User:Nkniebusch/Ziyadat Allah I of Ifriqiya

Context
At the start of Ziyadat Allah's rule in 817, the Abassid Caliphate had settled the civil war in 812 but other issues still persisted (origins19). The caliph, al-Ma'mun, originally tried to rule the empire from Merv and only moved to Baghdad to try and exert control over a strife stricken capitol (TGC32). He did not, however, attempt to exert control over the now independent Aghlabids of Ifriqiya. In the year Ziyadat became emir al-Ma'mun was making peace with the Alid opposition, a concern much more pertinent to the caliphate than the once periphery of their empire. Ziyidat never received and 'ahd from the Caliphate which had been so important to previous Ifriqiya governors but was able to rule more effectively than most of his predecessors (Origins 18).

Abbasid emirs from 763-813 almost indiscriminately had to deal with Berber rebellions and jund insurrections. The Jund were first deployed to Ifriqiya in 763 to reestablish Abbasid control of the region and mitigate the threat of the indigenous population of Berbers. However, the Jund often posed a greater threat to the emirs in Ifriqiya as they required a large sum to meet their monthly payments. A sum that was often not met. Ziyidat Allah's father, the emir Ibrihim al-Aghlab, had dealt with two Jund rebellions which were only put down with the help of... The increased level of control exerted by Ziyidat Allah over the region can be seen

Reign
Despite being an independent ruler of Ifriqiya, Ziyadat Allah was faced with many of the same issues that his predecessors faces as governors under the Abbasid Caliphate. The jund had led a multitude of rebellions against the muslim authority in Ifriqiya although they were first employed in 758 to help further caliphal authority in the region (Origins 5). The reason for these rebellions was usually financial as was the case under Ziyadat. This revolt, beginning in 824, saw the jund conquer most of Ifriqiya and the revolt was only ended when Ziyidat allied with the Berbers, another historically rebellious group, to put down the jund rebellion (Origins 20). This marked the Aghlabids final confrontation with the jund as Ziyidat began the conquest of Sicily in 827 looking to solve the cash flow problems that had let to the jund revolt (21).

Historiography
One of the major issues confronting modern study of the Aghlabids and Ziyadat Allah is the sources from which knowledge originates. One of the chief sources utilized in studying the Aghlabids is the works of the Islamic historian al-Tabari. Al-Tabari is concerned with the Abbasid empire and its development. (Trans1) The geographical bias stemming from this has infiltrated modern scholarship where scholars will sometimes assume the geographical bias of the more contemporaneous historian. (Trans1). Scholars adopting views more similar to al-Tabari tend to emphasize the role of the civil war that began in 809 in giving the Aghlabids autonomy (Origins 21). Other scholars acknowledge the existence of a degree of agency on the part of the Aghlabids in becoming autonomous (Trans 4).

Primary sources such as al-Tabari or al-Baladhuri can also raise question due to not being written by individual personally familiar with much of what they write about. Al-Baladhuri, for example, wrote about the Aghlabids over a hundred years after their demise. Another reliability question is raised due to the long chains of oral sources Islamic historians cite. Because the intermediary sources are not always verifiable and the degree to which the information that has been given can be trusted is difficult to determine.

Another pervasive issue in studying Islamic history, which Ifriqiya is a part of, is the lack of a common framework specific to the field. Much of the framework used to conceptualize Islamic history comes from European contexts especially when studying regional elites such as Ziyadat (Trans 28). This is an issue because elites of European origin did not necessarily function in the same way those of Islamic origin did. As a result, applying a European framework to Islamic elites can lead to misinterpretations of their functions and actions.