Al Mu’tasim’s armies were among the strongest ever fielded by the caliphate. They reliably triumphed over their foes and faced no problems putting down any resistance to the caliph’s authority. Al Afshin and the Ushrusania were some of their most important elements, responsible for some of the umma’s most celebrated victories. Their reputation took a nosedive in the last few years of the caliph’s reign after al Afshin’s ambition got the best of him.

For the third time in a row, a son of Harun al Rashid took control of the umma. Al Mu’tasim is remembered for his close association with the Turkic peoples of the East, an interest supposedly nurtured by his Sogdian mother. Of these men he amassed a personal army during the reigns of his brothers and used it to become an important part of al Ma’mun’s military. The new caliph spent great sums to support and grow his armed forces, leading to a far more martial Abbasid caliphate.

It’s hard to identify a single aspect of the umma left unchanged by al Ma’mun’s long reign: he had a major impact politically, socially, intellectually, religiously, and beyond. Despite its many impressive achievements however, its flaws receive an inordinate amount of attention in our sources. Even when describing al Ma’mun’s successes, narrations employ more of a wistful tone than a triumphant one. Attitude notwithstanding, al Ma’mun is still a strong candidate for best caliph, and even his...

Two decades of al Ma’mun’s capable administration led the caliphate to an extraordinary recovery. His return to Baghdad put an end to the chaotic aftermath of the great fitna and his enduring success helped the umma reach new heights militarily, commercially, and even intellectually. The material we find on the caliph during these prosperous years describes an intelligent, curious, responsible, and sincere man of considerable conscience.

Back in Baghdad, al Ma’mun finally began to play an active role in running the Abbasid state. The five years he spent in Khurasan were rough on the rest of the caliphate, but especially disastrous for Iraq. The caliph now had to restore peace and central control to practically every province. His leadership proved exceptional: even without a ready set of advisors to draw upon, al Ma’mun found the right people to fill the many vacancies he had in his administration. Over the course of his...

Al Ma’mun’s surprise victory over his brother left him in charge of the entire caliphate. But the conclusion of the great fitna did not bring an end to its miseries: the chaos of war had spread throughout the land and the new caliph possessed neither the experience nor the resources to return peace to his umma. To everyone’s detriment, the caliph’s most trusted advisors displayed a myopic obsession with personal control and proved wholly inadequate at administering the state. 

Haroon al Rashid divided his realm among his children, and the young men were quickly goaded into conflict with one another by their advisors. The unexperienced princes found the underlying tensions simply too powerful to overcome. But the predictability of war was upended by its unpredictable outcome. Fortune swung violently from one party to the other, leaving the caliphate forever changed.

Haroon al Rashid worked towards fool-proofing his succession arrangement more than any other caliph by far: the ceremony he held at Mecca with his heirs swearing to abide by his wishes is more elaborate than anything we have or will come across. He would not have gone to such lengths if he didn’t think it necessary, and it wasn’t long before his sons proved him right. Eager for more power, Al Amin’s advisors urged him to move against his brothers, leading the entire caliphate down a dangerous...

Due to his father al Mahdi’s arrangement, Haroon al Rashid endured a traumatic year during which his brother tried to have him removed from the line of succession. Having barely survived the experience, he put a great deal of thought and effort into the matter of his own succession in order to avoid inflicting the same dangers upon his own heirs and the umma at large. This careful planning unfortunately yielded devastating results, something which ironically only further improved the caliph’s...

Royal advisors, court attendants, and other officials began to hold some real political power in the Abbasid caliphate, a development which progressed with every caliph who came after the micromanaging al Mansur. The Baramika during al Rashid’s reign represented the pinnacle of this sort of bureaucratic authority and they established a level of political control that at times seemed to be almost complete. Their fall from grace was so shocking and sudden that it stands out as an oft recounted...

Now that we’ve covered Haroon al Rashid’s foreign wars, we can get started with the messy conflicts which took place within the umma, and within his administration itself. The caliphate’s distant west slowly broke away during his reign, but his armies faced off and defeated various challengers across the rest of his lands. The Abbasid state was still powerful and quite capable of fending for itself, but a close look at how it responded to these threats reveals a more daunting problem within...

Haroon al Rashid is commonly portrayed as a martial caliph, one who menaced the Byzantine empire and led a tireless crusade against them. He is praised in Arab sources for defeating the Greeks time and again, all in defense of the umma’s faith and faithful. While this popular opinion isn’t entirely mistaken, it is remarkably exaggerated, a curiosity which itself deserves special attention. The caliphate’s forces dominated the battlefield, but no tangible gains were made despite their...

