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Distinctive Facts About The Mighty Ottoman Empire

Khalid Elhassan August 13, 2020 35 min

Battle of Ankara - Timurid Empire — Tamerlane gloating over the captured Bayezid I. Wikimedia

35. Turk Mercenaries Kick Off the Decline of the Abbasid Caliphate

Turkic soldiers in Abbasid service. Pintrest

The Turk mercenaries first introduced by al Mu’atsim engaged in widespread robberies and rapes that made them hugely unpopular with the civilian population. So in a bid to reduce the friction between his subjects and soldiers, al Mu’tasim relocated his capital in 835 from Baghdad to a new city, Samarra. That calmed things down for a while, but did not solve the core issue of controlling the Turkish mercenaries.

Things came to a head in 1861, in what came to be known as “The Anarchy at Samarra”. It began when the Turkish Guard murdered the caliph al Mutawakkil, and replaced him with his brother, al Muntasir. It was just the start of a period of chaos. By the time the dust had settled, the Turk mercenaries had fatally weakened the Abbasid Caliphate, and set in on the path to extinction.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.