Abbasid Caliphate Research Paper

The Abbasid Caliphate’s success as an empire led it to rule over the Middle East from the year 750 to 1254 C.E. Abbas, the first caliph, overthrew the Umayyad’s to create a more righteous caliphate that wanted to follow the Prophet and the Islamic teaching. Little did he know that he was going to create a prosperous empire that would benefit the entire world. Abbas and his successors lead Islam to its golden age. Many people desired the Abbasid Caliphate and chose to move to its province because of the vast amount of accomplishments that had been occurring. Muslims were given the chance to become political leaders, poets, and theologians. Harun al Rashid’s granting of education and the fueling of scholarly sanctuaries led the caliphate to contribute
The Abbasids created court circles where only the elite and the knowledgeable were allowed; thus, it created the ideology that the educated were the high-class. The court circle required the “aristocracy to submit to one God”, and also be educated about the world in science, philosophy, history, theology etc. (Lapidus 1988, 74). People had to be “knowledgeable” or educated in order to be of the high class; knowing not just their religion, but also worldly information (Lapidus 1988, 74). The people of the high courts or the aristocracy had to be educated in secular studies and also continue to stay on their Islamic values. This idea continued on into Europe and the Europeans educated themselves, and expanded this concept throughout the world. Education was even emphasized, and was an “essential quality for worldly refinement” (Lapidus 1988, 80). The form of education the Abbasid’s developed is the fundamental foundation to the modern form of education we see around us. It has been derived from the Abbasid’s and put together by the Europeans to be employed all around the
The language of Arabic was not as common or widely spoken as it is in modern times. With the Help of the Abbasid’s rule, Arabic became the common language of the Middle East. Previously, the region was dominated with a variety of languages. The literary revolution that took place under the caliphate’s rule replaced all other languages and made Arabic the lingua franca (Lapidus 1988, 74). Due to such rapid expansion of Arabic, as mentioned in “Language of Empire: Politics of Arabic and Persian in the Abbasid World”, Arabic replaced “Greek, Persian, Sanskrit, Coptic, and Syriac as the lingua franca” (Yucesoy 2015, 385). Arabic gave the Abbasid rulers a central identity and a path for building social and political relationships. The importance of a common language was for everyone to stay interconnected as an empire. One of the most important things that occurred during the transformation of Arabic as the lingua franca was the translation and the accumulation of information from various scholars and researchers. Eventually, “it became unavoidable for non- Arabic speaking subjects of the caliphate to articulate their claims in Arabic” (Yucesoy 2015, 386). As a result, many non-Muslims, and non-Arabs came together and translated their works of scientific research in philosophy, politics, theological interpretation and science to Arabic (Yucesoy 2015, 386). This