Just like the Roman emperors, the Abbasid khalifas surrounded themselves with a corps of bodyguards, which became the tail that wagged the dog. In Rome, this group was called the Praetorian Guard, and it was (ironically) well staffed with Germans recruited from the territories of the barbarians north of the frontiers, those same barbarians with whom Rome had been at war for centuries and whose excursions posed a constant threat to civilized order. The same pattern emerged in the Abbasid khalifate. Here, the imperial guards were called mamluks, which means “slaves,” although these were not
...more
