List of Abbasid caliphs

The Abbasid caliphs were the holders of the Islamic title of caliph who were members of the Abbasid dynasty, a branch of the Quraysh tribe descended from the uncle of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, Al-Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib.

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'a Fatimid 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 Buyid Emirs 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 where from non-Muslim lands and brought to slavery in the Abbasid Caliphate via a number of different slave trade routes. The slave 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]

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.^[15][16]

References

1. ^ "Umm al-Walad". Oxford Islamic Studies. Archived from the original on September 24, 2015.
2. ^ "The golden age of Islam (article)". Khan Academy. Retrieved 2023-06-30.
3. ^ Khan, Syed Muhammad (19 October 2021). "خاندان بنو عباس" (in Urdu). عالمی تاریخ انسائیکلوپیڈیا. Retrieved 2023-06-30.
4. ^ "Roznama Dunya: اسپیشل فیچرز :- خلافت عباسیہ کا خاتمہ". Roznama Dunya: اسپیشل فیچرز :-. Retrieved 2023-06-30.
5. ^ "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.
6. ^ Bosworth 1987, pp. 222–223, 225.
7. ^ Kennedy 2006, p. 232.
8. ^ Bosworth, "Mu'tazz," p. 793
9. ^ Bosworth, "Mu'tazz," p. 793
10. ^ Zetterstéen & Bosworth 1993, pp. 476–477.
11. ^ Sourdel 1978, p. 424.
12. ^ "John I Tzimisces | Byzantine Empire, Military Campaigns, Iconoclasm | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 2024-10-16.
13. ^ Bennison, Amira K. (2009) The Great Caliphs: The Golden Age of the 'Abbasid Empire. Princeton: Yale University Press, p. 47. ISBN 0300167989
14. ^
15. ^ Bosworth 1996, p. 9.
16. ^ Houtsma & Wensinck 1993, p. 3
17. ^ Holt, P. M. (1984). "Some Observations on the 'Abbāsid Caliphate of Cairo". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. 47 (3): 501–507. doi:10.1017/S0041977X00113710. ISSN 0041-977X. JSTOR 618882
18. ^ El-Hibri 2021, pp. 275–276.

Bibliography

• Al-Tabari, Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Jarir (1985–2007). The History of Al-Ṭabarī.. Vol. 40 vols. Ehsan Yar-Shater (ed.). Albany, New York: State University of New York Press.
• Bennison, Amira K. (2009). The Great Caliphs: The Golden Age of the 'Abbasid Empire. Princeton: Yale University Press, p. 47. ISBN 0300167989
• Bobrick, Benson (2012). The Caliph's Splendor: Islam and the West in the Golden Age of Baghdad. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1416567622.
• El-Hibri, Tayeb (2021). The Abbasid Caliphate: A History. Cambridge History Press. ISBN 9781316634394.
• Houtsma, M. Th. & Wensinck, A. J. (1993). E.J. Brill's First Encyclopaedia of Islam 1913–1936. Vol. IX. Leiden: BRILL. ISBN 978-90-04-09796-4.
• Hurvitz, Nimrod (2002). The Formation of Hanbalism: Piety into Power. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-7007-1507-X.
• Kennedy, Hugh (2006). [Google Books When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World: The Rise and Fall of Islam's Greatest Dynasty]. Cambridge, Massachuetts: Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0-306814808.
• Lane-Poole, Stanley (1894). The Mohammedan Dynasties: Chronological and Genealogical Tables with Historical Introductions. Westminster: Archibald Constable and Company. OCLC 1199708
• "Ahmad b. Abi Du'ad". The Encyclopedia of Islam, New Edition, Volume I: A–B. Leiden and New York: BRILL. 1960. p. 271. ISBN 90-04-08114-3.
• Zetterstéen, K. V. (1987). [Google Books "al-Muʿtaḍid Bi'llāh"]. E.J. Brill's First Encyclopaedia of Islam, 1913–1936, Volume VI: Morocco–Ruzzik. Houtsma, Martijn Theodoor (ed.). Leiden: Brill. p. 777. ISBN 978-90-04-08265-6.