ABSTRACT
The Abbasids proved to be one of the longest-lived dynasties of Islam. Their rule lasted for half a millennium, from the overthrow of the Omayyads in 750 till the destruction of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258, and even then a line of shadow-Caliphs was prolonged in Cairo, under the protection of the Mamluk Sultans, from 1261 till the Ottoman conquest of Egypt in 1517. Their effective government came to an end, however, as early as 945, when their political authority passed into the hands of the Buyid amirs and later of the Turkish sultans: henceforth they exercised only spiritual power as the successors of the Prophet and Imams of the Muslim world. Their history is much better known to us than that of the Omayyads, owing to the rapid growth of Arabic historiography from the late eighth century onwards. Contemporary chronicles provide us with a mass of information, much of it not yet adequately sifted: of these the fullest is the great Annals of Apostles and Kings by the learned Persian Tabari, who as his name implies was a native of the province of Tabaristan on the shores of the Caspian and who died at Baghdad in 923, after a lifetime devoted to historical and theological scholarship. On the other hand, archival material (charters, official decrees, legislative enactments) is almost wholly wanting, as Islam never had a clergy, a feudal aristocracy, urban communes, or representative assemblies, and the social and economic history of the Abbasid age has to be pieced together with such meagre evidence as is afforded by coins, business documents, geographical handbooks, and archaeological finds.
