Khilafah (Caliphate): Difference between revisions

The Abbasid overthrow of the Umayyads ushered in the Islamic Golden Age, especially as the rationalist heresy of the Mu'tazilites became culturally dominant and as the ruling Abbasids themselves participated in and encouraged this heresy. The rationalists' obsession with knowledge and reason directly motivated the Mu'tazilite ruler al-Ma'mun (ruling from 813-833) to both found the famous House of Wisdom (''Bayt al-Hikmah'') in Baghdad, fund the works of scientists like [[Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi|al-Khwarizmi]], and begin an inquisition (''mihna'') against the traditionalist, and even anti-intellectual movement that would later become orthodox Sunni Islam and bring an end to the scientific and philosophical flourishing of the Islamic world as a result of the sort of dogmatism that would define the lives and works of [[Al-Ghazali]] (d. 1111) and [[Ibn Taymiyya]] (d. 1328) a few centuries later. By the 1250s, however, the once-loyal Mamluk members of the Abbasid military would take control of Egypt, and in 1258, Baghdad would be sacked, bringing an end to the original Abbasid caliphate.