Titans of History

Muawiya was famed for his good sense and witty decency at a time when he was probably the most powerful ruler on earth. He prided himself on his patience and forbearance: no one has ever so cleverly stated the essence of politics as Muawiya, who said: “I apply not my sword when my lash suffices nor my lash when my tongue suffices. And even if but one hair is binding me to my fellow men, I don’t let it break. When they pull, I loosen, if they loosen, I pull.”

On his death in 680, his son Yazid failed to grasp the succession, facing rebellions in Arabia and Iraq. Muhammad’s grandson Hussein rebelled to avenge his father Ali’s death but was brutally murdered at Karbala in Iraq, his martyrdom creating the Shia, “the party,” a division that still splits Islam today. However, after Yazid’s early death, Muawiya’s old kinsman Marwan started to reconquer the empire, dying in 685 and leaving this troubled inheritance to his son Abd al-Malik, the second of the titanic Ummayad Caliphs. Abd al-Malik was less humane and flexible but more ruthless and visionary than Muawiya. He first mercilessly crushed the rebellions, retaking Iraq and Arabia; in Jerusalem he built the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount, a triumph of religious expression and imperial grandeur, the oldest Islamic shrine, and ordered the building of the Aqsa Mosque.

Abd al-Malik was severe, thin, hook-nosed, curly-haired and, his enemies claimed, in what can probably be dismissed as hostile propaganda, that he had breath so noxious he was nicknamed the Flykiller. Abd al-Malik saw himself as God’s shadow on earth: if Muawiya was Caesar of the Arabs, he was a mixture of St. Paul and Constantine the Great—he believed in the marriage of empire, state and god. As such it was Abd al-Malik who collated the book of Islam—the Koran—into its final form (the inscriptions in Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock are the first examples of the final Koran text), who defined Islamic rituals and who unified Islam into a single religion recognizable today with the emphasis on Koran and Muhammad, expressed in the double shahada: “There is no God but God and Muhammad is the apostle of God.” Abd al-Malik and his son Caliph Walid expanded their empire to the borders of India and the coasts of Spain. Yet their dynasty remained part Islamic theocrats, part Roman emperors, often living in a distinctly un-Islamic decadence. This led to the family’s downfall in the revolution of 750, when they were replaced by the Abbasid caliphs who ruled from Iraq and blackened the reputation of the Ummayads. To the Shia, they remained heretics and sinners because the Shia believed the real Caliphs were the twelve descendants from Ali and Fatima: indeed the Shia of Iran still await the return of the Twelfth.

ZHAO WU

625–705

Wu is a treacherous monster! May it be that I be reincarnated as a cat and she be reincarnated as a mouse, so that I can, forever and ever, grab her throat.

Consort Xiao, one of Empress Wu’s many victims

The only woman in Chinese history to rule in her own right, the empress Wu was both depraved megalomaniac and intelligent puppeteer. Beginning life as the emperor’s concubine, she dominated the imperial court for over half a century, eventually achieving absolute power as the self-styled “Heavenly Empress.”

Wu Zhao, as she was then known, was only thirteen when in 638 she entered the imperial palace as a concubine of the emperor Taizong. From an early age she was aware of the power that flowed from her good looks and intelligence, and by the time Taizong died a decade or so later, she had already ingratiated herself with his son and heir, Gaozong.

As was customary for concubines following the death of their master, Wu Zhao spent a brief period in retreat at a Buddhist convent. But within a couple of years she was back at the center of imperial court life, her return being partly driven by the empress Wang, Gaozong’s wife: jealous of one of her husband’s other concubines, Consort Xiao, Wang had hoped that Wu might divert his attention. It was to be a fatal move.

As Wang had anticipated, Wu quickly displaced Xiao as the new emperor’s favorite concubine, and went on to bear him four sons. But Wu now wanted power for herself, and sought ways of eliminating the influence of the empress Wang. When in 654 Wu gave birth to a daughter who died shortly afterward, Wu ensured that Wang emerged as prime suspect in the baby’s death. Gaozong believed his concubine over his wife and duly had both Wang and Consort Xiao removed from their positions. In their place, Wu became empress.