The Abbasid Caliph and his People: a View form the Centre

Conventional narrations of the Abbasid dynasty, both medieval and modern, depict it as an arc spanning two centuries, starting with the ousting of the Umayyads in the mid-eighth century, peaking in a so-called ‘Golden Age’ in the ninth century, and declining into political insignificance in the course of the tenth century. Similarly, scholarly interest, which stays on the Abbasids and their movements for the first and second part of this arc, gradually moves elsewhere for the latter decades. In this lecture, Letizia Osti discusses the different ways in which historical and literary sources for the mid-tenth century describe the role and influence of the Abbasid Caliph—and of his capital Baghdad—at a time of profound political and cultural change.