The ʿAbbāsid Revolution in Marw: New Data
New data from Chinese, Bactrian and archaeological sources on the oasis of Marw are introduced in the long debate on the Persian or Arab nature of the ʿAbbāsid movement. These data provide us with a rough estimate of the maximum feeding power of the oasis of Marw. This feeding power is then taken in...
| Published in: | Der Islam |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
De Gruyter
2018
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| In: |
Der Islam
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| Further subjects: | B
ʿAbbāsid
Marw
Irrigation
Demography
Abu Muslim
Acculturation
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| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) |
| Summary: | New data from Chinese, Bactrian and archaeological sources on the oasis of Marw are introduced in the long debate on the Persian or Arab nature of the ʿAbbāsid movement. These data provide us with a rough estimate of the maximum feeding power of the oasis of Marw. This feeding power is then taken into account to demonstrate that the Arab soldiers and their families settled there should have consumed between one-third and two-thirds of the food produced in the oasis. The ʿAbbāsid Revolution did not take place in an oasis with two widely divergent communities, a tiny community of powerful Arab warriors versus a vast majority of powerless Persian-speaking peasants, but of communities intermingled all over the oasis in quite equal numbers which had no choice but to cooperate during four generations before the Revolution. If the Revolutionary network before the Revolution seems to have been mainly Arab, the texts clearly describe an ʿAbbāsid army numerically dominated by Persians under Arab command. The existence of a partially mixed society does explain how an Arab network came to muster and to dominate a much more mixed military force, which gave way to a gradual Persian empowerment. |
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| ISSN: | 1613-0928 |
| Contains: | In: Der Islam
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1515/islam-2018-0005 |