Turks, mamluks and arabs

 

The reasons for why Turks became prominent are complex and long but one thing that you must be sure of is that Turks were not better fighters than Arabs for the simple reason of what the arab have conqured and what the Turks have conquered.

 

Ummayyads believed in Arab supremecy and throughout their history they bluntly refused to hire regulars that were not Arabs except in the navy which was heavily dependent on the Copts and that worked well for them, not only they quenched all the rebellion during 40 years of civil war, but they conquered all the lands from Toulous to Kashi or Kashghar, the heartland of the Turks. The Abbasids who overthrough the Umayyads were dependent on Persians and shiite Arabs for their support though the Bulk of their Army was Arab the civil service and court officials were not Arabs but Persians. The Persians started a covert campaign in Al-Mansur's reign to make recruitment more open especilly to Persians but the guy was very watchful and he did not make this happen in a widespread manner. However in the reign of his son the Barmicides came and they were keen to make Persians supreme. After filling the top ranks with Persians they stopped resourting to Arab tribes who until then had to train their subjects and Mawali, non arabs in allegiance with a certain tribe, and had to send a fixed number every year to serve in the military. The tribes which natuarally benifited financially from this system expressed resentment and even rebelled only to be defeated. The Army by the time of Al-Rashid was a professional army doing recruitment in a manner similar to the old Roman Army without preferring certain groups. Arabs continued to be the bulk of the Army but the fighting was done by Persian units and when the civil war between Al-Amin and Al-Mamun most of the troops were either Persian or Arab with a growing turkish presence despite the commanders being mostly Arab.

 

After Al-Mamun's victory he started diversifying more and more, he correctly predicted that Persians will revolt (Babak Khorramdin) and the Arabs will do the same (Yemen, shiite etc) so in an effort to make the Army more loyal and professional and less ethnically homogeneous he recruited from all sides of the empire and disbanded most Arab units and perminanlty cancelled the old system. he also recruited men from old nble houses from conquered lands, like Afshin, to command posts. the arab response for this was unfortunate, they simply refused to serve in the military both officers and commanders, withdrew from public life and some tribes even returned to the desert in protest. When Al-Mutasim things finally reached to their climax. The guy was illiterate, the first illiterate ruler of Islam, and he know little Arabic. His guards and units were all turks from his mother's kin. When he came he faced over 10 different rebellions and since convinving the Arabs to fight was in vein and Persians were deserting for Babak he started his recruitment of Ghulams. They were good fighters, as good as Arabs, and they had blind loyalty to their leaders. Afshain liked them depite being Persian and In his reign the entire Army was to became based on the turkish race and Arab representation was deminished to a bare minimum. Soon afterwords The Abbasids were under a military dictatorship run by commanders of the Army like Wasif and Bagha and they failed to protect the state. About the year 320 AH the Abbasid were at the lowest they can get. Byzantines ravaged through the lands, Persia was under various independent principalities and invaders came and went without much resistance.

 

Al-Jassas

 

 

I did not say Turks were bad fighters or Arabs were better. I just explained why the Abbasids chose Turks over Arabs, i was politics. Turks were largely non muslim at that time or at least nominally so. They know little Arabic and the only thing they were interested in was money. The Arabs on the other hand have been restless in their opposition to the measures taken by the Abbasids turning the country more and more to the persian way. By the time of Mamun Arabs were only military commanders. The Beauracracy was of Persian or Greek origin and Arabs were gradually given lower positions there. This with the existance of several strong parties that wanted to retrn the glory of the Arabs were the only reason why they were expelled from the Army during Al-Mutasim's reign. The conspiracy of Afshin had already resulted in the disbanding of Persian units and By the caliphate of Al-Wathiq, Turks were the Rank-and-file of the military, administration was still in the hands of the Persians and the Arabs had nothing. They rebelled without coordination and by the time of Al-Muqtadir, petty Arab princedoms in syria, Armenia, the caucasus and Arabia were far away from the control of the caliphate.

 

Al-Jassas

 

The Abassids couldn't trust to retain their power by trusting either the Grand viziers or the old guard, the Turkic tribes provided them with a ally that would fight for them, and was not affected by previous events, they did not know the corruption yet at least.

 

However, by the time of Alp Arslan the Khalifah's power had been long diminished to a figurative head of state position.

 

In the end the Turkic soldiers just like the Malawi before them immersed in the Islamic society, and state. We see a parallel with the Germanic tribes who went through immense Romanization while acting as Roman agents, and eventually becoming Romans in the sense of being governors as well.

 

 

 

Turks were a good choice for the late Abbasids for the same reason Germans were a good choice for the late western Romans, and why the modern US army is predominantly from the South or Arabs served in both Byzantine and Persian armies. At some points in time certain groups prefer army life to other groups. If one group of people have power for too long, they cease to wish to fight, and the armies that they previously supported need to be staffed by others.