Q. & A. 711 to 1707 with solved Papers css 1971 to date

Ukhaidir
As successor to thr brother al-Mansur, al-Saffah had named Isa ibn Musa, his nephew, Isa was made Governor of Kufa and occupied a great palace in the new Baghdad, but beginning in 764-65 a number of attempts were made to depose him in favour of Mansur’s son,al-Mahdi. When treachery and poison failed, a threat to the life of Isa’s son compelled the father to give up his rights on payment often million dirhams, while retaining the right to succeed al-Mahdi. Finally, in 778, when Isa refused again to give up his right of accession in favour of al-Mahdi’s son, Harun al-Rashid, he was deprived of the governorship of Kufa and retired to his estate, visiting Kufa only for Friday prayers.
Ukhaidir consists of an inner enclosure about 367 by 269 feet entered from the north through a portal flanked by quarter circle towers. After ponstruction had reached about 10 feet was begun perhaps in 778, when Ibn Musa might have felt he needed added protection. Where the north wall of the outer enclosure enveloped that of the inner one, three stories of symmetrically arranged rooms rose against it; all other parts of the palace were of one story, like Mshatta.14
Instead Ukhaidir follows the hieratic immobility of the enshrined Persian king and the grandees, tribute bearers, and entertainers of his court-a court by now safely receding into legend and ultimately totally supplanted by the power of Islam. The Tarik Khana of Damghan
Monuments of the early Abbasid period are rare in Persia but at Damghan, due south the eastern most tip of the Caspian Sea, there is hypostyle mosque of Arabic plan but Sassanian structure. Heavy cylindrical piers of baked brick support arcades perpendicular to the
Hoag, P 25
Scientific and Literary Progress under the Abbasuh
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qibla wall with its elliptical arches, some almost pointed. Wooden tie beams are use, as at Ukhaidir, and the mihrab aisle is notabl> wider than that at al-Aqsa in Jerusalem. The arcades originally supported barrel vaults of unbaked brick, and the riwaqs v\ere also barrelvaulted perpendicularly to their outer walls. A date sometime between 750, when the Minber was first permitted in all Friday mosques and 789, when the Abbasids first began to use the pointed arch consistently, has been suggested for the Tank Khana. The building is simple, massive, and utterly without ornament, relying, much as do parts of the palace at Ukhaidir. on the hea\>, rhythmic succession of pier and arch for its great force and dignity. The Samarra of al-Mu’tasim
AI-Mu’tasim, before settling upon Samarra proper, first chose a site nearer Baghdad but soon rejected it for another at a place called al-Qatul. Here construction continued until the soil was found unsuitable. There is at the southern end of a Samarra a site called Qadisiyya where an octagonal fortified enclosure with habitation areas around the walls encloses what looks like an inner square. Nearby across a canal is an unfortified palace enclosure some 711 by

924 yards with the remains of a square ornamental lake on axis. If this site is indeed al-Qatul it seems that al-Mu’tasim repeated the arrangement of al-Mansur’s secure circular city but built near it a

.more open palace, as al-Mansur himself had done about 773 at al-
|Khuld, a Baghdad suburb.
|The Qasr al-Jiss
Excavations by the Iraqi government form 1936 to 1939 at ^Huwaissalat, on the west bank of the Tigris near the Ishaqi canal, uncovered what may be al-Mu’tasim’s Gypsum Palace or Qasr alJiss, mentioned by Ibn Serapion around 945. The building (of baked brick and a kind of terre pisee found later in North Africa) is 167 square yards and stood within a outer enclosure of mud brick 442 square yards, presumably with four portals corresponding to those of the inner enclosure. Here Abu Muslim’s famous palace at Merv is resurrected complete with a central, almost certainly dome, chamber and four iwans leading to as many open courts. The outer enclosure may have accommodated courtiers, guards, and servants, as it did in al-Mansur’s round city, though on a more modest scale here. The rows of buttresses close to the walls of inner enclosure were probably linked to them and to each other with arches suggesting the blind arcading of the outer walls of Ukhaidir. They would have

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Political and Cultural History of Islam

supported a fairly ample passage behind a parapet and suggest that there were fortifications as well a feature absent in al-Mu’tasim’s far grandeur establishment across the Tigris. The Jausaq al-Kharqani
Although set some distance south of the Qasr al-Jiss, this vast structure of al-Mu’tasim’s may have had the same relation to the former that his unfinished palace at al-Qadisiyya had to the octagonal enclosure there, al-Khuld to the circular city at Baghdad. In other words, it may have functioned as a plaisancs, open and unfortified, with convenient access to a fortified keep in which considerable magnificence was available, though on a reduced scale. The area encompassed by the Jausaq, also called Bayt alKhahfa, is immense. From the pavilion on the Tigris opposite the Bab al-Amma, the gate of public audience, to the eastern moist pavilion overlooking the race-course in the game preserve the distance is no less than 1,531 yards. In area the building covers some

432 acres, of which 172 were gardens. Although it has been questioned, there seems little doubt that the Bab al-Amma, or gate of the people (ummah), served both as palace entrance and public audience hall where the canopied throne (sidilla) was placed in the central iwan.15

The Muslims continued their work in the service of science until a great misfortune afflicted their principal intellectual centres at Baghdad and Damascus in the East and Cordova and Granada in the West. Then there was downfall. Several reasons can be attributed for this decline of the Muslim power and civilization. The first and foremost of these were the Mongols who destroyed all the centres of learning with the result that Muslims started living on their past glories, which were slowly fading and giving place to a more vibrant society, emerging from the West, after the renaissance. A degeneration of the political and economic conditions that followed proved also a great setback to sciences. If the Muslims could lead the world in the field of science, by making solid contributions in the past, they can do the same now. They can touch the same heights again or even higher, provided they inoculate the habit of dedication and selflessness on the individual as well as the national scale. The Qur’an says: ”God helps only those who help themselves”.
15 Falbot Rice, P 25
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