Harun Al Rashid

Author : André Clot
Publisher : Saqi
ISBN 13 : 0863565581
Total Pages : 220 pages
Book Rating : 4.88/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Harun al-Rashid written by André Clot and published by Saqi. This book was released on 2014-02-01 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Harun al-Rashid, the legendary caliph portrayed in The Thousand and One Nights, was the son of a Yemenite slave who cleared Harun's path to power, very probably by poisoning her eldest son. Harun reigned for a quarter of a century, his empire spreading over south-west Asia and into north Africa. He waged war on the Byzantine Empire, and dealt ruthlessly with the religious and social insurrections which threatened his kingdom, executing almost the entire Barmakid family when they threatened to become too powerful. As well as being a ruthless soldier and politician Harun was also a great patron of the arts, and highly esteemed by Charlemagne. He turned Baghdad into a brilliant centre of culture and learning, which witnessed unprecedented economic development, its merchants and navigators carrying the caliph's renown to the farthest corners of the known world. Surrounded by his wives, concubines, musicians and learned men in his palace in Baghdad, 'Harun the Good' remains a potent symbol of the fabled Orient. In this remarkable account André Clot explores the man behind the legend, revealing his development as a ruler of an empire that was shaken to the core by religious and social revolt. 'Most interesting ... full of fascinating detail.' The Bookseller

Author : André Clot
Publisher : Saqi Books
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 276 pages
Book Rating : 4.86/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Harun Al-Rashid and the World of the Thousand and One Nights written by André Clot and published by Saqi Books. This book was released on 2005 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Known in the West as a cultural patron and as the ruler who sent exotic gifts to Charlemagne, Harun al-Rashid was also a soldier who waged war against the Byzantine empire, and a politician who often dealt ruthlessly with the religious and social revolts which threatened his far-flung kingdom. A symbol of the fabled Orient and the caliph portrayed inThe Thousand and One Nights, he is shown living grandly in his palace in Baghdad, surrounded by his wives, concubines, musicians and learned men, but is not merely a legendary figure. He was the son of a Yemenite slave who carved a path to power, very probably by poisoning the reigning caliph, her elder son. Harun reigned for a quarter of a century, and was the most famous caliph of the Abbasid dynasty. Through Arab chronicles, the author corrects our vision of `Harun the Good`, and gives a remarkable account of his development as a ruler of an empire that was shaken by religious and social insurrections.

Author : Nabia Abbott
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780863561191
Total Pages : 277 pages
Book Rating : 4.95/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Two Queens of Baghdad written by Nabia Abbott and published by . This book was released on 1946 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Abbasid dynasty was perhaps the greatest in Arab history, and the greatest of the Abbasid rulers was undoubtedly Harun al-Rashid. His mother, Khaizuran, and wife Zubaidah are the 'two queens' of this book. Abbott recounts the lives of these two women, who flouted the taboos of Muslim society and made their imprint on a key period of early Islamic history.

Author : John Henry Haaren
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 284 pages
Book Rating : 4.62/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Famous Men of the Middle Ages written by John Henry Haaren and published by . This book was released on 1904 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Tayeb El-Hibri
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521650236
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Reinterpreting Islamic Historiography written by Tayeb El-Hibri and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1999-11-25 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of the early Abbasid Caliphate has long been studied as a factual or interpretive synthesis of various accounts preserved in the medieval Islamic chronicles. Tayeb El-Hibri s book breaks with the traditional approach, applying a literary-critical reading to examine the lives of the caliphs. By focusing on the reigns of Harun al-Rashid and his successors, the study demonstrates how the various historical accounts were not in fact intended as faithful portraits of the past, but as allusive devices used to shed light on controversial religious, political and social issues of the period. The analysis also reveals how the exercise of decoding Islamic historigraphy, through an investigation of the narrative strategies and thematic motifs used in the chronicles, can uncover new layers of meaning and even identify the early narrators. This is an important book which represents a landmark in the field of early Islamic historiography.

Author : Jurji Zaidan
Publisher : Zaidan Foundation, Incorporated
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 250 pages
Book Rating : 4.39/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Caliph's Sister written by Jurji Zaidan and published by Zaidan Foundation, Incorporated. This book was released on 2010 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It was quite unsuitable for a man from outside the family to be admitted to the company of a young woman, but Harun found a way to arrange things; he decided to marry them in what the French call a "mariage blanc." As he explained to Ja'far, "You see her only in my company, your body never approaches hers and you have no conjugal relations with her. You may thus share our evenings of pleasure without risk." Ja'far accepted and swore solemnly never to stay with his young wife alone. The charismatic Ja'far controlled many of the levers of power while 'Abbasa was a strong-willed woman whose beauty was second to none. And the close friendship between Harun and Ja'far spawned jealousies among the caliph's entourage. Nor did Zubayda, Harun's favorite Hashemite wife, like Ja'far. He had been a tutor to al-Ma'mun, the son of a Persian slave girl, her son's rival.

