Abbasid Dynasty - Caliphs Of Baghdad

		Abbasid Dynasty - Caliphs Of Baghdad         Abbasid Dynasty - 1         Abbasid Dynasty - 2           Abbasid Dynasty - 3           Abbasid was the dynastic name generally given to the caliphs  of Baghdad, the second of the two great Sunni dynasties of the Muslim that overthrew the Umayyid caliphs.It seized power in 750, when it finally defeated the Umayyads in battle, and flourished for two centuries, but slowly went into decline with the rise to power of the Turkish army they had created, the Mamluks. Their claim to power was finally ended in 1258 for broader historical context, see 1250s and 13th century. When Hulagu Khan, the Mongol  general, sacked Baghdad .While they continued to claim authority in religious matters from their base in Egypt, their dynasty was ended. » Learning Under The Abbasid Dynasty The reigns of Harun al-Rashid  ( 786  - 809 ) and his successors fostered an age of great intellectual achievement. In large part this was the result of the schismatic forces that had undermined the Umayyad  regime, which relied on the assertion of the superiority of Arab culture as part of its claim to legitimacy, and the Abbasids' welcoming of support from non-Arab Muslims. A number of medieval thinkers and scientists living under Islamic rule, many of them non-Muslims or heretical Muslims, played a role in transmitting Greek, Hindu, and other pre-Islamic knowledge to the Christian West.They contributed to making Aristotle known in Christian Europe.In addition the period saw the recovery of much of the Alexandrian mathematical, geometric and astronomical knowledge, such as that of Euclides  and Claudius Ptolemy, and these recovered mathematical methods were later enhanced and developed by other Islamic scholars, notably by Al-Biruni, and Abu Nasr Mansur, who are thought to have first derived the Cosine rule and applied it to spherical geometry. Three speculative thinkers,the Persians al-Kindi,al-Farabi, and Avicenna, combined Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism with other ideas introduced through Islam » The end of the Caliphate Hulagu Khan  sacked Baghdad on ( February 10 , 1258 ), causing great loss of life. Al-Musta'sim, the last reigning Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad was then executed on February 20, 1258. The Abbasids still maintained a feeble show of authority, confined to religious matters, in Egypt under the Mamluks, but the dynasty finally disappeared with Motawakkil III, who was carried away as a prisoner to Constantinople by Selim 1. » Abbasid Caliphs of Baghdad