The caliph al-Mustarshid renews the prohibitions of the ghiyar

Three centuries after Haroun al-Rachid, the caliph al-Mustarshid reinstated in Baghdad the prohibitions of the *ghiyar*, which had fallen into disuse under previous reigns. Jews were required to wear insignia sewn onto their clothing and bells when going to the public baths, and were forbidden to ride certain animals.

These returns of the *ghiyar* punctuate the history of the caliphate: they occur when a sovereign needs to display his piety, often at a moment when his political authority is weakening. This one governed a capital contested between the Seljuks and what remained of Abbasid power.

Baghdad then housed the exilarch, lay head of Babylonian Judaism, and the rabbinical academies whose authority extended as far as the Maghreb. Benjamin de Tudèle, who visited the city a generation later, still describes it as a great Jewish center — the prohibitions had not emptied it.