For the very first time in Arab history, a child became the ummas caliph. The 13 year old had not yet left his royal harem and was totally under his mothers control. She used her influence over al M

After all our recent foreshadowing, weve finally arrived at the period of Abbasid collapse. Its a relatively long period, stretching from the start of al Muqtadirs reign in 908 until around the mid

Cataloguing the tapestry of Islamic traditions is a task that lies well beyond our scope, but every now and again the topic overlaps with the subjects we are interested in. Its important to understan

Reading about this caliphs reign in our sources is a bewildering experience: everything is simultaneously great and on the brink of destruction. Later histories pick apart developments in the adminis

Before you even hit play it should already be clear to you that the caliphate is only going to get stronger over the course of our discussion today. Al Mutadid seems to have been incapable of doing a

Get ready for a blast from the past! Perhaps I should have prepared you for a weak pun instead. Hearing about this caliphs reign will transport us back to his great-grandfather al Mutasims days. Mu

Al Mutamids reign lasted from 870 to 892. The Abbasid Caliphate was reborn during these decades, midwifed by the caliphs brother Talha, better known in history by his title al Muwaffaq. The new Abb

Having covered the caliphates East last time, we must now do the same for its west. The anarchy left such a deep impact on the caliphate that we really need to take our time discovering its aftermath

We have been focused exclusively on the capital province of Iraq ever since the outbreak of anarchy. While we had good reasons to keep a close eye on developments there, Khurasan can no longer be igno

Now that the anarchy was over, a reduced but reunited Abbasid military could finally face up to the multitude of threats facing the caliphate. A slave insurrection in the south of Iraq was one of the