ENTER THE TURKS 123itary title. (A similar thing happened in the Germanic kingdoms of Europe
where a similar officer, the "mayor of the palace" developed into the real
ruler of the land.) The Buyids, like the khalifas, began importing the chil-
dren ofTurkish barbarians to Baghdad as slaves and raising them in dormi-
tories over which they had absolute control, to serve as their personal
bodyguards. Once the Buyids had their system in place, no one could op-
pose them, for their Turkish bodyguards had come to town at such a young
age they had no memory of their families, their fathers, their mothers, their
siblings: they knew only the camaraderie of the military schools and camps
in which they grew up, and they felt soldierly allegiance only to one another
and to the men who had controlled their lives in the camps. The Buyids,
then, became a new kind of dynasty in Islam. They kept the khalifa in place
but issued orders in his name and enjoyed a high life behind the throne.
Thus, Persians came to rule the capital of the Arab khalifate.
These Persian viziers couldn't rule the rest of the empire, however, nor
did they even care to. They were perfectly content to leave distant locales
to the domination of whatever lord happened to have the most strength
there. Major governors thus turned into minor kings, and Persian mini
dynasties proliferated across the former Sassanid realm.
You might think that training slaves to be killers, giving them weapons,
and then stationing them outside your bedroom door would be such a bad
idea that no one would ever do it, but in fact almost everyone did it in these
parts: every little breakaway Persian kingdom had its own corps ofTurkish
mamluks guarding and eventually controlling its little Persian king.
As if that were not enough, the empire as a whole was constantly fight-
ing to keep whole tribes ofTurkish nomads from crossing the frontier and
wreaking havoc in the civilized world, just as the Romans had struggled to
keep the Germans at bay. At last the Turks grew too strong to suppress,
both inside and outside the khalifate. In some of those little outlying king-
doms, mamluks killed their masters and founded their own dynasties.
Meanwhile, with the empire decaying and the social fabric fraying, bar-
barians began to penetrate the northern borders, much as the Germans
had done in Europe when they crossed the Rhine River into Roman terri-
tory. Rude Turks came trickling south in ever growing numbers: tough
warriors, newly converted to Islam and brutal in their simplistic fanati-
cism. Accustomed to plunder as a way of life, they ruined cities and laid