Figuring out the Abbasid Caliphate's size ain't like looking at a clean modern map. Started wanting a real picture of it, beyond just seeing the name.
Cracking Open Old Books (and Digital Stuff)
Dug into my pile of history books first. Pulled out the giant ones, flipped through pages searching for maps. Found a few, but they were kinda vague. Zoomed in, squinted – the borders were fuzzy lines, just approximations. Not satisfying.
Jumped online next, scrolled through academic sites and digital archives. Found way more detailed maps here, showing different times under the Abbasids. Problem? They all looked different! One map from 800 AD showed a huge chunk, another from say, 900 AD, looked noticeably smaller. Got confused pretty fast.
The Sorting Mess Begins
Decided I needed to pick a specific point in time. Couldn't map 500 years all at once! Focused on the real peak, roughly around Harun al-Rashid's time, late 700s to early 800s. That felt manageable.
Started collecting scraps:
- Scribbled names of major cities I knew: Baghdad, Samarra, Damascus, Cairo, Cordoba.
- Marked areas I knew they controlled: Mesopotamia (obviously!), Persia, most of Arabia, big chunks of North Africa, parts of Spain.
- Jotted down natural borders: Mediterranean Sea coast, Red Sea, Taurus Mountains, Hindu Kush.
- Noted trouble spots: Independent regions in Morocco, mountains in Iran, messy Anatolian border with the Byzantines.
My desk looked chaotic – open books, printed maps, handwritten notes everywhere.
Putting Pencil to Paper (And Erasing. A Lot)
Grabbed a big piece of blank paper. Drew a rough outline of the Mediterranean, the Arabian Peninsula, and Persia first. Used city names as anchor points.
Started sketching borders:
- Connected Baghdad east towards Persia (Khorasan).
- Swept west through Damascus, down into Egypt.
- Pushed further west along North Africa to Tunisia.
- Jumped the gap to Spain (Al-Andalus).
This is where it got messy. That "controlled" area? It wasn't solid. Think patches. Remote desert regions? They maybe paid taxes sometimes to the Caliph in Baghdad, but local tribes ran things. Coastal areas? Mostly under governors. Mountain valleys? Often fiercely independent. My pencil line kept getting wobbly and dotted.
Saw those giant deserts inside Arabia and North Africa? Had to remember they weren't really "ruled" in the direct way we think. More like loosely claimed territory. So much erasing! Kept having to backtrack.
The Final (Well, Sort Of) Picture
After way too long staring at conflicting info and my messy sketch, I finally stepped back. There it was – this massive, sprawling beast.
- From the Atlantic coast of Morocco/Iberia...
- Across all of North Africa...
- Through the entire Middle East (Egypt, Levant, Arabia, Iraq)...
- Deep into Persia...
- And pushing into Central Asia.
The key takeaway? It wasn't a neat block. It was like a huge, intricate spiderweb.
- Core heartlands around Baghdad and western Persia tightly controlled.
- Distant provinces (like Spain or North Africa) much looser.
- Huge empty spaces in between, deserts nobody really "governed" day-to-day.
- Constant border friction everywhere.
My map ended up covered in pencil smudges, dotted lines, and question marks in the deserts. Not perfect, not super detailed, but hands-on. Doing it step-by-step like this, wrestling with the sources and the geography myself, hammered home just how ridiculously huge and complex managing that empire must have been. Made the history feel way more real than just reading "it was vast". They ruled an almost unthinkable amount of the world.
