Born in Yemen, Khayzuran was captured as a slave and brought to the palace of Caliph al-Mahdi in Baghdad, the seat of the Abbasid Empire that ruled the Islamic world from the 8th century until 1258, when the Mongols conquered the city. If you don’t know much about Baghdad other than what you’ve heard on the news in recent years, wipe your mind free of those perceptions and begin again in the year 775, as al-Mahdi came to power, the third Abbasid caliph.
Baghdad in this time, and for centuries after, was lit.’ Well-regulated markets offered trade from India, China, and basically everywhere else. People came from all over and shared scientific and literary knowledge. Baghdad has from its start been book-obsessed. Educated Baghdadi citizens frequented libraries and bookstores and read works from around the world translated to Arabic in one of the translation schools of the city.
Now forget what you think you know about harems. If you have vague memories of the word or paintings of women lolling about half-naked, know that these images come from the minds of horny white European men, the kind of men who nowadays visit a Middle Eastern country for a week and thenceforth hold court in all social gatherings about the mysteries of the Orient.
In reality, the harem was the private sphere of women in an imperial court, and was a highly political place. Quite a few powerful women who started out as slaves in the harem but ended up ruling empires through the work of their own wits, their alliances, their education, their skill at political intrigue, and, sure, their beauty.
When Khayzuran was brought to the palace at Baghdad, her impoverished family came with her, and their fate would be altered beyond their wildest imaginings.
Khayzuran became the wife of al-Mahdi, and manoeuvred their sons to be named his heirs in spite of an earlier marriage. As the wife of the caliph, Khayzuran was an active and public face of state affairs, and arranged excellent positions in government for her much-elevated family.
When al-Mahdi died in 785, Khayzuran’s two sons were away from Baghdad, but she acted quickly to assert her family’s claim to power. To quell any unrest in a sudden power vacuum, she disbursed two years of pay to the army. You wouldn’t be interested in a coup if you’d just received two years’ salary, would you?
Khayzuran called back her sons, and arranged for dignitaries and power brokers to swear allegiance to the elder son, al-Hadi.
Unfortunately for all involved, al-Hadi turned out to be a garbage son. (There’s one in every family, and if you don’t know who yours is, it’s you.) He was also jealous of his younger brother, who was obviously and better liked than he. Al-Hadi felt very threatened by his mother, who had cultivated a powerful network of advisers and officials who visited her regularly in the palace. ‘It is not in the power of women to intervene,’ he had the nerve to say to his own mother who birthed him, ‘in matters of sovereignty. Look to your prayers and your prayer beads’.
Well, instead of looking to her prayer beads, Khayzuran *may* have gotten involved in murdering her son instead. Was it her who did it? Who’s to say! Whoever it was, they *may* have sent sexy ladies to his bedroom to girlishly smother him with pillows, putting a sexy end to al-Hadi’s rule after just over a year.
It seems that al-Hadi had probably been plotting the deaths of his mother and brother. Once, he sent his mother food with instructions for her to ‘eat it up because it’s sooooo soooo yummy!’ but she fed it to her dog first, who promptly died. So better to get in there first when you’re playing the murdering game, I suppose.
And so Khayzuran’s second son, Harun, came to power. Khayzuran continued managing her own affairs of state just fine, and Harun trusted his mother for advice in matters of policy. He happily divided responsibilities and power with her, and presided over a glorious court…..Seê _ Morê
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