An Elephant for Aachen: How Charlemagne and Harun al-Rashid Ruled

From Aachen to Baghdad and Back

1In 797 Charlemagne, king of the Franks, sent two envoys, Lantfrid and Sigimund, on a long journey to Baghdad. With them went an interpreter named Isaac. Both envoys died on the way, but in 802 Isaac returned to Charlemagne's palace at Aachen with gifts from the caliph Harun al-Rashid, including an elephant named Abul-Abbas. Isaac had traveled between two of the largest empires of his time, and each was ruled in its own way.

2Charlemagne's lands covered much of western Europe and reached south into Italy. On Christmas Day in 800, Pope Leo III crowned him emperor in Rome. To rule so much land, Charlemagne relied on counts, usually local nobles, who collected dues, called up soldiers and held courts in their districts. He sent written orders, called capitularies, to be read out across the empire, and most years he met his nobles at a great assembly.

3Counts far from the emperor could be tempted to act like little kings. So Charlemagne sent out the missi dominici, "the lord's envoys." They usually traveled in pairs, a bishop or abbot together with a noble, to inspect the counts' work, hear complaints and report back to him. In 802 he also ordered all free men to swear an oath of loyalty to him as emperor.

4The Abbasid Caliphate stretched from North Africa to Central Asia. Its rulers, the caliphs, governed from Baghdad, a round city on the Tigris River founded in 762. Harun al-Rashid relied on a vizier, a chief minister, to run the government day to day. Under the vizier, offices called diwans kept written records of taxes, soldiers' pay and official letters. Governors ran the provinces, and judges called qadis decided cases by Islamic law. A postal service called the barid kept riders and horses at relay stations along the main roads. Its officials carried government messages and sent the caliph reports on what his governors were doing.

5For years, members of one Persian family, the Barmakids, served as Harun's viziers and grew rich and powerful. In 803 Harun suddenly removed them from office and had their leaders arrested; one was put to death. Around the same years, papermaking spread to Baghdad, and paper was cheaper to make than parchment or papyrus.

6Charlemagne died in 814. His son Louis held the empire together, but after Louis died, his three sons fought one another, and in 843 the Treaty of Verdun split the empire into three kingdoms. Abbasid caliphs ruled from Baghdad for centuries more, although over time many provinces came under governors who acted on their own.