Decline of the Abbasid Caliphate and the Rise of Local Muslim Dynasties, 921–1215 AD

2021 ◽  
pp. 127-166
Keyword(s):  
Abbasid Caliphate

Islam: The Arabic and Persian Traditions, Eleventh–Fifteenth Centuries

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Konrad Hirschler
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Practice ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
The Past ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
Abbasid Caliphate ◽  
Middle Period ◽  
Early Islamic

This chapter deals with how the Islamic historical writing of the Middle Period developed directly from the early Islamic tradition, and its legacy remained deeply inscribed into the ways history was written and represented between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries. However, as historians started to develop new styles and new genres, they turned to previously neglected aspects of the past, their social profile changed, and the writing of history became a more self-conscious, and to some degree self-confident, cultural practice. Most importantly, those issues that had motivated earlier historians, such as the legitimacy of the Abbasid Caliphate, declined in significance and historians of the Middle Period turned to new and more diverse subjects.

scholarly journals Plague and the Fall of Baghdad (1258)

2021 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-177
Author(s):  
Nahyan Fancy ◽  
Monica H. Green
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Disease Outbreaks ◽  
Epidemic Disease ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Western Asia ◽  
Abbasid Caliphate ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
A Minor

AbstractThe recent suggestion that the late medieval Eurasian plague pandemic, the Black Death, had its origins in the thirteenth century rather than the fourteenth century has brought new scrutiny to texts reporting ‘epidemics’ in the earlier period. Evidence both from Song China and Iran suggests that plague was involved in major sieges laid by the Mongols between the 1210s and the 1250s, including the siege of Baghdad in 1258 which resulted in the fall of the Abbasid caliphate. In fact, re-examination of multiple historical accounts in the two centuries after the siege of Baghdad shows that the role of epidemic disease in the Mongol attacks was commonly known among chroniclers in Syria and Egypt, raising the question why these outbreaks have been overlooked in modern historiography of plague. The present study looks in detail at the evidence in Arabic sources for disease outbreaks after the siege of Baghdad in Iraq and its surrounding regions. We find subtle factors in the documentary record to explain why, even though plague received new scrutiny from physicians in the period, it remained a minor feature in stories about the Mongol invasion of western Asia. In contemporary understandings of the genesis of epidemics, the Mongols were not seen to have brought plague to Baghdad; they caused plague to arise by their rampant destruction. When an even bigger wave of plague struck the Islamic world in the fourteenth century, no association was made with the thirteenth-century episode. Rather, plague was now associated with the Mongol world as a whole.

Recapturing Lost Glory and Legitimacy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mona Hassan
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
The Self ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Self Image ◽  
Abbasid Caliphate ◽  
Physical Presence ◽  
Legal Legitimacy ◽  
The Way

This chapter considers problematic questions of political and legal legitimacy for premodern Muslim states in the wake of the Abbasid Caliphate's demise. Similar to the self-image of Byzantium as a Second Rome or the way that medieval rulers in western Europe appropriated Roman symbols, the Mamluk State reinvented the Abbasid Caliphate of Cairo through elaborate rituals and ceremonies reminiscent of a glorious past, and legal scholars articulated creative jurisprudential solutions. Within Mamluk domains, the dilemma of caliphal absence was thus resolved by resurrecting the Abbasid Caliphate in Cairo as a doubly political and spiritual institution, where the caliph delegated his authority to govern to the sultan and radiated metaphysical blessings through his continued physical presence. This fraught relationship between caliphal authority and the wielding of power notably continued to surface as a magnet for political activity and debate, including the ever-potent threat of rebellion, over the centuries of Mamluk rule.

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