Social life in the Abbasid era according to Al-Isfahani in his book Al-Aghani

Abstract

      After the fall of the Umayyad state in the Levant, the Abbasids became the inheritors of the Caliphate, whose new capital was Baghdad, and it became the center of government, administration and politics. It is known that the Abbasid state was not able to rule except with the help of the Persians, who overthrew a previous state. After the stability of the state, the Persian presence continued in the center of the readers, and among them were leaders, ministers and notables. Due to the presence of these people and their influence on the political reality, they worked to transfer Persian traditions, including the systems of administration, construction, clothing, food, and other things that were followed by the Persians. These traditions first entered the palaces of the caliphs and ministers, and then society imitated them, and luxury and pleasure became the dominant characteristic of the general public, and as a result it became common in private and public gatherings... Music and singing in all its forms, and what increased the fame of this situation was what the poets depicted of the descriptions of the councils of the caliphs and princes and what was going on in them of amusement and debauchery, I think it was depicted so that they could obtain rewards from the rulers and participate with them in that behavior, and through the poets and their traps some historians and narrators relied on transmitting that and their depiction of the caliphs and the Isra’ that their approach in their lives was in this image and they described in that the books that deal with the news of the concubines and the singing girls and the councils of music in it during the era of the Abbasid state, They also cared about the clothing of the elite and the Co. by mentioning the scholars and companions and the conditions of the caliphs, princes and ministers with them. There was nothing left of the social conditions except that they talked about the general and the etiquette of food, sweets and drink and so on, which depicts the life of luxury and splendor that the Abbasid society lived in. Among the most famous of those who took refuge in that social life was Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani. Who filled the writing of songs with these manifestations in an attempt to portray the state and society as people of pleasure, wandering, concubines, young boys, and addicted to drinking, and that is the situation that Al-Isfahani wrote about in his book, Distortion of the Caliphs, the leaders of the state, while ignoring their role in guidance and advice, and working to strengthen the state, fight the enemies, preserve the nation’s characteristics, and work  according to what the Sharia dictates in terms of adhering to the rulings of Islam and its moral system. In this research, there is what shows you the truth of what we mentioned.