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Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258)

The Abbasid Caliphate was a long-lived Sunni

dynasty that ruled the Islamicate empire for five

centuries and set the standard for Muslim rulers

who came later. It took power in a tremendous

revolution in 750 that ended the Umayyad caliph-

ate in Damascus. It was during the Abbasid era,

particularly until the 10th century, that the for-

mative elements of Islamicate civilization were

put into place. Among the achievements of this

era were a massive project of translation, thanks

to which Greek philosophy was made available

to the Arabs (and later to Latin Europe), the

flowering of Arabic prose and poetry, the forma-

tion of the major schools of Islamic law, and the

consolidation of Shii and Sunni communities with

distinctive traditions.

The Abbasids came to power on the back of

a masterful propaganda campaign that targeted

those elements in the Islamicate empire whom

the Umayyads had alienated, especially those who

harbored various degrees of loyalty to the family

of Ali: the nascent Shia. They put forward the

claim, later largely accepted, that a caliph must

come from the clan of Hashim, which included

Muhammad and Ali, but also Abbas, Muhammad’s

paternal uncle and the ancestor of the Abbasids.

Only after they had attained power did they make

it clear that the revolution they had led was for

their own family, not that of Ali, crushing the

messianic expectations of those who had awaited

a descendant of Ali to come to the throne. The

messianic expectations generated by the struggle

between the Abbasids and Umayyads, as reflected

in hadiths that can be dated to this period, remain

even now an important part of Islamic apocalyptic

beliefs regarding portents of the Last Hour and

JUdgment day.

During the heyday of the Abbasid Caliph-

ate, the Islamicate Empire stretched from India

and the Central Asian steppes in the east to the

western coast of northern Africa. But the heart of

the empire was always iraq, where they had their

capital, baghdad, and what is now iran. Iraq, in

particular, was extensively irrigated and therefore

was a rich source of agricultural produce and the

resulting tax revenue. By the ninth century, major

parts of the empire were functionally indepen-

dent, and this gradual breakdown of central rule

only increased as time went on. Nonetheless, the

provincial rulers, ever anxious to legitimize their

rules through official recognition from the caliph,

largely maintained their symbolic allegiance to

him. Even when these rulers were, in fact, much

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