History of the Caliphate III: The Abbasids — Between Golden Age and Crisis
1. The Abbasid Revolution
In 750, the Umayyad dynasty was replaced by the Abbasids. Supported by the powerful military backing of the Persian-Khorasanian element, Abu al-'Abbas obtained the title of caliph. He was a direct descendant of 'Abbas, uncle of the Prophet, and belonged to a clan that regarded the Umayyads as usurpers. By claiming close kinship with Muhammad, the new caliph could legitimize himself in the eyes of the entire Umma. This dynasty held the office for half a millennium until the arrival of the Mongols under Hülegü (1258) and represented both the cultural and political apex of the Arab-Islamic world and the agent of regionalization of the domains acquired by the Umayyads.
2. Baghdad and the Imperial Court
The Abbasids established the centre of their power in present-day Iraq, founding, on the western bank of the Tigris, Madinat al-Salam (“City of Peace”), later Baghdad. The second caliph, al-Mansur (754–775), built his personal Round City outside the capital, where he lived surrounded by his dignitaries and soldiers. This signalled that court life was adapting to well-established imperial models, adopting ceremonial practices typical of Persian and Byzantine palaces.
3. Viziers and Mamluks
It was precisely in the Abbasid era that the figure of the vizier (wazir, “assistant”) and the military caste of the Mamluks emerged. The caliph al-Mu'tasim (833–842) was the first to purchase young Central Asian slaves to form his personal guard. These slaves of Turkish ethnicity, mostly from the Samarkand market, had no tribal ties and were therefore more reliable.
The presence of this elite corps in Baghdad became so heavy that the caliph was forced to build a new capital, Samarra, in 836. Here, their numbers reached 20,000. The possibility of being freed and then pursuing a regular military career soon led to the formation of an influential Mamluk class, capable of deposing or electing caliphs at will.
4. Regionalization and Counter-Caliphates
Regionalization during the Abbasid era occurred mainly through two models:
- Independent states: In 756, the Iberian Peninsula welcomed a fleeing Umayyad prince, who established a dynasty in al-Andalus. In Morocco, another fugitive, Idris, founded a separate political entity in newly created Fes.
- Governorships dependent on Baghdad: In Kairouan (Tunisia), the Aghlabid dynasty (800–909) governed on behalf of the caliph over central Maghreb and Sicily.
It was also in Kairouan that, in 909, the Fatimid counter-caliphate arose, of Shi'ite-Ismaili imprint, followed in 929 by the Umayyad counter-caliphate of Córdoba.
5. The Decline of Caliphal Authority
The Iraqi caliphs increasingly found themselves under the authority of “protectors”: first the Buyids (932–1055), then the Seljuk Turks (1037–1308). The Seljuks were the first to adopt the title of sultan (“sovereign power”) and accomplished a feat the Arabs had never achieved: in 1071, after the Battle of Manzikert, the Turks swept into Asia Minor, endangering the Byzantine Empire and finally conquering Anatolia.
Seljuk Expansion by Ruler
Baghdad entered a long phase of decline, while Isfahan, seat of Seljuk power, became the centre of an Islamic world now culturally Persian and militarily Turkish.
6. Crusades, Ayyubids, and Mamluks
The traumatic event of the First Crusade (1096–99) led to the creation of four Western Catholic principalities: the County of Edessa, the Norman Principality of Antioch, the Principality of Tripoli, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
Kingdom of Jerusalem: Time Series of all Territorial Changes from 1099 to 1297
The fate of Islam was now in the hands of Egypt, which regained Sunni orthodoxy under the Kurdish leader Salah al-Din (Saladin). In the Battle of Hattin (1187), he restored almost all of Palestine to Muslim control and regained Damascus and Aleppo.
Maximum Extension of the Ayyubid Dynasty (1209)
Thus began the Ayyubid dynasty, later deposed by the Mamluk guards in 1250. It was at the Mamluk court that the caliphs, exiled from a Baghdad fallen to the Mongols (1258), found refuge. They retained an office that had become nothing more than a symbolic religious authority.
7. The End of the Caliphate
In 1517, Sultan Selim I conquered Egypt, bringing to his imperial residence in Topkapi, Istanbul, all the insignia and emblems of caliphal power (including the cloak and sword believed to have belonged to the Prophet himself).
Territories conquered by Selim I
For the next four centuries, the title of Caliph was thus a prerogative of the Ottoman sultans. The Caliphate was definitively abolished by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of modern Turkey, in 1924, upon the fall of the centuries-old Ottoman Empire.
One of the last and most famous attempts to restore the Caliphate was the creation of the so-called Islamic State under al-Baghdadi (2014), considered defunct on 23 March 2019. It is likely that the Caliphate will remain suspended in the future — both as a religious entity and, above all, as a political institution.
First year every territory was controlled by the Islamic State
Sources
- Silverstein, A.J., A Short History of Islam, 2013.
- Halm, H., The Arabs, 2006.
- Ducellier, A., Eastern Christians and Islam in the Middle Ages. 7th–15th Centuries, 2001.
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