ABSTRACT

It was under the Abbasids that the decline of the empire set in. The year 800, the date of the coronation of Charlemagne in Rome and the establishment of the Holy Roman Empire, may be taken as the culminating point of the prosperity of the Abbasid empire, though a prince of the Umayyad family, who had fled to Spain, had already made that country a separate kingdom in 756, and North Africa from 800 practically became an independent kingdom under the governor who founded the Aghlabid dynasty and made his post hereditary in his family. One province after another rapidly made itself independent, Egypt and Syria were cut off from the empire, and separate dynasties were established in Persia. By the tenth century the authority of the A b basid Caliph hardly extended beyond the precincts of the city of Baghdad, and the Caliph himself was at the mercy of his foreign troops, for the most part of Turkish origin, lawless and undisciplined. The Caliph Muqtadir (908-932) was twice deposed, and at the end of an inglorious reign, marked by drunkenness, sensuality, and

extravagance, was killed in a skirmish with the troops of one of his generals; his head was stuck upon a spear, and his body left lying on the ground where he fell.