37. The Abbasid Caliphate’s Nose Dive
Although al Ma’mun ruled for a respectable twenty years, the bulk of that reign was spent in fighting challengers. The civil war between al Rashid’s sons had fatally weakened the Abbasid Caliphate, and unleashed separatist movements that no Caliph was able to control.
The Abbasid Caliphate went into a precipitate decline, and within a few decades of al Ma’mun’s death, it had been reduced to a shadow of its former glory. Abbasid Caliphs continued to rule from Baghdad, but they ruled in name only. By the end of the century, their authority barely extended beyond their capital, and often, not even beyond their palace.