Al-Mu'tadid
Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad ibn Ṭalḥa ibn Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad ibn Hārūn, better known by his regnal name al-Muʿtaḍid bi-llāh, was the caliph of the Abbasid Caliphate from 892 until his death in 902.
Al-Mu'tadid was the son of al-Muwaffaq, who was the regent and effective ruler of the Abbasid state during the reign of his brother, Caliph al-Mu'tamid. As a prince, the future al-Mu'tadid served under his father during various military campaigns, most notably in the suppression of the Zanj Rebellion, in which he played a major role. When al-Muwaffaq died in June 891 al-Mu'tadid succeeded him as regent. He quickly sidelined his cousin and heir-apparent al-Mufawwid; when al-Mu'tamid died in October 892, he succeeded to the throne. Like his father, al-Mu'tadid's power depended on his close relations with the army. These were first forged during the campaigns against the Zanj and were reinforced in later expeditions which the Caliph led in person: al-Mu'tadid would prove to be the most militarily active of all Abbasid caliphs. Through his energy and ability, he succeeded in restoring to the Abbasid state some of the power and provinces it had lost during the turmoil of the previous decades.
In a series of campaigns he recovered the provinces of Jazira, Thughur, and Jibal, and effected a rapprochement with the Saffarids in the east and the Tulunids in the west that secured their—albeit largely nominal—recognition of caliphal suzerainty. These successes came at the cost of gearing the economy almost exclusively towards the maintenance of the army, which resulted in the expansion and rise to power of the central fiscal bureaucracy and contributed to the Caliph's lasting reputation for avarice. Al-Mu'tadid was renowned for his cruelty when punishing criminals, and subsequent chroniclers recorded his extensive and ingenious use of torture. His reign saw the permanent move of the capital back to Baghdad, where he engaged in major building activities. A firm supporter of Sunni traditionalist orthodoxy, he nevertheless maintained good relations with the Alids, and was interested in natural sciences, renewing caliphal sponsorship of scholars and scientists.
Despite his successes, al-Mu'tadid's reign was ultimately too short to effect a lasting reversal of the Caliphate's fortunes, and the revival that he spearheaded was too dependent on the presence of capable personalities at the helm of the state. The brief reign of his less able son and heir, al-Muktafi, still saw some major gains, notably the annexation of the Tulunid domains, but his later successors lacked his energy, and new enemies appeared in the form of the Qarmatians. In addition, factionalism within the bureaucracy, which had become apparent during the later years of al-Mu'tadid's reign, would debilitate the Abbasid government for decades to come, eventually leading to the subjugation of the Caliphate by a series of military strongmen, culminating in the conquest of Baghdad by the Buyids in 946.
Early life
Al-Mu'tadid was born Ahmad, the son of Talha, one of the sons of the Abbasid caliph al-Mutawakkil, and a Greek slave named Dirar The exact date of his birth is unknown; as he is variously recorded as being thirty-eight or thirty-one years old at the time of his accession, he was born around either 854 or 861. In 861, al-Mutawakkil was murdered by his Turkish guards in collusion with his oldest son al-Muntasir. This began a period of internal turmoil, known as the "Anarchy at Samarra" from the site of the Caliphate's capital, which ended in 870 with the rise to the throne of Ahmad's uncle, al-Mu'tamid. Real power however, had come to lie with the elite Turkish slave-soldiers and with Ahmad's own father, Talha, who, as the Caliphate's main military commander, served as the chief intermediary between the caliphal government and the Turks. Assuming the honorific name al-Muwaffaq in the style of the caliphs, Talha soon became the effective ruler of the Caliphate, a position consolidated in 882 after a failed attempt by al-Mu'tamid to flee to Egypt led to his confinement in house arrest.Caliphal authority in the provinces collapsed during the "Anarchy at Samarra", with the result that by the 870s the central government had lost effective control over most of the Caliphate outside the metropolitan region of Iraq. In the west, Egypt had fallen under the control of the Turkish slave-soldier Ahmad ibn Tulun, who also disputed control of Syria with al-Muwaffaq, while Khurasan and most of the Islamic East had been taken over by the Saffarids, a Persianate dynasty who replaced the Abbasids' loyal clients, the Tahirids. Most of the Arabian peninsula was likewise lost to local potentates, while in Tabaristan a radical Zaydi Shi'a dynasty took power. Even in Iraq, the rebellion of the Zanj, African slaves brought to work in the plantations of Lower Iraq, threatened Baghdad itself, and further south the Qarmatians were a nascent threat. Al-Muwaffaq's regency was thus a continuous struggle to save the tottering Caliphate from collapse. His attempts to recover control of Egypt and Syria from Ibn Tulun failed, with the latter even able to expand his territory and obtain recognition as a hereditary ruler, but he succeeded in preserving the core of the Caliphate in Iraq by repelling a Saffarid invasion aimed at capturing Baghdad, and by subduing the Zanj after a long struggle.