From our vantage point in the 21st century, it is clear that Haroon al Rashid is by far the most famous Arab caliph. His renown is not some modern phenomenon either: he may occasionally pop up as a cultural reference or on a trivia show, but he was immortalized early in the epic One Thousand and One Nights. His time in charge is generally thought of as the height of Arab power and culture, a claim we will investigate together in our many episodes on the legendary figure.

The sudden passing of Mohammad al Mahdi led his son Musa al Hadi to become the umma’s next leader sooner than anyone would have expected. With a wild disposition and little actual experience in administration, the twenty one year old became the youngest Abbasid to wield power. He didn’t get a chance to do very much, and there is very little agreement on his brief spell as caliph.

Al Mansur’s long reign transformed the caliphate in countless ways, most of them for the better. It provided a kind of stability the umma desperately needed to absorb the tumult of the Abbasid revolution and adjust to the new status quo. What followed was a golden age of prosperity, to be reaped by al Mahdi after having been sown by his father.

Perhaps most significant among al Mansur’s many triumphs was his founding of a new capital for his administration, a glorious new city which would come to be known as Baghdad. It was a decision that had a tremendous impact on Arab and world history, bringing the umma another step closer to the imperial models surrounding it.

The chaos of the Abbasid revolution gave foreign powers a rare opportunity to strike at the caliphate while it was paralyzed by internal strife. Things could have gone very badly for the Arabs but the unparalleled al Mansur proved as capable against these foes as he had those who had opposed him within the caliphate. His armies faced down assaults from all directions and successfully guarded his domain, though some fringes were secured better than others.

The Abbasids based their legitimacy on the fact that they were part of the prophet’s clan. This was not contested during the upheaval of their revolution, and in the following years al Saffah inflicted great pain on his enemies as a way of warning others not to mess with the new dynasty. Despite all this, al Mansur knew to expect a challenge from his clan sooner or later, a threat he took very seriously indeed.

One of al Mansur’s first acts as caliph was to lure Abu Muslim to his court and assassinate the powerful and popular governor. This led to immediate turmoil in the East, leaving him to contend with sporadic upheavals for almost an entire decade. The caliph proved up to the task: his adept management of all these challenges helped him emerge from the chaos with more control over the region than any of his predecessors.

Much of what people associate with the idea of a medieval Arab caliphate is rooted in the reign of our upcoming caliph. The foundation he laid for his dynasty is so solid that it makes the Umayyad era seem like little more than a formalized extension of the early Arab raids against their neighboring empires. It will take us a while to get through his reign, and before we start with that, we’ll take this episode to better orient ourselves within the world he is about to reshape.

Succession once again warrants its own episode. Al Saffah relied on three commanders to oversee different parts of his caliphate, and while the setup kept the new dynasty safe and stable, the ambitions of these three leaders clashed soon after the caliph passed away.

The Abbasid revolution showed what it took to overthrow a dynasty; establishing a new one brought a whole other set of challenges. The clan’s first caliph, al Saffah, took an aggressive posture to scare off any would-be challengers to his power. Legitimacy was his chief concern, and he found the best way to attain it was to assert his claim as fiercely as possible.

The Abbasid path to power required stealth, deceit, and most of all patience. The Hashemite family managed to unseat the Umayyads through cultivating a secret movement that benefitted from all the social tensions which plagued the umma. They drew on Hashemite support by calling for the rights of the prophet’s clan, they championed the southern or Yemeni side of the tribal feud, and they were deeply anti-Umayyad. Their success would have been unlikely in Hisham’s age, but times had changed in...

While the Umayyads fought among themselves in distant Syria, dangerous developments were underway in Khurasan. The umma’s divisions in the Eastern province were deep enough to give the coming revolution its first foothold in the caliphate. Its final Umayyad governor, Nasr ibn Sayyar, bore witness to the entire transformational era in the region, and he did an admirable job holding things together until his final breath.

Yazid III’s successful coup against Walid II blew up the tribal feud. Syrian unity had long undergirded Umayyad power in Syria and from there, the entire caliphate; it had now been torn asunder in bloody warfare. Even when the clan finally had someone strong enough to make a play at stabilizing the situation, the caliphate was far too weak, a mere shadow of its former self, its armies comprised entirely of men animated by tribal loyalties.