Abbasid Caliphate

The Abbasid Caliphate was the third Islamic caliphate and presided over what is often called the Golden Age of Islam, a period of extraordinary intellectual, cultural, and economic flourishing.

It came to power in 750 CE through the Abbasid Revolution, which overthrew the Umayyads by harnessing the grievances of non-Arab Muslims, the Shia, and the people of the eastern provinces. Claiming descent from the Prophet Muhammad's uncle al-Abbas, the new dynasty shifted the empire's centre of gravity eastward and in 762 founded a magnificent new capital at Baghdad, which rapidly grew into one of the largest and richest cities in the world. The Abbasids governed a more cosmopolitan and inclusive empire than their predecessors, drawing heavily on Persian administrative traditions and integrating diverse peoples into the bureaucracy and army. Under caliphs such as Harun al-Rashid and his son al-Ma'mun, the caliphate reached the zenith of its power and prestige; Baghdad became a renowned centre of learning where the translation movement rendered Greek, Persian, and Indian works into Arabic, and scholars made lasting advances in mathematics, astronomy, medicine, philosophy, and the natural sciences. Trade networks linked the empire from the Atlantic to China. Yet political unity proved difficult to sustain across so vast a realm. From the ninth century the caliphs' real authority eroded as provinces broke away, rival caliphates arose in Spain and North Africa, and the central government grew dependent on Turkish slave-soldiers who increasingly dominated their masters. By the tenth century the caliphs had become largely figureheads under the control of regional dynasties such as the Buyids and later the Seljuk Turks, retaining religious prestige but little temporal power. The caliphate's long twilight ended abruptly in 1258, when the Mongol army of Hulagu Khan besieged and sacked Baghdad, destroying its libraries, slaughtering much of its population, and executing the last Abbasid caliph, al-Musta'sim. A line of Abbasid caliphs survived in name under Mamluk protection in Cairo, but the great caliphate was finished.

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