Campaigns against the Zanj and the Tulunids
It was against the Zanj that the future al-Mu'tadid—at this time usually referred to by his of Abu'l-Abbas—would acquire his first military experience and establish the close army ties that would characterize his reign. Al-Muwaffaq gave his son a military upbringing from an early age, and the young prince became an excellent rider and a solicitous commander, who showed personal attention to the state of his men and their horses.Within a decade of the outbreak of the revolt in 869, the Zanj had seized most of lower Iraq, including the cities of Basra and Wasit, and expanded into Khuzistan. In 879 the death of the founder of the Saffarid state, Ya'qub al-Saffar, allowed the Abbasid government to fully concentrate its attention against the Zanj rebellion, and Abu'l-Abbas' appointment to command in December 879 at the head of 10,000 troops marks the turning point of the war. In the long and hard struggle that followed, which involved amphibious operations in the Mesopotamian Marshes, Abu'l-Abbas and his own —of which the long-serving Zirak al-Turki was the most eminent—played the major role. Although the Abbasid armies eventually swelled with reinforcements, volunteers, and Zanj defectors, it was the few but elite who formed the army's backbone, filling its leadership positions and bearing the brunt of the battle, often under the personal command of Abu'l-Abbas. After years of gradually tightening the noose around the Zanj, in August 883 the Abbasid troops stormed their capital of al-Mukhtara, putting an end to the rebellion. A detailed account of the war by a former Zanj rebel, preserved in the history written by al-Tabari, stresses the role of al-Muwaffaq and Abu'l-Abbas as the heroes who, in defence of the embattled Muslim state, suppressed the rebellion; the successful campaign would become a major tool in their propaganda effort to legitimize their de facto usurpation of the caliph's power.
Following the death of Ibn Tulun in May 884, the two caliphal generals Ishaq ibn Kundaj and Ibn Abu'l-Saj sought to take advantage of the situation and attacked the Tulunid domains in Syria, but their initial gains were rapidly reversed. In the spring of 885, Abu'l-Abbas was sent to take charge of the invasion. He soon succeeded in defeating the Tulunids and forcing them to retreat to Palestine, but after a quarrel with Ibn Kundaj and Ibn Abu'l-Saj, the latter two abandoned the campaign and withdrew their forces. In the Battle of Tawahin on 6 April, Abu'l-Abbas confronted Ibn Tulun's son and heir, Khumarawayh, in person. The Abbasid prince was initially victorious, forcing Khumarawayh to flee, but was in turn defeated and fled the battlefield, while much of his army was taken prisoner. After this victory the Tulunids expanded their control over the Jazira and the borderlands with the Byzantine Empire. A peace agreement followed in 886, whereby al-Muwaffaq was forced to recognize Khumarawayh as hereditary governor over Egypt and Syria for 30 years, in exchange for an annual tribute. Over the next couple of years, Abu'l-Abbas was involved in his father's ultimately unsuccessful attempts to wrest Fars from Saffarid control.
Imprisonment and rise to the throne
During this period, relations between Abu'l-Abbas and his father deteriorated, although the reason is unclear. Already in 884, Abu'l-Abbas' rioted in Baghdad against al-Muwaffaq's vizier, Sa'id ibn Makhlad, possibly over unpaid wages. Eventually, in 889, Abu'l-Abbas was arrested and put in prison on his father's orders, where he remained despite the demonstrations of the loyal to him. He apparently remained under arrest until May 891, when al-Muwaffaq returned to Baghdad after two years spent in Jibal.Al-Muwaffaq, suffering from gout, was clearly close to death; the vizier Isma'il ibn Bulbul and the city commander of Baghdad, Abu'l-Saqr, called al-Mu'tamid and his sons, including the heir-apparent al-Mufawwad, into the city, hoping to exploit the situation for their own purposes. This attempt to sideline Abu'l-Abbas failed due to his popularity with the soldiers and the common people. He was set free to visit his father's deathbed, and was able to immediately assume power when al-Muwaffaq died on 2 June. The Baghdad mob ransacked his opponents' houses, and Ibn Bulbul was dismissed and thrown in prison, where he died from maltreatment after a few months. Similar fates awaited any of Ibn Bulbul's supporters who were caught by Abu'l-Abbas's agents.
Now "all-powerful", Abu'l-Abbas succeeded his father in all his offices, with the title of and a position in the line of succession after the Caliph and al-Mufawwad. Within a few months, on 30 April 892, al-Mu'tadid had his cousin removed from the succession altogether. Thus, when al-Mu'tamid died on 14 October 892, al-Mu'tadid took power as caliph.