Almost exactly two years ago, on my very first post on this blog, I made a promise which I have not yet kept. Long-time readers will remember that I talked about Abu al-ʿAbbas, the elephant given by Harun al-Rashid (r. 787-809) to Charlemagne (r. 768-814). I explained why I think he was an Asian elephant and why that means he was probably born and raised in India. Towards the end of the post, I vowed to return to this subject to explore some of the implications of this fact. While I have since touched upon Indian history, I have neglected that guarantee. But, much like the pachyderms that are the subject of this post, I do not forget. The time has now come to make good upon that promise.
Our early medieval Arabic sources indicate that live elephants in the Caliphate came from India. They could not be bred or reared elsewhere. They also tell us that even the mightiest caliphs had only a handful of elephants at most. Caliph al-Muʿtasim (r. 833-842) seems to have possessed one elephant. When Byzantine ambassadors arrived in Baghdad in 917/918, they were led past a display of one hundred lions, two giraffes and four elephants. It’s not always clear how these elephants were acquired. Indian monarchs controlled the trade in elephants tightly because they were vital resources in warfare, as well as symbols of royal authority. Some of the elephants that reached the caliphs, such as the one received by al-Maʿmun (r. 813-833), were diplomatic gifts from Indian kings. Caliphs also had the right to dispose of elephants captured in battle, dating back, at least in theory, to the Caliph ‘Umar I (r. 634-644).
Whether by diplomacy or by warfare, access to India was essential if an ʿAbbasid Caliph wanted elephants. And herein lay the rub for Harun al-Rashid. Charlemagne sent his embassy to the caliph asking for an elephant in 797. Exactly when the embassy arrived at Harun’s capital at Raqqa is unclear, perhaps in late 797 or early the following year. Whatever the date, the caliph had a problem with helping Charlemagne with his request, because Harun’s communications with India at that point were under threat.
The Caliphate’s window into India was Sind, a province centred on the Indus river valley that had been conquered in the early eighth century. A long way from the ʿAbbasid heartlands in Iraq, Sind could be difficult to manage. The province had been settled by different Arab kin groups following the conquests, and their descendants were extremely powerful in the area. We don’t know exactly when, but at some point in the middle of the 790s fighting broke out between the Yemeni faction and the Nizariyya. We don’t have exact dates for much of this. We do know that Harun al-Rashid sent a series of governors to restore order, but they failed and were defeated in battle by local armies. The Nizariyya got the upper hand and attempted to parcel out Sind among their supporters. Our first fixed point is the year 800 when a newly appointed governor, Dawud b. Yazid b. Hatim al-Muhallabi, succeeded in crushing the Nizariyya, which he did with the utmost brutality. It took several months and the capture and sack of all the cities of Sind, including the capital, al-Mansura.
This means that when Charlemagne’s ambassadors reached Harun, his ability to reliably source elephants was very much in question. The caliph was also engaged in a series of somewhat tricky domestic manoeuvres, culminating in establishing a new line of succession and breaking the dominance of the powerful Barmakid family, who had previously been his chief advisors. He had an audience at home that he needed to impress. The timeline of events is hard to reconstruct. Our first evidence for the movements of Abu al-ʿAbbas comes from June 801 when Charlemagne received the news that the elephant, and the surviving members of the embassy, led by Isaac the Jew, had arrived in modern Tunisia. The poetry of Florus of Lyons suggests that they had followed the North African coast on foot. I don’t know how long it takes to walk an elephant from Mesopotamia to Tunisia, but this might indicate a late 800- very early 801 start.
I see three possibilities here:
1. Abu al-ʿAbbas was an elephant Harun had had before the civil war in Sind. He gave the elephant to Isaac before he learned that the rebellion had been crushed.
2. Abu al-ʿAbbas was an elephant Harun had had before the civil war in Sind. He gave the elephant to Isaac after he learned that the rebellion had been crushed.
3. Abu al-ʿAbbas was an elephant acquired during the fighting, sent to Harun in as booty after the rebellion had been crushed.
Scenario 1 is interesting. If it were the case, it would imply that Harun placed a very high importance on his dealings with Charlemagne, sending him a scarce resource that he might not be able to replace. This might help explain Einhard’s comment that the caliph sent Charlemagne the only elephant he had. Einhard also noted that Harun ‘held virtually the whole east except for India.’ While no caliph could ever be said to have ruled more than a fraction of India, in the late 790s Harun controlled even less of it than had been usual. In this reading, Harun may have been aiming to transmit a message of confidence to a domestic audience, showing that he expected to regain control of Sind and access to India soon with an ostentatious gift to a distant ruler.
