For the very first time in Arab history, a child became the umma’s caliph. The 13 year old had not yet left his royal harem and was totally under his mother’s control. She used her influence over al Muqtadir to to extend her personal wealth and authority. It was a fundamentally corrupt setup that encouraged the worst types of administrative abuses. This cancer at the very top of official power lasted so long it devastated the caliphate far more than any war with a foreign enemy; it was a fall the Abbasids never recovered from.