Charlemagne and the Arabic World

At the end of yesterday's post on the Auld Alliance I mentioned that France (or the Franks) had formed earlier alliances, some of them seemingly more unusual than that with Scotland. If the cultures of the French and the Scots were different, imagine the cultural divide between the Franks of the 8th and 9th centuries and the Abbasid Caliphate.

In the Life of Charlemagne written by Einhard, and a few other Latin/Frankish sources, we find references to the Carolingians reaching out to the Abbasids. The Franks had clashed with the predecessors of the Abbasids, the Umayyad Caliphate, most notably at the Battle of Tours in 732. The Umayyads were finally expelled from Gaul by Pepin the Short.

After the collapse of the Umayyads and the rise of the Abbasids, Pepin reached out to Caliph al-Mansur. The Carolingians were powerful enough in Western Europe at that time that the Abbasids were open to the possibilities of an alliance; Umayyads still existed on the Iberian Peninsula, posing a potential threat to the southern border of the Carolingians and the western border of the Abbasids.

A Carolingian embassy visited Baghdad in 765 and returned with gifts after three years, followed by an Abbasid embassy to France in 768. Arabic coins from that era are found throughout the Carolingian world, and Arabic gold was exchanged for materials like timber and iron; also, slaves went eastward.

The alliance included a request from the Abbasids in 777 for military aid against the Umayyads in Cordoba. Charlemagne crossed the Pyrenees into Iberia in 778 with a large force, joining in Zaragoza with the Abbasid forces of Sulaymaniyah al-Arabi in an attempt to reconquer the peninsula. This was unsuccessful, and on Charlemagne's return to the north he was ambushed disastrously by Basques at Roncevaux.

Charlemagne did not give up on an alliance, however, and had a strong relationship with Harun al-Rashid, who gifted Charlemagne an elephant, recorded in the Royal Frankish Annals as Abul-Abbas. A few embassies went back and forth between the courts of Charlemagne and al-Rashid. (The illustration is of al-Rashid receiving a Frankish embassy.)

A few centuries later, France saw value in another alliance to the east, with the Mongol Empire. The reason and the result will be tomorrow's topic.

Abul-Abbas

The Royal Frankish Annals cover the era from Charlemagne's grandfather to his son. In it we find that Caliph Harun al-Rashid gave an elephant to Charlemagne. This was the result of Charlemagne sending his emissary, Isaac the Jew (Isaac Judaeus), to open relations with the Abbasid rulers. Harun al-Rashid sent Isaac back with an elephant, named Abul-Abbas.

So how do you get an elephant from Syria to France? With great difficulty. From Baghdad Isaac took Abul-Abbas to Egypt, and then along the north coast of Africa to Tunisia. The going was slow, and Charlemagne received messages from Harun al-Rashid and from Ibrahim ibn al-Aghlab (governor of Africa, whom Isaac would have met in Tunisia) referring to Isaac's mission. Charlemagne ordered a man to Italy, to commission some ships in Genoa to travel to Africa to find Isaac and the elephant and bring them home.

Isaac and Abul-Abbas landed in Genoa in October 801, stayed for the winter, and when the weather turned they crossed the Alps. Isaac reached Charlemagne's court at Aachen on 20 July 802.

Abul-Abbas must have been a lot to maintain, but having the largest land animal anyone had ever seen in your menagerie would have been a great point of pride for Charlemagne. Elephants have long lifespans, and Charlemagne might have had his new pet for a long time, but on an expedition to Denmark in 810, after crossing the Rhine, Abul-Abbas died suddenly while Charlemagne camped at "Lippeham."

We don't know what the records mean by Lippeham, but on the conjecture that it has something to do with the Lippe River, it might be the city of Wesel. We will never know for sure, but there's a story that a colossal bone was found in the Lippe in 1750.

Much of what we know of Isaac the Jew has been revealed in the tale of Abul-Abbas. There was another "Isaac Judaeus," however, in the medieval records: one of the foremost Jewish physicians of his day. Let's take a look at him next time.

(The illustration here is of Abul-Abbas from 12th century Spain; the fresco is 80" high and 53" wide.)