A Short History of the Abbasids: Rediscovering the Longest Caliphal Dynasty

ABOUT THE BOOK

The longest-ruling line of caliphs in the Muslim world, the Abbasids were no ordinary dynasty. A meteoric rise, a decline that seemed to herald imminent collapse, an unexpected revival, a profound catastrophe and so it continued: the dramatic fluctuations of their fortunes across the centuries are nothing short of vertiginous.

Their very longevity,five centuries commands respect and secures for them a central place in the history of Islam. And what of the legacy of the Banū ‘Abbās upon Islamic civilisation? It was under their rule that the Muslim world completed its formative synthesis, opened itself to newly converted peoples, and reached its zenith in the cultural and intellectual efflorescence that would later be known as its “Golden Age.”

From the Abbasid Revolution to the Mongol invasions, across the reigns of thirty-seven caliphs in Baghdad, this book offers a searching journey into the life of a dynasty that once ruled from Central Asia to North Africa, commanding the allegiance of many of the greatest heroes of the Ummah, even as it spent nearly half its existence under foreign domination!