THE ABBASID AGE 89magic lamp hark back to the reign of the fourth and most famous Abbasid
khalifa, Haroun al-Rashid, portrayed as the apogee of splendor and justice.
Legends about Haroun al-Rashid characterize him as a benevolent
monarch so interested in the welfare of his people that he often went
among them disguised as an ordinary man, so that he might learn first-
hand of their troubles and take measures to help them. In reality, I'm
guessing, it was the khalifa's spies who went among the people disguised as
ordinary beggars, not so much looking for troubles to right as malcontents
to neutralize.
Even more than in Umayyad times, the khalifa became a near mythic
figure, whom even the wealthiest and most important people had little
chance of ever seeing, much less petitioning. The Abbasid khalifas ruled
through intermediaries, and they insulated themselves from everyday real-
ity with elaborate court rituals borrowed from Byzantine and Sassanid tra-
ditions. So, yes, Islam conquered all the territories ruled by the Sassanids
and much that had once been ruled by the Byzantines, but in the end the
ghosts of those supplanted empires infiltrated and altered Islam.