The emergence of an autonomous Egypt

From 850, the attention of Arab chroniclers ceased to focus on the eastern provinces of the Dār al-Islām, the ‘Abbāsids’ primary concern for a century. Southern Iraq, potentially so rich because of its high–yielding agriculture, its vast port of Basra, its convergence of caravans and riverine navigation (the main route directing the Iranians toward Mecca and the commodities of the Indian Ocean toward the Byzantine markets), was nonetheless shaken by unrest. From 820 to 834 the disturbances engendered by the undisciplined Zutt, buffalo breeders who had arrived from India during the Sassanid period, compelled the ‘Abbāsid caliphs in 222/837 to relocate them in northern Syria, confronting the Byzantines. Subsequently, the general uprising of the Zanj erupted, a rebellion of black slaves imported from Zanzibar to cultivate the southern Iraqi plantations of sugar cane and rice under unbearable climatic conditions. Inspired by an ‘Alid pretender, they were initially victorious. The Zanj temporarily occupied Basra and, after 255/869, menaced all the fertile agrarian lands of southern Mesopotamia. Although they were vanquished in 270/883, the region’s agriculture did not recover from the devastation that was inflicted on it. A group of Ismā‘īlī agitators, the Carmatians, had inaugurated their programs of indoctrination in the region of Kūfa around 264/877. After founding a state at Bahrayn on the southern shore of the Persian Gulf in 286/899, they instigated revolts among the poor peasants of southern Iraq and the Arab tribes of the Syro–Iraqi steppe at the beginning of the fourth/tenth century.