List of Abbasid caliphs

The political decline of the Abbasids had begun earlier, during the Anarchy at Samarra (861–870), which accelerated the fragmentation of the Muslim world into autonomous dynasties.

The caliphs lost their temporal power in 936–946, first to a series of military strongmen and then to the Shi'a Buyid Emirs that seized control of Baghdad; the Buyids were in turn replaced by the Sunni Seljuk Turks in the mid-11th century, and Turkish rulers assumed the title of "Sultan" to denote their temporal authority.

Most Abbasid caliphs were born to a concubine mother, known as umm al-walad (Arabic: أم الولد, lit.

[1] Those concubines where from non-Muslim lands and brought to slavery in the Abbasid Caliphate via a number of different slave trade routes.

The Cairo Abbasids were largely ceremonial caliphs under the patronage of the Mamluk Sultanate that existed after the takeover of the Ayyubid dynasty.