Encyclopedia of Islam

1

AF

J:

Abbasid Caliphate

 

(750–1258)

The Abbasid Caliphate was a long-lived Sunni 

dynasty that ruled the Islamicate empire for five 

centuries and set the standard for Muslim rulers 

who came later. It took power in a tremendous 

revolution in 750 that ended the U

mayyad

 c

aliph

-

ate

 in Damascus. It was during the Abbasid era, 

particularly until the 10th century, that the for-

mative elements of Islamicate civilization were 

put into place. Among the achievements of this 

era were a massive project of translation, thanks 

to which Greek philosophy was made available 

to the Arabs (and later to Latin Europe), the 

flowering of Arabic prose and poetry, the forma-

tion of the major schools of Islamic law, and the 

consolidation of Shii and Sunni communities with 

distinctive traditions.

The Abbasids came to power on the back of 

a masterful propaganda campaign that targeted 

those elements in the Islamicate empire whom 

the Umayyads had alienated, especially those who 

harbored various degrees of loyalty to the family 

of Ali: the nascent Shia. They put forward the 

claim, later largely accepted, that a caliph must 

come from the clan of Hashim, which included 

Muhammad and Ali, but also Abbas, Muhammad’s 

paternal uncle and the ancestor of the Abbasids. 

Only after they had attained power did they make 

it clear that the revolution they had led was for 

their own family, not that of Ali, crushing the 

messianic expectations of those who had awaited 

a descendant of Ali to come to the throne. The 

messianic expectations generated by the struggle 

between the Abbasids and Umayyads, as reflected 

in 

hadith

s that can be dated to this period, remain 

even now an important part of Islamic apocalyptic 

beliefs regarding portents of the Last Hour and 

J

Udgment

 d

ay

.

During the heyday of the Abbasid Caliph-

ate, the Islamicate Empire stretched from India 

and the Central Asian steppes in the east to the 

western coast of northern Africa. But the heart of 

the empire was always i

raq

, where they had their 

capital, b

aghdad

, and what is now i

ran

. Iraq, in 

particular, was extensively irrigated and therefore 

was a rich source of agricultural produce and the 

resulting tax revenue. By the ninth century, major 

parts of the empire were functionally indepen-

dent, and this gradual breakdown of central rule 

only increased as time went on. Nonetheless, the 

provincial rulers, ever anxious to legitimize their 

rules through official recognition from the 

caliph

,

largely maintained their symbolic allegiance to 

him. Even when these rulers were, in fact, much 

A

---

stronger than the caliph, few considered declar-

ing themselves independent outright, in order to 

maintain an aura of legitimacy as supporters of 

the traditional caliphate. The clear exceptions to 

this were the F

atimid

 

dynasty

 (909–1171) and the 

Umayyads in a

ndalUsia

.

The Abbasids thus had little more than sym-

bolic power by the middle of the 10th century, 

except for a limited revival of their political for-

tunes in the 12th and 13th centuries. They were 

finally crushed by the invading Mongols, who 

took Baghdad in 1258, wiping out most mem-

bers of the Abbasid family and destroying their 

legendary capital, Baghdad. While a few of the 

Abbasids escaped to Egypt, where a figurehead 

caliphate survived under the tutelage of the m

am

-

lUk

 

dynasty

, they no longer held even the moral 

aUthority

 that they had had when in Baghdad. 

Today, the Abbasids remain important as a symbol 

of the former greatness of the Islamicate civiliza-

tion, and as a model for what a united Muslim 

community might again attain.

See also 

adab

;  a

rabic

 

langUage

 

and

 

litera

-

tUre

; m

ahdi

; s

hiism

.

John Iskander