The 'Abbasid rule had been declining since the tenth century. This decline intensified when Ibn Ra'iq was appointed Amir al-Umara' in 324/936. The appearance of Amir al-Umara' meant the beginning of the period of the rule by army corps in the Islamic world. It is necessary to explain the military organization of the army corps in order to understand the state of the Islamic world at that time. One of the army corps was Al-Baridis.
The preceding studies which specially dealt with Al-Baridis followed their whole activity. But it is not enough to only study the special feature and historical position of Al-Baridis in Islamic history.
In this paper, the author tries to investigate the military organization of Al-Baridis and the base of their power.
As a result of studying Al-Baridis, the author made clear the following points:
(1) The military of Al-Baridis consisted of the army and the river forces.
(2) The army of Al-Baridis consisted of three kinds of military groups, that is, (1) part of ex-Yaqut's soldiers, (2)original military groups possessed by Al-Baridis (3) military groups organized by Al-Baridis after conquering Basra.
(3) In case of the first group, the soldiers were part of non-Arab cavalrymen of the ex-'Abbasid soldiers (Turks), Daylamites, Barbars and Arabs. In case of the second group, the soldiers were three brothers of Al-Baridis and ghulams of them. In case of the third group, the soldiers were a part of non-Arab cavalrymen of the ex-'Abbasid soldiers (Turks), Daylamites, inhabitants of Basra and others.
(4) The river forces consisted of many ships and their soldiers. But a type of ships and the soldiers were not clear.
(5) We can see that the first group of the army was the most important group of all, and the existence of the river forces on a large scale was a characteristic of Al-Baridis's military.
(6) The number of military were around 10, 000 people. We can see that Al-Baridis was a power which was mainly composed of private military groups from the ex-'Abbasid soldiers.
