34. The Chaos at Samara
Killing the Caliph al Mutawakkil and replacing him with his brother was just the Turk mercenaries’ warm-up act. The new caliph lasted for six months, before the Turks did him in. They then held a conference to appoint a successor, al Musta’in. He escaped in 865, but the mercenaries pursued, captured, and put him to death. They then appointed another caliph, al Mu’tazz, but when he bucked, they deposed and killed him in 869, replacing him with another puppet, al Muhtadi. He, too, tried to assert his authority, only to get murdered by the mercenaries and replaced in 870. The anarchy finally ended with the appointment of a caliph who accepted his role as a puppet.
The Abbasid Caliphate stumbled on for another four centuries, surviving as a shadow of what it had once been, with its caliphs as playthings of Turk strongmen and sultans. It was finally put out of its misery in 1258, when the Mongols sacked Baghdad, and executed the last Caliph by rolling him inside a rug and trampling him to death beneath their horses’ hooves.