Samaga Performances in Third/Ninth-Century Abbasid Courts

Literary sources from the Abbasid period record few descriptions of courtly masquerades and plays called samaga, which closely resemble sumozhe plays from eighth-century China. On the basis of these samaga descriptions, the present paper argues that it is possible to understand how samaga plays were carried out. Moreover, I argue that samaga performances were a Central Asian custom imported to the Abbasid court with the establishment of the Turkish corps, and that its disappearance after the caliphate of al-Mu ta id signals a substantial shift in the nature of the Turkish presence in the Abbasid heartland, marked by the establishment of the mamluk system.