The War of the Brothers: the Civil War That Broke the Islamic Empire In 811 CE, the armies of the Abbasid Caliphate marched east to crush a provincial rebellion. By 813, the greatest city in the medieval world was in flames, a caliph lay dead in the Tigris, and an empire that had seemed eternal was discovering the true dimensions of its own fragility.The Fourth Fitna, the civil war between the brothers al-Amin and al-Ma'mun, sons of the legendary Harun al-Rashid, was not simply a succession dispute. It was the violent expression of contradictions that had been building since the dynasty's revolutionary founding in 750 CE: between Arab and Persian, between the military aristocracy of Baghdad and the provincial elites of Khurasan, between the world the caliphate had built and the world it was becoming.Hegemonic Fragmentation traces this crisis from its structural origins through the war's devastating military campaigns, the collapse of Baghdad, and the turbulent six-year interregnum that followed. It follows the commanders, caliphs, viziers, and ordinary fighters whose decisions shaped the outcome, and asks what the catastrophe ultimately produced: the dissolution of an imperial military class, the rise of regional dynasties, a permanent settlement between caliphal and scholarly authority, and, paradoxically, the intellectual golden age that the crisis made possible.This is the story of an empire that destroyed itself and, in doing so, transformed the world. Finbar John Harris was born in Limerick and studied medieval history at University College Cork, where his fascination with the Islamic world began during a year spent researching the political culture of the early Abbasid caliphate. He has spent two decades reading in the Arabic and Persian historical traditions, and his particular interest lies in the structural forces that shape dynastic collapse - the slow fractures beneath the surface of apparently stable empires. Hegemonic Fragmentation is the culmination of that long engagement, drawing on the scholarship of Hugh Kennedy, Patricia Crone, and the great Arabic chroniclers to reconstruct one of the most consequential crises in Islamic history. He lives in County Clare and is the author of several works of narrative historical nonfiction.
