Kutama
The Kutāma ( Arabic كتامة, DMG Kutāma ) were an ethnic group of the Berbers who achieved historical prominence in the founding phase of the Shiite caliphate of the Fatimids in the 10th century.
origin
The historical settlement area of the Kutāma was in the small Kabylia between the northern foothills of the Aurès massif (Ǧabal Aurās) and the Mediterranean coast in the northeast of today's Algeria . In ancient times the area of the Roman province subordinate to Africa , but has been barely tapped by the Roman civilization or not at all, because the indigenous peoples living there as barbaric (from the Greek Bárbaros , Arabic barbarian were characterized it, "Berbers"), which until was true in the Arab period. The only urban center in the immediate vicinity was the Roman founding Constantine (Qusṭanṭīna) to the east of them , in addition their land was crossed from east to west by two roads, on which the colonies Milevum (Mila) and Sitifensium (Saṭīf) emerged. The livelihood of the Kutāma, however, remained agricultural livestock; their way of life was considered rough and spartan. They were organized into the seven tribes of Ǧīmala, Masālta, Iǧǧāna, Malūsa, Laṭāya, Danhāǧa and Ūrīsa.
history
At the beginning of the 8th century, Africa ( Ifrīqiyā ) was conquered by the Arabs in the course of Islamic expansion and incorporated into their caliphate empire. Their rule in the “barbaric west” ( maġrib ) was only guaranteed by a thin upper class recruited from the descendants of the Arab conquering army, who concentrated only on the urban centers, while the rural regions remained almost unaffected. Although the Kutāma, like most other Berber peoples, also adopted Islam with Sunni characteristics , to the annoyance of Orthodox commentators, they continued to adhere to pre-Islamic rites and customs for a long time.
In 892 a small group of Kutāma pilgrims on their way back from Mecca made the acquaintance of Abū ʿAbdallāh ash-Shīʿī , a preacher from the Iraqi Kufa , and showed an interest in his teachings. Abu Abdallah was a missionary ( da'i ) the Shiite doctrine of the Ismailis , by the imminent return of their hidden rightly guided Imam ( al-Imam al-Mahdi ) announced that the hated Sunni caliphate of the Abbasids overthrow and even the legitimate caliphate of the descendants of Ali restore will. Along with this, the barriers of the Islamic commandments ( šarīʿa ) existing since the preaching of the divine message by the prophet Mohammed would fall. Enthusiastic about this “religion of truth” (dīn al-ḥaqq) , the pilgrims invited the missionary to accompany them to their homeland, which is far from the centers of power of the caliphate, in order to spread the doctrine there to their compatriots. In 983, Abu Abdallah began promoting the Ismaili doctrine in the Kutāma village of Īkǧān north of Mila, but then had to relocate to the safe Tāzrūt southwest of it, where he quickly got all the Kutāma tribes to accept the doctrine could.
Part of this mission was also the preparation for the military confrontation with the authorities of the Sunni caliphate, represented on site by the governor dynasty of the Aghlabites . To this end, Abu Abdallah made use of the warlike disposition of the Kutāma, whose notorious quarrel among each other he was able to end and direct their militant determination against the representatives of the ruling Aghlabites as a common enemy. To this end, he established an army order in which the seven tribes of the Kutāma each formed their own army of cavalry and infantry, which were under the command of their respective "elders" (mašāyiḫ) . In 903 the Ismailis in Syria dared to revolt against the Abbasid caliphate, which was suppressed after only one year and forced the Mahdi to flee from his hiding place in Salamiyya . Notwithstanding this first failed attempt to establish the Mahdi state, Abu Abdallah had now also taken up the open confrontation in distant Africa after the Aghlabites had become aware of him through the conquest of Mila by the Kutāma in 902. The death of the Aghlabite emir in the following year had favored the Ismailis cause, as the state order collapsed due to disputes over the succession within the state holding dynasty.
