for the export of slaves, timber, iron, and weapons from Europe to the East.
A famous example is the English king Offa of Mercy (8th century), who is known to have struck copies of Abbasid dinars, struck in 774 by the Caliph Al-Mansur with “Offa Rex” centered on the reverse side amidst inscriptions in pseudo-Kufic script.
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Military alliance in Spain (777-778)
In 777, the pro-Abbasid rulers of northern Spain approached the Carolingians for help against the powerful Umayyad caliphate in southern Spain, still ruled by Abd al-Rahman I. The Spanish Abbasids found many interests in an alliance with Pepin the Short; the Cordovan dynasty posed a constant military threat to southwestern France.
Sulayman al-Arabi, the pro-Abbasid governor (wali) of Barcelona and Girona, sent a delegation to Charlemagne in Paderborn, offering his submission, as well as the allegiance of Hussein of Zaragoza and Abu Taur of Huesca in return for military aid. The three pro-Abbasid leaders passed on information that the Baghdad caliph, Muhammad al-Mahdi, was preparing an invasion force against the Umayyad ruler Abd al-Rahman I.
When this alliance was sealed in Paderborn, Charlemagne marched across the Pyrenees in 778 “at the head of all the forces he could muster. His troops were welcomed in Barcelona and Girona by Sulayman al-Arabi. As he headed for Saragossa, his troops were joined by troops led by Sulayman. Hussein of Saragossa, however, refused to surrender the city, claiming that he had never promised Charlemagne his allegiance. Meanwhile, the force sent by the Baghdad caliphate seems to have been stopped near Barcelona. After a month”s siege in Saragossa, Charlemagne decided to return to his kingdom. On his way back, Charlemagne was attacked by the Basques in central Navarre. In retaliation, he attacked Pamplona and destroyed it. However, during his retreat, his logistics were ambushed by the Basques at the Battle of Roncesvalles on August 15, 778.
The Carolingians, however, remained present south of the Pyrenees, and the city of Girona was captured in 785, when they concentrated on extending their dominion over Vich, Casserres and Cardona.
The Muslims made their last incursion into Gaul in 793, during which they sacked the suburbs of Narbonne and defeated Guillaume de Gellone, Count of Toulouse, near Carcassonne.
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Posterior contacts
After these campaigns, there were still numerous embassies between Charlemagne and the Abbasid caliph Hâroun ar-Rachîd from 797 onwards, apparently with a view to an Abbasid-Carolingian alliance against Byzantium, or with a view to obtaining an alliance against the Umayyads of Spain.
Indeed, Charlemagne”s “conflict with the Umayyad emir of Cordoba made him an ally of the Abbasid emir of Baghdad, the notorious Hâroun ar-Rachîd,” and so they “formed a pact against a common enemy – namely the Muslim rulers of Umayyad Spain.
For Charlemagne, the alliance may also have functioned as a counterweight to the Byzantine Empire, which was opposed to his role in Italy and his claim to the title of Roman emperor. For Hâroun ar-Rachîd, there was an advantage in having an ally.
Three embassies were sent by Charlemagne to the court of Hâroun ar-Rachîd and the latter sent at least two embassies to Charlemagne. Hâroun ar-Rachîd sent many gifts to Charlemagne, such as aromatics, fabrics, a clock and an elephant named Abul-Abbas. The automatic clock is a brass water clock, described in the Frankish Royal Annals of 807. It marked the 12 hours with copper balls falling on a plate at each hour, and also had twelve riders who appeared in turn at each hour. A chessboard was removed from the gift list when it was dated to the 11th century.
The 797 embassy, Charlemagne”s first, was composed of three men, the Jew Isaac (Isaac Judaeus, probably as interpreter), Lantfrid and Sigimud. Four years later, in 801, an Abbasid embassy arrived in Pisa, composed of an “eastern Persian and an emissary” of Amir Abraham, probably the governor of Hâroun ar-Rachîd in North Africa, Ibrahim ibn al-Aghlab. They brought back news of Isaac Judaeus and many gifts. They met Charlemagne who was present in Italy at that time.
In 799, Charlemagne sent another mission to the patriarch of Jerusalem.
Apparently, pushed by the encouragement of Spain, Louis the Pious, king of Aquitaine, captured Barcelona in 801, but did not succeed in extending his conquests to Tortosa, which remained under Muslim rule for another three hundred years.
A second embassy was sent by Charlemagne in 802 and returned in 806.
In 807, Rodbertus, Charlemagne”s ambassador, died while returning from Persia. Hâroun ar-Rachîd is said to have offered the custody of the holy places in Jerusalem to Charlemagne. In 807, Abdallah, “sent by the king of Persia”, reached Charlemagne at Aachen in the company of two monks from Jerusalem, George (a German by the name of Egilbaldus, prior of the monastery of the Mount of Olives) and Felix, the envoys of Patriarch Thomas. They also brought many gifts, including a clock.
The third and last embassy was sent by Charlemagne in 809, but it did not arrive until after the death of Hâroun ar-Rachîd. The embassy returned in 813 with messages of friendship, but few concrete results.
From the Carolingian period onwards, various Islamic influences seem to appear in Christian religious architecture, such as the multicolored tile designs that may have been inspired by Islamic polychromy in the Torhalle of Lorsch Abbey.
The horseshoe arches, as well as the centralized plan, in some Carolingian churches such as Germigny-des-Prés suggest an influence of Mozarabic architectural designs from Muslim Spain. Early Carolingian architecture generally combines Romanesque, Early Christian, Byzantine, Islamic, and Northern European styles.
In the Byzantine Empire from 723 to 842, Islam and Judaism influenced the Christian movement toward the destruction of images, an event known as iconoclasm. According to Arnold Toynbee, it was the prestige of Islam”s military successes in the seventh and eighth centuries that caused Byzantine Christians to adopt the Islamic precept of the destruction of idolatrous images. Charlemagne himself attempted to follow the iconoclastic precepts of the Eastern Roman emperor Leo III the Isaurian (Leo Syrus in Toynbee”s book), but the movement was stopped by the Council of Nicaea II.
These embassies also seem to have had the objective of promoting trade between the two kingdoms.
After 814 and the accession of Louis the Pious to the throne, internal strife prevented the Carolingians from venturing deeper into Spain.
Almost a century later, Berthe, daughter of Lothaire II and mother of several Italian kings of the tenth century, would have sent an embassy to the Abbasid caliph Al-Muktafi, asking for friendship and a matrimonial alliance.
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