Abbasid Caliphate
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The Abbasid Caliphate was the third of the Islamic caliphates and succeeded the Umayyads after a revolution that began in Khurasan in 747. Its leaders claimed descent from al-Abbas, the uncle of the Prophet Muhammad, and the movement drew support from Persian client families, pious critics of Umayyad luxury and dispossessed Arab clans. The first caliph, Abu al-Abbas as-Saffah, defeated the last Umayyad ruler in 750, and his brother al-Mansur founded Baghdad in 762 as a round capital on the Tigris. Under Harun al-Rashid and his son al-Ma'mun the caliphate reached its height: the House of Wisdom gathered Greek, Persian and Indian scholarship, paper making spread from Samarkand, and merchants traded along the Silk Road as far as Tang China. Authority gradually shifted east, and the Turkish slave soldiers of the caliphal guard became kingmakers. Caliph al-Mutawakkil was assassinated in 861, opening a period of anarchy in which provincial dynasties such as the Aghlabids, Tulunids and Buyids ruled in the caliph's name while he kept religious authority in Baghdad. The Buyids entered the city in 945 and the Seljuk Turks in 1055, reducing the caliphs to ceremonial figures. In 1258 Hulegu's Mongols sacked Baghdad and killed the last caliph there; a shadow line survived in Cairo under the Mamluks until 1517, while Sunni scholars continued to treat the office as the legitimate leadership of the Muslim community.