Talk:Abbasid Caliphate

Which "successors"?
This recent and reasonable edit brings up a longstanding issue in the infobox, I think: what exactly is this article considering as a "successor"? Is it 1) the states that took over the territory the caliphate controlled? Or 2) the dynasty that took over the title of "caliph"?

The first option seems to be the more usual understanding of this parameter across Wikipedia articles, in which case the Ottoman empire came long after the political territory of the Abbasids had been taken over by others by 1258, so it's hardly relevant. If it's the second option, then the only successor would be the Ottoman dynasty/Ottoman Caliphate and nothing else. Mixing both, as seems to be the case currently, frankly just looks like a semi-arbitrary list of states from different periods and regions that I doubt is very useful to readers. R Prazeres (talk) 04:12, 17 June 2023 (UTC)


 * Yes, there needs to be some sort of distinction between spiritual and political succession, or, if that is not possible, to just go with the usual, territorial take. Iskandar323 (talk) 05:50, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Belated follow up: after seeing more partially confusing edits to it just recently, I'm revising the list to include only the states that took over political control of the caliphate's territories. I've removed those that did not control from the Abbasids directly (e.g. the Fatimids took over North Africa and Egypt from the Abbasids or their vassals, whereas the Ayyubids were nominal Abbasid vassals who took over what was mostly under Fatimid (& Crusader) control before them, the Mamluks were their successors, etc). Some smaller states might be missing from the list (e.g. Hamdanids?), but at some point all of this should probably be explained in more detail in the article itself so that it's not merely up to passing editor's discretion. R Prazeres (talk) 17:24, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
 * PS: Also the Emirate of Córdoba and the Idrisids (not to mention the Rustamids) were established in territories that were already out of effective caliphal control before the end of the Umayyad period. See this talk page explanation for the Idrisids, among others. R Prazeres (talk) 17:27, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

"Separatist dynasties" and "Decline" sections
Initially I was going to tag the "Separatist dynasties and their successors" section as unsourced, but on second thought I don't think we should keep this section. I went bold and removed it. Aside from being unsourced, it also contains various errors, includes some recent nationalist POV insertions, and the framing as "separatist" dynasties is dubious since many were part of the Abbasid Caliphate or, as the section mentions, nominally acknowledged their authority. More fundamentally: listing every dynasty in the history of every region of the Islamic world is not reasonably within the scope of this article and we have plenty of articles that cover the full history of each region. The trouble it would take to add sources to verify all the dates and names, plus sorting out inconsistences and arbitrary choices over what is included where, does not reasonably seem worth it.

It would make more sense to simply revise and expand the preceding "Decline" section, which already summarizes some of the same information, to cover the immediate successor states and dynasties that emerged in the 9th-10th centuries. It would probably be better to also merge that section with the History section, with which it already overlaps and which also needs some work. R Prazeres (talk) 17:26, 5 October 2023 (UTC)


 * Hello @R Prazeres dunno if it's fitting to post this here, but according to those sources: (p 132), Abassid caliph Al ma'mun adopted the green flag when he declated the shiite imam Ali al-Rida as his heir. Nourerrahmane (talk) 16:19, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Islamic Arts of the Book
— Assignment last updated by Bumblebeatrice (talk) 19:09, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Arabic terror in "Greater Persia"
Why didn't this encyclopedia highlight the incident of Arabic terror in "Greater Persia"?

Baghdad was the fear of the whole medieval world!

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Removal of Abbasid slave trade from the trade section
I inserted referenced information about the slave trade between the vikings and the Abbasid Caliphate, taking place via present day Russia, in the section about trade. The text is the following:
 * Quote: The Abbasids conducted an extensive trade with Europe via the Khazar Khanate, and later Volga Bulgaria, in present day Russia. The Arabs traded their goods for European slaves. People taken captive during the Viking raids in Western Europe, such as Ireland, could be transported to Hedeby or Brännö and from there via the Volga trade route to present day Russia, where slaves and furs were sold to Muslim merchants in exchange for Arab silver dirham and silk, which have been found in Birka, Wollin and Dublin;(The New Cambridge Medieval History: Volume 3, C.900-c.1024. (1995). Storbritannien: Cambridge University Press. p. 91) initially this trade route between Europe and the Abbasid Caliphate passed via the Khazar Kaghanate, (The World of the Khazars: New Perspectives. Selected Papers from the Jerusalem 1999 International Khazar Colloquium. (2007). Nederländerna: Brill. p. 232) but from the early 10th-century onward it went via Volga Bulgaria and from there by caravan to Khwarazm, to the Samanids in Central Asia and finnally via Iran arrived to its destination in the Abbasid Caliphate.(The New Cambridge Medieval History: Volume 3, C.900-c.1024. (1995). Storbritannien: Cambridge University Press. p. 504)

In summary: the text above is: 1) well referenced; 2) it is about a relevant topic; 3) it is on topic; as it concerns a topic about trade, and it is duly placed in the section about trade. A well referenced topic about an important part of Abbasid trade was removed from the section about Abbasid trade with the claim that it was irrelevant and non-neutral. It was removed by an editor who has previously questioned referenced information about slavery in an Islamic realm, and allerted a user with a history of questioning and removing well referenced information about slavery in Islamic states. This does not make it easy to assume good faith in the removal of the text. Because of these circumstances, a discussion about the subject does not appear constructive. Consequently, I will leave it as it is. However, this post will be made on the talk page, to make a note of the incident. Thank you. --Aciram (talk) 00:14, 27 June 2024 (UTC)


 * that entire paragraph is about a wider European slave trade in which the Abbasid Caliphate is tangential even in your own words. This article is already 10,000+ words, it still doesn't cover far more important topics in sufficient depth, and there's already a hatnote link at the top of that section to Slavery in the Abbasid Caliphate, an article you created. Among the smaller problems, here you repeated the word "enslaved" twice despite the word literally right before this already, then again in another sentence without reference to the cited source. Here, your lower edit inserted new unsourced material again into an already sourced statement.
 * This is of course not the first article where you've inserted content about slavery rather heavy-handedly. On some of these previous occasions, I've found evidence of WP:OR: you seem to take very general information from sources, then add your own details and make your own decisions about what is relevant in what context, even when it doesn't fit. For example, from even a cursory look at Slavery in the Abbasid Caliphate, I see you included an entire section on al-Andalus, followed by a "Saracen piracy" section about the Almoravids and the Almohads; all of which are completely outside Abbasid control and therefore all irrelevant to the stated topic. Frankly, this looks like you don't understand the historical contexts you're writing about, which would all be perfectly fine if you didn't resort to possible WP:OR.
 * I am not the first one to bring these criticisms to you and I have previously given you polite and constructive criticism about the content you've edited. If your attitude in response to these criticisms is to insinuate, as you did above, that I have some agenda when it comes to the topic of slavery, then the lack of good faith is entirely on your part. R Prazeres (talk) 00:47, 27 June 2024 (UTC)