Longest line of caliphs in the Muslim world, the Abbasids are not a dynasty like the others. A dazzling rise, a decline that looks like it will soon disappear, an unexpected revival, a profound disaster, and so on: the ups and downs in the curve of their fortunes over the centuries are dizzying.

Their longevity alone – five centuries – commands respect and gives them a special place in the history of Islam, its culture, its political model. And what about the impact of the Banû 'Abbas on Islamic civilization? It is indeed under their reign that the Muslim world completes its formative synthesis under the banner of the caliphate, opens up to newly converted peoples and reaches its apogee in the cultural, intellectual, scientific and religious bubbling typical of the "age of 'gold' of that time.

Through a collection of anecdotes and stories about the thirty-seven caliphs of Baghdad, from the Abbasid revolution to the Mongol invasions, as-Suyûtî offers in this extract from his "History of the caliphs" an original overview of the life of this dynasty. who reigned for a time from the confines of Central Asia to North Africa and to whom many of the greatest heroes of the Ummah made allegiance - while being under foreign tutelage almost half of his existence, and having no even more, at times, the control of his own palate!