Not surprisingly, the same period saw the revival of monumental architecture.
Already Emperor Theophilus was known for the splendid palace that he had built on
the outskirts of Constantinople, and Basil I was famous as a builder of churches.
Rich men from the court and church imitated imperial tastes, constructing palaces,
churches, and monasteries of their own.
The Shift to the East in the Islamic World
Just as at Byzantium the imperial court determined both culture and policies, so too
in the Islamic world of the ninth century were the caliph and his court the center of
power. The Abbasids, who ousted the Umayyad caliphs in 750, moved their capital
city to Iraq (part of the former Persia) and stepped into the shoes of the Sasanid king
of kings, the “shadow of God on earth.” Yet much of their time was spent less in
imposing their will than in conciliating different interest groups.
THE ABBASID RECONFIGURATION
Years of Roman rule had made Byzantium relatively homogeneous. Nothing was less
true of the Islamic world, made up of regions wildly diverse in geography, language,
and political, religious, and social traditions. Each tribe, family, and region had its
own expectations and desires for a place in the sun. The Umayyads paid little heed.
Their power base was Syria, formerly a part of Byzantium. There they rewarded
their hard-core followers and took the lion’s share of conquered land for themselves.
They expected every other region to send its taxes to their coffers at Damascus. This
annoyed regional leaders, even though they probably managed to keep most of the
taxes that they raised. Moreover, with no claims to the religious functions of an
imam, the Umayyads could never gain the adherence of the followers of Ali. Soon
still other groups began to complain. Where was the equality of believers preached in
the Qur’an? The Umayyads privileged an elite; Arabs who had expected a fair
division of the spoils were disappointed. So too were non-Arabs who converted to
Islam: they discovered that they had still to pay the old taxes of their non-believing
days.
The discontents festered, and two main centers of resistance emerged: Khurasan
(today eastern Iran) and Iraq. (See Map 3.2.) Both had been part of the Persian
Empire; the rebellion was largely a coming together of old Persian and newly
“Persianized” Arab factions. In the 740s this defiant coalition at Khurasan decided to