After seven years of war, the Kutāma led by Abu Abdallah were able to conquer Kairouan first and then the palace city of Raqqada on March 25, 909, thereby ending the rule of the Aghlabites and the Sunni caliphate in Africa. In his place they founded the Shiite-Ismaili caliphate for the Mahdi they expected. During the war, the Mahdi himself had traveled incognito through the combat area disguised as a merchant and had settled in the safe Sjilmasa in what is now Morocco to await the outcome of the fighting. Abu Abdallah and the victorious Kutāma were able to attend him here on August 26, 909, whereupon he stepped out of concealment ( ġaiba ) and led them in a triumphal procession to Raqqada and there on January 5, 910 as the rightful successor of the Prophet and commander of all believers was proclaimed. This established a new caliphate in competition with the existing Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad . Historiography retrospectively refers to this new caliph dynasty as " Fatimids ". For the next almost a hundred years, the Kutāma remained the military backbone of the Fatimids and thus the spearhead of their territorial expansion. Using their fighting power, the rest of the Maghreb and Sicily could first be subjugated for the caliphate. In 969 they made up the bulk of the Fatimid expedition army under the Slavic general Jawhar as-Siqilli , who entered the Egyptian provincial capital al-Fustat with almost no battle and thus won Egypt for the caliphate. In contrast, the Kutāma socialized as warriors, with a few individual exceptions, could not be used for administrative tasks in state administration and government. The Fatimids preferred to occupy the highest levels of their state with competent Arabs, Slavs and, later, Turks.
With the conquest of Egypt, the Kutāma had reached the height of their military endeavors, but as soon as they continued their advance into Syria they had to accept their first heavy defeats in the late 10th century. They were opposed here by Arab Bedouin tribes and then by the first hordes of heavily armed Turks who began to advance from Central Asia into the Near East. In order to meet the new military requirements, the Fatimid army was increasingly supplemented during the time of the caliph al-Aziz with units made up of Persian mercenaries ( Dailamites ) and acquired military slaves ( mamlūk ) of Sudanese and Turkish origin, whereby the Kutāma lost their exclusivity threatened in the army order. As the oldest “friends of God” (auliyāʾ Allāh) and first “helpers of the truth” (anṣār al-ḥaqq), however, they claimed preferential treatment in terms of salary and public recognition from the caliphs. In order to preserve this claim, they used the unexpected death of al-Aziz and the succession of the underage al-Hakim in October 996 to establish themselves as the ruling elite of the Fatimid state. To this end, they proclaimed their elder Hassan ibn Ammar al-Kutami as the “mediator” (wisāṭa) between them and the caliph, which corresponded to the position of a vizier who immediately set about filling all posts in the administration with Kutāma. The violence and robbery-marked regime of the tribal warriors from the uncivilized West, who viewed themselves as above the law, quickly became hated by the local Egyptian population. Their numerical inferiority was their undoing as early as September 997, when the Turks and Dailamites, led by the harem administrator Bardjawan , gained control of Cairo in a coup and ended the Kutama regime.
After their fall, the decimated Kutāma were again allowed to join the Fatimid army as paid warriors, but in the course of the 11th century they lost influence and military weight compared to other units, especially since they were no longer recruited to the same extent as Turks and Sudanese and Armenians. The Kutāma, who became resident in Egypt through military service, were later assimilated into the local Arab population. Their compatriots who remained in their homeland were, like all other Berber tribes, severely decimated in the 11th century during the western migration of the Arab Bedouin tribes (see Banū Hilāl and Banū Sulaim ) (forced by the Fatimids) . The few remnants of them withdrew into the valleys of the Algerian mountain ranges, but were then largely Arabized or assimilated into the Berber people of the Kabyls .
swell
Eyewitness accounts of the work of the Kutāma can be found in the biographies (Sīrat) of Jafar al-Hajib (died after 953) and Jaudhar al-Ustadh (died 973).
The kadi and compiler of the Ismaili legal compendium accepted a special literary appreciation of the warriors as the military spearhead of Ismailitism - Numan (died 974) in his work "The opening of the mission and the beginning of the revolution" (Iftitāḥ ad-daʿwa wa-btidāʾ ad- daula) .
literature
- Heinz Halm , The Empire of the Mahdi. The rise of the Fatimids 875–973. CH Beck, Munich 1991.
- Heinz Halm, The Caliphs of Cairo. The Fatimids in Egypt 973-1074. CH Beck, Munich 2003.
- Heinz Halm, Caliphs and Assassins: Egypt and the Near East at the Time of the First Crusades 1074–1171. CHBeck, Munich 2014.
- Yaacov Lev, Army, Regime, and Society in Fatimid Egypt. In: International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 19 (1987), pp. 337-365.