What did Abbasid Caliph do?

Answer 1

Abbasid Caliphate

The first continent outside of Arabia to have an Islamic history was Africa beginning with the Hijirah to modern day Ethiopia trough modern day Eritrea (All part of Abyssinia). Islam in Eritrea & Ethiopia can be dated back to the founding of the religion of Muhammad, was from Abyssinia (Habasha).The Abbasid Caliphatewas the third of the Islamic caliphates. It was ruled by the Abbasid dynasty of caliphs, who built their capital in Baghdad after overthrowing the Umayyad caliphate from all but the Al-Andalus region.

The Abbasid caliphate was founded by the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad's youngest uncle, Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib (566-653), in Kufa in 750 CE and shifted its capital in 762 to Baghdad. Within 150 years of gaining control of Persia, the caliphs were forced to cede power to local dynastic Emirs who only nominally acknowledged their authority.

The gains of the Ummayad Empire were consolidated upon when the Abbasid dynasty rose to power in 750, with the conquest of the Mediterranean islands including the Balearics and Sicily. The new ruling party had been instated on the wave of dissatisfaction propagated against the Ummayads, cultured mainly by the Abbasid revolutionary, Abu Muslim. Under the Abbasids, Islamic civilization flourished. Most notable was the development of Arabic prose and poetry, termed by The Cambridge History of Islam as its "golden age. This was also the case for commerce and industry (considered a Muslim Agricultural Revolution), and the arts and sciences (considered a Muslim Scientific Revolution), which prospered, especially under the rule of Abbasid caliphs al-Mansur (ruled 754 775), Harun al-Rashid (ruled 786 809), al-Ma'mun (ruled 809 813), and their immediate successors.

Expansion ceased and the central disciplines of Islamic philosophy, theology, law and mysticism became more widespread and the gradual conversions of the populations within the empire occurred. Significant conversions also occurred beyond the extents of the empire such as that of the Turkic tribes in Central Asia and peoples living in regions south of the Sahara in Africa through contact with Muslim traders active in the area and sufi missionaries. In Africa it spread along three routes, across the Sahara via trading towns such as Timbuktu, up the Nile Valley through the Sudan up to Uganda and across the Red Sea and down East Africa through settlements such as Mombasa and Zanzibar. These initial conversions were of a flexible nature and only later were the societies forcibly purged of their traditional influences.

The reasons why, by the end of the 10th century, a large part of the population had converted to Islam are diverse. One of the reasons may be that Islam had become more clearly defined, and the line between Muslims and non-Muslims more sharply drawn. Muslims now lived within an elaborated system of ritual, doctrine and law clearly different from those of non-Muslims. The status of Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians was more precisely defined, and in some ways it was inferior. They were regarded as the 'People of the Book', those who possessed a revealed scripture, or 'People of the Covenant', with whom compacts of protection had been made. In general they were not forced to convert, but they suffered from restrictions. They paid a special tax; they were not supposed to wear certain colors; they could not marry Muslim women.

It flourished for two centuries, but slowly went into decline with the rise to power of the Turkish army it had created, the Mamluks. Within 150 years of gaining power across Iran, they were forced to cede power to local dynastic emirs who only nominally acknowledged their power, and had to cede Al Andalus to an escaped Umayyad royal and the Maghreb and Ifriqiya to independent entities such as the Aghlabids and the Fatimids. Their rule was ended in 1258, when Hulagu Khan, the Mongol conqueror, sacked Baghdad. While they continued to claim authority in religious matters from their base in Egypt, the dynasty's secular authority had ended. Descendants of the Abbasids include the al-Abbasi tribe who live northeast of Tikrit in modern-day Iraq.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spread_of_Islam

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spread_of_Islam