Slaves on Horses: The Evolution of the Islamic Polity

by Patricia Crone

Slave soldiers are a distinctively Muslim phenomenon. Though virtually unknown in the non-Muslim world, they have been a constant and pervasive feature of the Muslim Middle East from the ninth century AD into modern times. Why did Muslim rulers choose to place military and political power in the hands of imported slaves? It is this question which Dr Crone seeks to answer. Concentrating on the period from the rise of the Umayyads to the dissolution of the 'Abbasid empire (roughly AD 650–850), she documents the consequences of the fusion between religion and politics in Islam, which she sees as an essential forging characteristic of the Muslim social structure and state. Primarily addressed to specialists and advanced students of Arabic and Islamic history, the book will also appeal to comparative historians and social anthropologists.

Genres: Islam, History, Nonfiction, Religion, Middle East, Theology

316 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Patricia Crone was Professor Emerita in the School of Historical Studies, where she served as the Andrew W. Mellon Professor from 1997 until her retirement in 2014. Crone’s insightful work, compellingly conveyed in her adventurous and unconventional style, shed important new light on the critical importance of the Near East—in particular on the cultural, religious and intellectual history of Islam—in historical studies. Her influence is strongly felt at the Institute, where, along with Oleg Grabar (1929–2011), Crone helped to establish the Institute as a recognized center for the pursuit of the study of Islamic culture and history.


https://www.ias.edu/scholars/patricia...

Reviews

[Mir · Rating 2 out of 5]

The stated purpose of Patricia Crone's Slaves on Horses is to explain, “how and why slave soldiers came to be a central feature of the Muslim polity.” She states that this occurred when the two formerly separate characteristics of “servile status and alien origin” became fused in the mamluks. This shift created a large population with the combined traits of “cultural disocciation and personal and political dependence,” which factors combined to make the mamluks extraordinarily obedient to their masters, only through whom were they able to possess any public existence within the Islamic polity. Once instituted, the servility of the mamluk military force made it more desirable than the employment of free native soldiery; this the practice spread and became indispensable. She goes on to say that “the conceptual framework in which the explanation is set is that of Hagarism,” a concept which she proceeds to explain only obliquely, through footnoted references to her own previous work on the subject. Crone begins her book with an overview of Islamic source material and the religious and historical traditions from which it arises.

Before proceeding further with her thesis, she provides a contextualization in the form of a general history and analysis in the chapters “The Nature of the Arab Conquest” and “The Evolution of the Conquest Society.” In this section she compares the medieval Islamic politics and society with various cultures of Europe and Asia, including China, India, Greece, Rome, Byzantium, and others. A key aspect of the background against which she sets the rise of Mamluk power is the fundamental hostility between nomadic tribes and settled groups, which she sees as profoundly influential in regards to the developmental of the Islamic religious and political cultures.

Unfortunately, Crone fails to prove this argument. Like many of her assertions, it fails even to develop into a true argument, but rather is tossed like a flaccid corpse onto the table, where it lies undissected at the center of the operating theater. Perhaps because the material in question is so familiar to her, Crone does not trouble herself to justify her position to her readers, but appears to expect them not only to swallow her assertions whole but even to refrain from digesting them afterward. Unfortunately, despite her expertise in this field, Crone hardly seems to be presenting incontestable facts or undisputed theories. Her premise of initially tribal and subsequently religious hostility to settled culture, to take a prominent example, is far from being the sine qua non historiographic base position which she seems to take it for; excellent work by scholars such as Jean-Luc Krawczyk's essay on “The Relationship Between Pastoral Nomadism and Agriculture” suggests that this issue requires a far more nuanced treatment than Crone accords it, and that the historical situation itself was considerably more fluid than she implies. Her presentation of this premise as a given also lends her larger argument a tone on inevitability which she fails to demonstrate in her explanation of the evolution of the Mamluks' role in the Islamic polity.

On another note, the comparisons with which Crone illustrates her first chapters are numerous, but fail to make up from by quantity what they lose by their uninformed and over-simplistic character. The over-generalization apparent in the introduction is, alas, no fluke. Rather, it is a recurrent pattern, lamentably evident throughout. Crone's apparently compulsive need to draw every conceivable parallel between Islamic and other civilizations leads her to display her embarrassing ignorance of the historiography readily available to any competent historian. Her remarks on non-Islamic societies are particularly facile, but her analysis of the political situation within the Islamic polity is prone to oversimplification as well.

The myriad problems already discussed are compounded by sloppy editing. In the first paragraph of chapter two, for instance, I strongly suspect that the author intended the sentence to contain the important word “not.” Other typographic errors, while less confusing, to nothing to improve the reader's faith in the book's reliability.

The most useful portion of this book is the substantial appendix, which, although not always entirely clear, contains information on specialized terminology and significant individuals of the various regions discussed. This is designed to help the non-specialist in making his way through the political entanglements of the period, but also contains bibliographic material which may be useful to specialists. The endnotes, although marked, as is the entire work, by the author's biases, also provide useful bibliographic material. Both endnotes and appendices are well-written and to the point, although non-Arabicists may be daunted by the profusion of transliterated terms.

In short, while I can hardly recommend this book on its own merit, it should not be by any means consigned to the circular file. It does contain useful information which may benefit some researchers, and also provides a point of departure for further arguments, of which I am sure there will be many.

[AskHistorians]

First, a warning: this book is not an easy read, but it is vital for understanding the problems associated with studying the early Islamic period. Crone demonstrates the problems of Islamic historiography, and how what evidence we have can - and can't - be utilized to explain Early Islamic history through to the early 'Abbasid period.

[Kumail Akbar · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The religious tradition of Islam is thus a monument to the destruction rather than the preservation of the past. It is in the Sira of the Prophet that this destruction is most thorough, but it affects the entire account of the religious evolution of Islam". This sentence has stuck with me ever since. Crone is a must read, even if her ideas are dated

[Hassan Mehmood · Rating 2 out of 5]

The most cogently argued and thus useful part of the book is part II, which outlines the evolution Umayyad dynasty. The first chapter does a fair job of subjecting traditional Islamic historical sources to a sustained and serious critique which has certain valuable insights. The two stars account for these aspects of the book.

The rest of the book is very poorly argued, if argued at all. It’s filled with a plethora of references to the most varied of topics, ranging from the Chinese empire to the differences between nomadic societies thriving on camels and horses, with the hope of obtaining some insights into Islamic history. But the stated goal is hardly achieved, for cryptic and superficial comparisons are no substitute for detailed analysis, especially when the former are adduced as evidence for sweeping generalisations, no matter how creative (which is a distinguishing quality of Crone indeed), about entire histories and cultures. This, together with a very superficial and not well-substantiated account of the Abbasid era, has only the flimsiest connection with musings on the innermost workings of the minds of local governors and religious ulema and conquered non-Arab populations and on the “essence” and “nature” of slave dynasties, whose ascendancy in the medieval Islamic polity is the central fact that the book claims to explains. Needless to say, such a half-baked analysis falls terribly short of achieving the stated goal. Frankly, she should simply have published the first chapter and part II of the book as two separate articles. The rest is useless.