Empires & Polities
Abbasid Caliphate
Also Known As Abbasid The adjectival form, as in Abbasid Baghdad and Abbasid translation of Greek learning.
Caliphates
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The Abbasid Caliphate, which ruled from Baghdad from 750 until the Mongol sack of 1258, presided over the formative centuries of Islamic law, theology and science. Its caliphs founded a city that became the largest in the world, sponsored the translation of Greek philosophy and medicine into Arabic, and made one serious attempt to impose doctrine on the scholars by force. That attempt failed, and its failure settled permanently that in Sunni Islam it is the scholars, not the ruler, who define orthodoxy.
Facts
Religion and State
State ReligionIslam, with the caliph styled the shadow of God on earth; the four Sunni schools of law, the great hadith collections and speculative theology all took their classical shape under Abbasid rule 2 Religious PolicyThe mihna of 833 required judges and scholars to affirm that the Quran was created; Ahmad ibn Hanbal refused under imprisonment and flogging, the policy was reversed around 848, and no later Sunni ruler attempted to define dogma 2 Attributions
Associated ReligionSunni Islam, whose classical institutions formed here; rival caliphates were proclaimed by the Ismaili Fatimids at Cairo and the Umayyads at Cordoba, and Sufi orders spread widely in the later Abbasid centuries 1 Origins
Origin RegionMesopotamia, from a revolution that began in Khurasan; Baghdad was founded in 762 and sacked by the Mongols in 1258, after which a shadow line sat in Cairo until 1517 1 Learn More
Baghdad, Translation and the Inquisition That Failed
The Abbasids came to power in 750 on a movement that promised rule by the Prophet's family and delivered rule by his uncle's descendants. They moved the centre of the Islamic world from Syria to Iraq, founding Baghdad in 762 as a round city on the Tigris, and adopted a court style, drawn substantially from Sasanian precedent, in which the caliph was styled the shadow of God on earth and sat behind a curtain.
Their most durable achievement was intellectual. Across the eighth to tenth centuries a sustained, state-funded translation movement rendered Greek philosophy, medicine, mathematics and astronomy into Arabic, and the commentary and correction that followed made Baghdad the working centre of the sciences for three hundred years. The same period saw the four Sunni schools of law take shape, the great hadith collections compiled, and speculative theology established as a discipline.
Against that background the caliph al-Mamun in 833 imposed the mihna, a test requiring judges and scholars to affirm that the Quran was created rather than eternal. It was the one attempt by a caliph to define dogma, and it broke on the refusal of Ahmad ibn Hanbal, who was imprisoned and flogged and did not yield. Around 848 the policy was abandoned and reversed. The lesson was drawn permanently: doctrine belongs to the scholars, and the caliph enforces the law rather than making it.
The Shadow Caliphate and Its Long Afterlife
Real Abbasid power lasted about a century. From the ninth century provinces broke away under their own dynasties, rival caliphates were proclaimed by the Fatimids in Cairo and the Umayyads in Cordoba, and from 945 the caliph in Baghdad was under the control of the Buyid amirs and from 1055 of the Seljuk sultans. What he retained was legitimacy: a sultan who could not claim the caliph's investiture ruled without a licence, and the office survived on that function alone for three hundred years.
It ended in 1258, when Hulagu's Mongol army took Baghdad, destroyed the libraries and killed the caliph al-Mustasim, by tradition rolled in a carpet and trampled so that no royal blood should touch the ground. The Mamluk sultans of Egypt installed a surviving Abbasid in Cairo in 1261, and that shadow line performed investitures without power until the Ottoman conquest of 1517.
Mona Hassan's history follows what the loss meant to Muslims who lived through it and to those who invoked it afterwards. The caliphate was mourned in poetry and legal argument within a generation of 1258, reconstructed as a claim by later empires, and mourned again after 1924, and the vacancy it left continues to organise a great deal of modern Islamic political thought.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Baghdad was founded as the Abbasid capital in 762, became the largest city in the world, and was sacked by Hulagu in 1258.
The formative centuries of Islamic law, theology and science fall under Abbasid rule, and Baghdad was their working centre.
The Ismaili Fatimids proclaimed a rival caliphate at Cairo in 909 and held Egypt and the holy cities' routes for two centuries.
The Sufi orders took organised form in the later Abbasid centuries and spread across the lands the caliphate no longer governed.
The four Sunni legal schools and the great hadith collections took shape in this period, and the failure of the mihna left doctrine with the scholars.
Successor Of
The Abbasid revolution of 747 to 750 destroyed the Umayyad dynasty and moved the centre of the Islamic world from Damascus to Iraq.
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