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Early Medieval Period: History
The early
medieval period was marked by another wave of invasions,
but this time from within the Islamic world. New rulers,
of varying ethnic backgrounds, established short-lived
regional dynasties, in contrast to the preceding period,
in which Arab leadership predominated and the Islamic
world was united under the centralized authority of the
caliph. This was a time of political change, shifting
religious trends, and a great flowering of the arts.
With the deterioration of Abbasid authority, autonomous dynasties
soon established themselves in the western territories.
In the early tenth century the Shicite Fatimid dynasty came to power in
North Africa and soon expanded its authority to Sicily
and parts of Egypt. The Fatimid armies completed their
conquest of Egypt in 969, and in that year Cairo was
founded as the new capital, becoming an important
cultural center that was to rival Baghdad. From Egypt the
Fatimids extended their domain to Syria. Egypt and Syria
enjoyed enormous economic prosperity under the Fatimids,
through their control of the lucrative trade between
India and the Mediterranean. Furthermore, this was a
period of remarkable tolerance, in which members of the
Christian and Jewish communities flourished alongside
their Muslim counterparts.
Fatimid power effectively
ended in 1169, when, in an attempt to rid themselves of
the Crusaders, who were then besieging Cairo, the Fatimid
rulers asked a Syrian dynasty to come to their aid. Not only did
the Syrians succeed in driving the Crusaders from Egypt,
but one of their officers overthrew the Fatimid
caliphate, establishing the Ayyubid dynasty.
In deposing the Shicite
Fatimid caliph, the founder of the Ayyubid dynasty, Salah
al-Din (Saladin), who was of Kurdish descent, also
restored Sunni, or orthodox, Islam to Egypt. He
expanded his empire to include Yemen, Syria, and Iraq,
and, famously, he managed to defeat the Crusader states in 1187. Following Salah al-Din’s
death, the empire was little more than a confederation of
semiautonomous principalities, each ruled by one of the
Ayyubid princes. This empire nonetheless enjoyed a period
of relative peace and affluence.
Elsewhere in the west,
Spain had been independently governed from the mid-eighth
century by a branch of the Umayyad dynasty, under whose
rule Islamic Spain witnessed a golden age. With the fall
of this dynasty in 1031, Spain was divided into several
minor principalities. Weakened by division, the Muslims
were unable to deflect the threat of the Christian reconquest. In 1086 a confederation of Berber clans known
as the Almoravids, who had risen to power in Morocco
under the banner of Islamic revival and renewal, crossed
over into Spain, gaining control of the Muslim south
while keeping the Christians in the north at bay. About
the mid-twelfth century the Almoravids were supplanted in
Morocco and, shortly thereafter, in Spain by another
Berber dynasty, the Almohads, who were soon forced from
Spain by the inexorable Christian advance.
On the borders of the
eastern Islamic world, the large-scale migration of
Turkish nomads from the Central Asian steppe shifted the
balance of power, and a series of Turkish dynasts soon
replaced Persians as rulers of the eastern Iranian world.
The first Turkish dynasty, the Ghaznavids, came to power
in what is now Afghanistan. The boundaries of the
Ghaznavid empire eventually extended from Khurasan in the
north to the Indian Subcontinent in the south. Despite
their Turkish origins, the Ghaznavids spoke Persian, and
their patronage helped further the development of modern
Persian as a cultural language. The great Iranian
national epic, the Shahnama, was completed by the
poet Firdawsi at their court in Ghazni in 1010 and was
dedicated to their ruler. Soon after, the Ghaznavids
forfeited their Iranian provinces to another Turkish
dynasty, the Saljuqs.
In the eleventh century
the Saljuqs briefly ruled over a vast empire that
included all of Iran, the Fertile Crescent, and most of
Anatolia, or Turkey. By the end of the century, however,
this empire had disintegrated into smaller kingdoms ruled
by different branches of the Saljuq house. The so-called
Great Saljuqs, the main branch of the dynasty, governed
Iran. Like the Ghaznavids, these ethnic Turks embraced
Persian culture and adopted the Persian language.
Turkish rule in Asia Minor
was initiated under the Saljuqs following their victory
over the Byzantine army in eastern Anatolia in 1071. This
important event paved the way for the gradual
introduction of Islam and Turkish culture into Anatolia.
The Saljuq sultanate of Rum (that is, Byzantium) endured
until the beginning of the fourteenth century, although
from the mid-thirteenth century the Saljuqs served merely
as governors under the Mongols.
Image in top banner:
Candlestick, Iran,13th century; brass, engraved and inlaid with silver; height: 6 3/8 in. (16.19 cm); The Nasli M. Heeramaneck Collection, gift of Joan Palevsky, M.73.5.123
Browse the Islamic
art collection at LACMA
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Early Medieval Period: Art 