'Men of the Chambers') were an elite cavalry corps that was one of the chief components of the late Abbasid army, from c. 900 to their forcible disbandment in 936.
[2] Despite their military prowess, they are rarely recorded as participating in campaigns or in provincial garrisons, and spent most of their time in Baghdad, where they served ostensibly as guards of the caliph, but more often as the power base of ambitious generals.
[4] By 927, they numbered some 12,000 men, and were able to destroy their long-time rivals and competitors for the Caliphate's increasingly scarce financial resources, the more numerous Masaffi infantry corps.
This provoked an uprising, but in a battle with Ibn Ra'iq's men, the Hujariyya were defeated with heavy loss of life.
[4] With them perished the last body of troops still loyal to the Abbasid dynasty, rather than individual strongmen, opening the way for the establishment of Ibn Ra'iq, and other military commanders after him, as quasi-dictators over a powerless, puppet caliph.