Author : Harry St. John Bridger Philby
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 166 pages
Book Rating : 4.78/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Harum Al Rashid written by Harry St. John Bridger Philby and published by . This book was released on 1934 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Harry St. John Bridger Philby
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 159 pages
Book Rating : 4.56/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Harun Al Rashid written by Harry St. John Bridger Philby and published by . This book was released on 1959 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Benson Bobrick
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1416568069
Total Pages : 366 pages
Book Rating : 4.63/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Caliph's Splendor written by Benson Bobrick and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-08-14 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Caliph’s Splendor is a revelation: a history of a civilization we barely know that had a profound effect on our own culture. While the West declined following the collapse of the Roman Empire, a new Arab civilization arose to the east, reaching an early peak in Baghdad under the caliph Harun al-Rashid. Harun is the legendary caliph of The Thousand and One Nights, but his actual court was nearly as magnificent as the fictional one. In The Caliph’s Splendor, Benson Bobrick eloquently tells the little-known and remarkable story of Harun’s rise to power and his rivalries with the neighboring Byzantines and the new Frankish kingdom under the leadership of Charlemagne. When Harun came to power, Islam stretched from the Atlantic to India. The Islamic empire was the mightiest on earth and the largest ever seen. Although Islam spread largely through war, its cultural achievements were immense. Harun’s court at Baghdad outshone the independent Islamic emirate in Spain and all the courts of Europe, for that matter. In Baghdad, great works from Greece and Rome were preserved and studied, and new learning enhanced civilization. Over the following centuries Arab and Persian civilizations made a lasting impact on the West in astronomy, geometry, algebra (an Arabic word), medicine, and chemistry, among other fields of science. The alchemy (another Arabic word) of the Middle Ages originated with the Arabs. From engineering to jewelry to fashion to weaponry, Arab influences would shape life in the West, as they did in the fields of law, music, and literature. But for centuries Arabs and Byzantines contended fiercely on land and sea. Bobrick tells how Harun defeated attempts by the Byzantines to advance into Asia at his expense. He contemplated an alliance with the much weaker Charlemagne in order to contain the Byzantines, and in time Arabs and Byzantines reached an accommodation that permitted both to prosper. Harun’s caliphate would weaken from within as his two sons quarreled and formed factions; eventually Arabs would give way to Turks in the Islamic empire. Empires rise, weaken, and fall, but during its golden age, the caliphate of Baghdad made a permanent contribution to civilization, as Benson Bobrick so splendidly reminds us.

Author : Charles River Editors
Publisher : Independently Published
ISBN 13 : 9781092955911
Total Pages : 52 pages
Book Rating : 4.17/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Harun Al-Rashid written by Charles River Editors and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2019-04-06 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes medieval accounts *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading Like many historical figures, Harun al-Rashid's biography has become part reality and part myth. A real individual and the fourth caliph of the Abbasid Caliphate, Harun al-Rashid is best known to many individuals because of his role in famous literature like One Thousand and One Nights, not necessarily because of his policy decisions. This is unusual because Harun al-Rashid was perhaps the most influential of the Abbasid caliphs due to his role in bringing economic prosperity, destroying one of the most powerful Islamic families of the 9th century CE, and ending the Abbasid Dynasty for good. The reputation of Harun al-Rashid is a controversial one over 1,000 years later. Although historians are often loathe to admit it, they understand that history, like other social and cultural subjects, is subject to the opinions and influences of the society in which it was written, and for centuries, numerous cultures in the Western world (primarily Europe, Australasia, North America, and sometimes Latin and South America) insisted that Islamic societies could not possess the intellectual progress and discourse Western society attributed to itself. According to Amira Bennison, "It was a commonplace of the European imperial age that the Islamic world was intellectually backward and that Muslims not only could not have produced the Enlightenment and Industrial Evolution but also required European tutelage." In short, European intellectuals believed Muslims, due to their religious, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds, lacked the capacity to be progressive - as determined by European standards - and were thus intellectually and culturally backwards. This interpretation of Islamic culture and society transcended intellectual barriers and seeped into the history and literature produced by scholars of the Western world, and in time, Harun al-Rashid became the figure through which the Western world applied its ideas of Arabian culture, Islam, and the power of the caliphates. The difficulty for historians and modern audiences, then, is trying to determine what about Harun al-Rashid is fact and what is fiction, produced over time by biased sources or legends. By the 21st century, much of the historical information about him has been distorted by folk tales and the exaggerations of medieval historians of all religions and walks of life. Even with numerous pop culture appearances, the actual history of the Abbasid caliph is difficult to determine because of the wealth of misinformation throughout Eastern and Western media alike. When Harun al-Rashid died in the early 9th century, the Abbasid Caliphate fell into civil war. Harun al-Rashid had chosen his son al-Amin to be the new caliph, but his other son, al-Ma'mun, had similar ambitions. Al-Ma'mun would receive the support of some of the noble families and make a claim for the throne, and after a two-year siege of the capital in Baghdad, al-Amin perished and al-Ma'mun took the throne in 813. He ruled for the following 20 years in relative peace though he was forced to put down local rebellions spurred by the Byzantines. Al-Ma'mun, to repay his allies, would create an autonomous Khorasan region in northeast Persia filled with Persian noble families. While scholars can still debate his legacy, none can argue that while Harun al-Rashid did not politically advance the Abbasid Caliphate and may actually be blamed for its eventual destruction, his emphasis on arts and culture brought the caliphate into the Islamic Golden Age and created the romanticized image of the Arab ruler in folk tales throughout Eastern and Western cultures.