The Abbasid Age
120-350AH
737-961 CET
HE DESCENDANTS OF Yazid ruled for a number of generations. They
wove a skein of entrenched power over the Muslim world, extended
their suzerainty to Spain in the west and India in the east. Under their ad-
ministration, the doctrines of Islam were elaborated, written down, and
sealed into codebooks. A body of religious scholars came to own those
codebooks, the way lawyers in America own the constitution and the laws
spun from it, and those religious scholars worked in tandem with the
politicians and bureaucrats of the Umayyad court to forge a distinctly Is-
lamic society.
Mainstream Western histories usually praise this process. The Umayyads
introduced that wonderful quality called stability to the civilized world.
Stability enabled farmers to plan next year's crop. It enabled businessmen
to invest in long-term projects. It encouraged students to enter upon
long courses of study with confidence that what they learned would still
apply by the time they had graduated. Stability gave scholars the free-
dom to lose themselves in study and dig deep into the mysteries of na-
ture without having to worry that their families were meanwhile getting
killed by thugs.
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