Behind door 2 we have a Harun who is rather less inclined to gamble. Responding to Charlemagne still matters and Abu al-ʿAbbas gets sent with all public pomp and honour. But the caliph wants to know that he can at least theoretically replace his elephant. This situation would help explain the curious timing of the embassy’s return. Assuming they reached Harun in 798 at the latest, the Frankish embassy had probably spent two years in the vicinity of his court before they set off back. These were busy years for the caliph, in which he led the pilgrimage to Mecca in 797/8. I think it’s also likely that Harun may have found having Franks at his new capital at Raqqa a useful display of his power. That said, if the caliph was waiting to hear that Sind was back under control before he let Isaac depart with Abu al-ʿAbbas, then their arrival in North Africa in the middle of 801 would make a lot of sense.
Option 3 is perhaps the most fun (unless you’re one of the Nizariyya). In this scenario, Abu al-ʿAbbas was brought straight from India following the crushing of the rebellion. Perhaps he was war booty from the defeated rebels, perhaps al-Muhallabi was given instructions to acquire an elephant. In this reading, Abu al-ʿAbbas’ journey from India to Francia was a triumphal march from east to west, reminding everyone who saw him along the way of Harun’s power and his capacity for universal monarchy. Among the target audiences for this message would be restive individuals within the caliphate, and Ibrahim b. al-Aghlab, whose autonomous rule in Ifriqiya had just been recognized by Harun.
One of the things I like about this possibility are the opportunities for parallels with Charlemagne. Charlemagne’s destruction of the kingdom of the Avars had produced vast quantities of treasure, some of which he sent to the kings of Northumbria and Mercia in 796. Gold from the Avar hoard may also have been among the gifts taken by the envoys he sent to the Caliphate in 797. It would point to the commonalities between Harun and Charlemagne’s styles of rulership if both sent booty from victories won in the east to overawe smaller polities to the west. It should also remind us just how much larger the scale on which Harun operated was in comparison to Charlemagne.
However, this scenario pushes the timetable to the limit. Probably the absolute latest Isaac and Abu al-ʿAbbas could have left Mesopotamia is the very beginning of 801. Theoretically al-Muhallabi could have put Abu al-ʿAbbas on a ship to Basra, saving some time, but the elephant’s subsequent journey seems to have prioritized minimizing the moments when a large, valuable and potentially easy to spook animal was at sea. Also, the beginning of the northeast monsoon season in around September suggests that the backend of 800 would be an, erm, exciting moment to be afloat with an elephant. The route by land is no joke either. That said, I think it might just be doable in a little under half a year. Assuming al-Muhallabi got off to a good start in his campaign and was in a position to dispatch Abu al-ʿAbbas in August/September 800, the timing might work.
I don’t really have much in the way of evidence to choose between these possibilities. Option 1 feels the least plausible to me, because I think if Harun was happy to send off Abu al-ʿAbbas immediately then Isaac’s Amazing Travelling Elephant Show reaches Charlemagne an awful lot sooner than it did. Option 2 is probably the safest bet here, but I would like to register a strong soft spot for option 3.
Whichever of these possibilities was actually the case, the war in Sind not only had an impact on Harun’s ability to send Charlemagne an elephant, but should also shape our understanding of the meaning of the gift. The caliph was presenting Charlemagne with something rare and potentially very difficult for him to replace, indicating that this was a relationship he took extremely seriously. The context of the war in Sind meant that for those in the Caliphate who witnessed the gift, they were either seeing a statement of confidence or triumph.
This context is not something visible in the sources that explicitly mention ʿAbbasid diplomacy with the Carolingians, which are mostly Frankish. In order to see these connections, when we study early medieval diplomacy we need to approach it with a wide lens, to get a sense of what else was going on at the same time that would have had an impact on people making political decisions. This is all the more pressing in the medieval period because our sources are much less likely to draw explicit links than modern sources. Like all rulers, Harun al-Rashid operated in a world where multiple things were always going on at the same time. We will only understand the choices he made when we perceive the connections between the challenges he was facing at any one point.
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