Harun al-Rashid

[DKleinecke]

Re Harun al-Rashid

Al-Tabari in his history ends each year (with a few exceptions) with a
brief summary of events during the year. One of the things he reports
in these summaries is who led the hajj. Three of the Abbascide caliphs
made hajj during their reigns - al-Mansur, al-Mahdi and Harun al
Rashid. Al-Mansur was already in Mecca on hajj when he became caliph
in 136 and returned three times - in 140, 147 and 152. Al-Mahdi went
in 160. Harun's record is rather different. He went once in 170, then
in the years 173-181 he went six times in nine years. He went once
more in 188 and al-Tabari says that was the last time a caliph went on
hajj.

According to al-Tabari Harun's pilgrimages were major events. He says
"When he performed the pilgrimage there performed it with him a
hundred legal scholars and their sons and when he could not perform it
personally he sent three hundred men on the pilgrimage with generous
expense allowances and a splendid covering for the Ka'bah" (p 305 in
volume 30 of the SUNY translation). Al-Tabari gives no source for this
(or for that matter any of the information in the summaries).

There is also an account from al-Waqidi (via Ibn Sad as translated by
Aisha Bewley in "Men of Madina" vol 2, p380ff) about how he was
recruited for service in Bagdad "when Harun al-Rashid performed hajj".
That implies only one hajj which must be the first one in 170. Harun's
formidible mother, al-Khayzuran, made a hajj in 171.

Al-Khayzuran is significant because of the curious incident of
Muhammad's house in Mecca. According to Ibn Ishaq via al-Tabari "It is
said that he was born in the house known as Ibn Yusuf's and it is said
that the apostle gave ot to Aqil bn Abu Talib [Ali's brother] who kept
it until he died. His son sold it to Muhammad bn Yusuf, the brother
of al-Hajjaj and he incorporated it into the house he built. Later
Khayzuran separated it therefrom and made it into a mosque
[Guillaume's translation of Sirat Rasul Allah, p 70. Guillaume notes
that Ibn Ishaq who died in 151 cannot be the source for events that
happened in the 160's and 170's]

The treatment of the house has been interpreted as unlikely if pious
interest in Muhammad had been continual and suggests a major upswing
in piety in 171. It is however reasonable to suggest that al-Khayzuran
was in Mecca with al-Mahdi in 160 and made the purchased the house
then.. However, so far as I know, there is no evidence she was in
Mecca in 160 and that she was might well be a guess by later
historians. We will have to accept a little indeterminancy.

My point is that this record indicates a decade of intense religious
activity 170-179 and a couple years after that. So far as I know,
other than al-Khayzuran's hajj, this decade is not especially called
out in islamic religious history. Al-Tabari has very little happening
during the decade except during 176 (a year when Harun did not perform
the hajj). However, if one follows John Wansbrough, something very
important did happen on the religious front.

I suggest that we should date the canonization of the Qur'an to this
decade (Wansbrough says vaguely "the end of the second century"). What
this signifies is that what I call the surat literature was collected,
edited and published as The Qur'an. The surat literature itself had
been around for the better part of two centuries in oral and written
form and had been studied by people like Ibn Ishaq (died 151) but its
precise content had not been definitively marked off. Of course, this
reconstruction of history ignores the story of the collection of the
Qur'an in the time of Uthman as a pious fiction. It seems certain that
a strong central authority would be needed to impose the "new" Qur'an
(the one that has come down to us) on the unruly Muslims. Assuming
that authority was the caliph this is the best possible moment.

So far as I know, there is no direct evidence for this
reconstruction. It has been deduced indirectly from other facts such
as the fact that Ibn Ishaq knows only of surats and not of a unified
qur'an. He knows the word, of course, but uses it broadly to indicate
the entire islamic kerygma rather than a specific document.

How the surat literature came into being and just exactly what it
includes are questions for another time.