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The Sibling Rivalry That Wrecked an Empire, and Other Self-Destructive Royal Family Episodes

Khalid Elhassan January 5, 2020 33 min

Wars of the Roses - Battle of Bosworth Field — The Wars of the Roses, during which the Plantagenet Dynasty destroyed itself. Encyclopedia Britannica

Gold dinar of al Ma’mun, minted in 830. Wikimedia

37. The Abbasid Caliphate’s Nose Dive

Although al Ma’mun ruled for a respectable twenty years, the bulk of that reign was spent in fighting challengers. The civil war between al Rashid’s sons had fatally weakened the Abbasid Caliphate, and unleashed separatist movements that no Caliph was able to control.

The Abbasid Caliphate went into a precipitate decline, and within a few decades of al Ma’mun’s death, it had been reduced to a shadow of its former glory. Abbasid Caliphs continued to rule from Baghdad, but they ruled in name only. By the end of the century, their authority barely extended beyond their capital, and often, not even beyond their palace.

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.