The family came to power in the Abbasid Revolution in 748–750, supplanting the Umayyad Caliphate. They were the rulers of the Abbasid Caliphate, as well as the generally recognized ecumenical heads of Islam, until the 10th century, when the Shi'aFatimid Caliphate (established in 909) and the Caliphate of Córdoba (established in 929) challenged their primacy. The political decline of the Abbasids had begun earlier, during the Anarchy at Samarra (861–870), which accelerated the fragmentation of the Muslim world into autonomous dynasties. The caliphs lost their temporal power in 936–946, first to a series of military strongmen, and then to the Shi'a BuyidEmirs that seized control of Baghdad; the Buyids were in turn replaced by the Sunni Seljuk Turks in the mid-11th century, and Turkish rulers assumed the title of "Sultan" to denote their temporal authority. The Abbasid caliphs remained the generally recognized suzerains of Sunni Islam, however. In the mid-12th century, the Abbasids regained their independence from the Seljuks, but the revival of Abbasid power ended with the Sack of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258.
Most Abbasid caliphs were born to a concubine mother, known as umm al-walad (Arabic: أم الولد, lit. 'mother of the child'). The term refers to a slave woman who had a child from her owner; those women were renowned for their beauty and intelligence, in that the owner might recognize the legitimacy of his children from them to be legally free and with full rights of inheritance, and refrain from trading the mothers afterwards.[1] Those concubines mostly were Abyssinians, Armenians, Berbers, Byzantine Greeks, Turkish or even from Sicily.[2][3][4]
Abbasid Caliphs (750–1258)
This is the list of Abbasid Caliphs.[5][6]
Caliphs of Cairo (1261–1517)
In 1261, the Abbasid dynasty was re-established by a cadet branch of the dynasty at Cairo under the auspices of the local Mamluk sultans, but these caliphs were purely religious and symbolic figures, while temporal power rested with the Mamluks. The revived caliphate in Cairo lasted until the Ottoman conquest of Egypt in 1517, after which the caliphal title passed to the Ottoman dynasty.
The Cairo Abbasids were largely ceremonial caliphs under the patronage of the Mamluk Sultanate that existed after the takeover of the Ayyubid dynasty.[19][20]
Genealogy
References
^"Umm al-Walad". Oxford Islamic Studies. Archived from the original on September 24, 2015.
^"The golden age of Islam (article)". Khan Academy. Retrieved 2023-06-30.
^Khan, Syed Muhammad. "خاندان بنو عباس". عالمی تاریخ انسائیکلوپیڈیا (in Urdu). Retrieved 2023-06-30.
^"List of Rulers of the Islamic World | Lists of Rulers | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art". The Met’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. Retrieved 2023-06-30.
^Hays, Jeffrey. "ABBASID RULERS (A.D. 750 to 1258) | Facts and Details". factsanddetails.com. Retrieved 2023-06-30.
^Aikin, John (1747). General biography: or, Lives, critical and historical, of the most eminent persons of all ages, countries, conditions, and professions, arranged according to alphabetical order. London: G. G. and J. Robinson. p. 201. ISBN 1333072457.
^Bobrick 2012, p. 24.
^Hurvitz 2002, p. 124; Zetterstéen & Pellat 1960, p. 271; Al-Tabari 1985–2007, v. 32: pp. 229-30; Ibn Khallikan 1842, p. 65.
^Bosworth 1987, pp. 222–223, 225.
^Kennedy 2006, p. 232.
^Bosworth, "Mu'tazz," p. 793
^Zetterstéen & Bosworth 1993, pp. 476–477.
^Cobb 2000, pp. 821–822.
^Zetterstéen 1987, p. 777.
^Bennison, Amira K. (2009) The Great Caliphs: The Golden Age of the 'Abbasid Empire. Princeton: Yale University Press, p. 47. ISBN 0300167989
^Daftary, Farhad (1992). The Isma'ilis: Their History and Doctrines. Cambridge University Press. p. 384. ISBN 978-0-521-42974-0.
^Hanne, Eric J. (2007). Putting the Caliph in His Place: Power, Authority, and the Late Abbasid Caliphate. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. p. 204. ISBN 978-0-8386-4113-2.
^Bosworth 2004, p. 7
^Houtsma & Wensinck 1993, p. 3
Bibliography
Bosworth, Clifford Edmund (1996). The New Islamic Dynasties: A Chronological and Genealogical Manual. New Edinburgh Islamic Surveys. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 0-7486-2137-7.
Bobrick, Benson (2012). The Caliph's Splendor: Islam and the West in the Golden Age of Baghdad. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1416567622.
Lane-Poole, Stanley (1894). The Mohammedan Dynasties: Chronological and Genealogical Tables with Historical Introductions. Westminster: Archibald Constable and Company. OCLC 1199708.
Hurvitz, Nimrod (2002). The Formation of Hanbalism: Piety into Power. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-7007-1507-X.
Zetterstéen, K. V.; Pellat, Ch. (1960). "Ahmad b. Abi Du'ad". The Encyclopedia of Islam, New Edition, Volume I: A–B. Leiden and New York: BRILL. p. 271. ISBN 90-04-08114-3.
Al-Tabari, Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Jarir (1985–2007). Ehsan Yar-Shater (ed.). The History of Al-Ṭabarī. Vol. 40 vols. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Ibn Khallikan (1842). Ibn Khallikan's Biographical Dictionary, Translated from the Arabic. Vol. I. Translated by Baron Mac Guckin de Slane. Paris: Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland. OCLC 1184199260.
Bosworth, C. E., ed. (1987). The History of al-Ṭabarī, Volume XXXII: The Reunification of the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate: The Caliphate of al-Maʾmūn, A.D. 813–33/A.H. 198–213. SUNY Series in Near Eastern Studies. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. ISBN 978-0-88706-058-8.
Kennedy, Hugh (2006). When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World: The Rise and Fall of Islam's Greatest Dynasty. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0-306814808.
Zetterstéen, K. V. (1987). "al-Muʿtaḍid Bi'llāh". In Houtsma, Martijn Theodoor (ed.). E.J. Brill's First Encyclopaedia of Islam, 1913–1936, Volume VI: Morocco–Ruzzik. Leiden: Brill. p. 777. ISBN 978-90-04-08265-6.
Bennison, Amira K. (2009) The Great Caliphs: The Golden Age of the 'Abbasid Empire. Princeton: Yale University Press, p. 47. ISBN 0300167989