Abbasid Did You Mean Abbasid?

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Abbasid provinces during the caliphate of Harun al-Rashid

Abbasid (Arabic: العبّاسدين al-ʿAbbāsidīn) was the dynastic name generally given to the caliphs of Baghdad, the second of the two great Sunni dynasties of the Muslim empire, that overthrew the Umayyad caliphs. It seized power in 750, when it finally defeated the Umayyads in battle, and flourished for two centuries, but slowly went into decline with the rise to power of the Turkish army they had created, the Mamluks. Their claim to power was finally ended in 1258, when Hulagu Khan, the Mongol general, sacked Baghdad. While they continued to claim authority in religious matters from their base in Egypt, their dynasty was ended. However, traces of this dynasty can be found in modern day Iraq, Kuwait, and in northern areas of Pakistan.

Revolt against the Umayyads

The Abbasid caliphs officially based their claim to the Caliphate on their descent from Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib (AD 566a href="652.html" title="652">652), one of the youngest uncles of the Prophet Muhammad, by virtue of which descent they regarded themselves as the rightful heirs of the Prophet as opposed to the Umayyads. The Umayyads were descended from Umayya, and were a clan separate from Muhammad's in the Quraish tribe.

The Abbasids also distinguished themselves from the Umayyads by attacking their secularism, moral character and administration in general. The Abbasids also appealed to non-Arab Muslims, known as mawali, who remained outside the kinship-based society of Arab culture and were at best second-class citizens within the Umayyad empire. Muhammad ibn 'Ali, a great-grandson of Abbas, began to campaign for the return of power to the family of the Prophet, the Hashimites, in Persia during the reign of Umar II, Muhammad ibn Ali.

During the reign of Marwan II this opposition culminated in the rebellion of Ibrahim the Imam, the fourth in descent from Abbas, who, supported by the province of Khorasan, achieved considerable successes, but was captured (AD 747) and died in prison (as some hold, assassinated). The quarrel was taken up by his brother Abdallah, known by the name of Abu al-'Abbas as-Saffah, who, after a decisive victory on the Greater Zab River (750), finally crushed the Umayyads and was proclaimed Caliph.

Consolidation and schisms

The Abbasids had depended heavily on the support of Persians in their overthrow of the Umayyads. Abu al-'Abbas' successor, al-Mansur, moved their capital from Damascus to the new city of Baghdad and welcomed non-Arab Muslims to their court. While this helped integrate Arab and Persian cultures, it alienated many of their Arab supporters, particularly the Khorasanian Arabs who had supported them in their battles against the Umayyads.

These fissures in their support led to immediate problems. The Umayyads, while out of power, were not destroyed. The only surviving member of the Umayyad royal family, which had been all but annihilated at a dinner party, ultimately made his way to Spain where he established himself as an independent Emir (Abd ar-Rahman I, 756). In 929, Abd ar-Rahman III assumed the title of Caliph, establishing Córdoba as a rival to Baghdad as the legitimate capital of the Islamic Empire.

The Abbasids also found themselves at odds with the Shias, many of whom had supported their war against the Umayyads, since the Abbasids claimed legitimacy by their familial connection to Muhammed. Once in power, the Abbasids embraced Sunni Islam and disavowed any support for Shi'a beliefs. That led to numerous conflicts, culminating in an uprising in Mecca in 786, followed by widespread bloodshed and the flight of many Shi'a to the Maghreb, where the survivors established the Idrisid kingdom. Shortly thereafter Berber Kharijites set up an independent state in North Africa in 801.

At the same time the Abbasids faced challenges closer to home. The Byzantine Empire was fighting Abbasid rule in Syria and Anatolia. Former supporters of the Abbasids had broken away to create a separate kingdom around Khorosan in northern Persia. Harun al-Rashid (786 - 809) added to these troubles by turning on the Barmakids, the Persian family that had supplied the caliphate with competent administrators, over a personal dispute.

The Mamluks

Faced with these challenges from within, the Abbasids decided to create an army loyal only to their caliphate, drawn mostly from Turkish slaves, known as Mamluks, with some Slavs and Berbers participating as well. This force, created in the reign of al-Ma'mun (813 - 833), and his brother and successor al-Mu'tasim (833 - 842), prevented the further distintegration of the empire.

It also, led to the ultimate eclipse of Abbasid rule. The creation of this foreign army and al-Mu'tasim's transfer of the capital from Baghdad to Samarra created a division between the caliphate and the peoples they claimed to rule. In addition, the power of the Mamluks steadily grew until al-Radi (934 - 941) was constrained to hand over most of the royal functions to Mahommed bin Raik. In the following years the Buyids, who were Shi'ites, seized power over Baghdad, ruling central Iraq for more than a century before being overthrown by the Seljuq Turks. In the same period, the Hamdanids, another Shi'ite dynasty, came to power in northern Iraq, leading to a tremendous expansion of Shi'a influence. In the process the Abbasid caliphs became no more than figureheads.

Learning under the Abbasid dynasty

The reigns of Harun al-Rashid (786 - 809) and his successors fostered an age of great intellectual achievement. In large part this was the result of the schismatic forces that had undermined the Umayyad regime, which relied on the assertion of the superiority of Arab culture as part of its claim to legitimacy, and the Abbasids' welcoming of support from non-Arab Muslims.

A number of medieval thinkers and scientists living under Islamic rule, many of them non-Muslims or heretical Muslims, played a role in transmitting Greek, Hindu, and other pre-Islamic knowledge to the Christian West. They contributed to making Aristotle known in Christian Europe. In addition, the period saw the recovery of much of the Alexandrian mathematical, geometric and astronomical knowledge, such as that of Euclides and Claudius Ptolemy. These recovered mathematical methods were later enhanced and developed by other Islamic scholars, notably by Al-Biruni, and Abu Nasr Mansur.

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Contents

Revolt against the Umayyads

Consolidation and schisms

The Mamluks

Learning under the Abbasid dynasty

The end of the caliphate

Abbasid Caliphs of Baghdad

Abbasid Caliphs in Cairo

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