ABSTRACT
The re-establishment of the ‘Abbāsid caliphate in Cairo after its overthrow on the fall of Baghdad to the Mongols in 656/1258 was, as is well known, accomplished by the Mamlūk sultan, al-Ẓāhir Baybars, who installed successively two refugee ‘Abbāsids as caliphs in his capital. What is perhaps not always realized is that the two pretenders did not appear in turn and out of the blue at the beginning of Baybars’s reign, and that the sultan’s reasons for installing the first, al-Mustanṣir, were not identical with his reasons for installing the second, al-Ḥākim. In certain respects the official account by Baybars’s court biographer, Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn ‘Abd al-Ẓāhir, needs to be supplemented and corrected. 1
