Al-Nasir

Al-Nasir was the son of Caliph al-Mustadi and a Turkish umm walad called Zumurrud (Emerald).[2] His reign was unusual for the rise of the futuwwa groups in his reign, connected to Baghdad's long-standing ayyarun. These urban social groups had long existed in Baghdad and elsewhere, and they were often involved in urban conflicts, especially sectarian riots. Al-Nasir made them into an instrument of his government, reorganizing them along Sufi lines and ideology.

Al-Sarai Mosque was laid by Caliph Al-Nasir

In the early years of his caliphate, his goal was to crush the Seljuq power and replace it with his own. He incited rebellion against the Seljuq Sultan of Persia, Toghrul III. The Khwarezm Shah, Ala ad-Din Tekish, at his instigation, attacked the Seljuq forces, and defeated them in 1194; Toghrul was killed and his head exposed in the caliph's palace. Tekish, recognized now as supreme ruler of the East, bestowed on the caliph certain provinces of Persia that had been held by the Seljuqs.

Al-Nasir sent his vizier to Tekish with some gifts, but the vizier irritated Tekish, who attacked the caliph's troops and routed them. Thereafter hostile relations prevailed for many years. The Caliph assassinated a governor of Tekish by using an Ismaili emissary. Tekish responded by having the body of al-Nasir's vizier, who died on a campaign against him, exhumed, and the head stuck up at Khwarizm. Irritated at this and other hostile acts, the Caliph retaliated by treating with indignity the pilgrims who came from the East under Khwarizm's flag. But beyond such poor revenge, he was powerless for any open enmity.

Tekish's son, Muhammad II (1200–1220), annoyed at the actions of the caliph, set up a Shi'a Caliph to paralyse al-Nasir's spiritual power. Following up this act, he turned his army on Baghdad. In response, some medieval historians write that al-Nasir appealed to Genghis Khan, the rising Mongol chief, to check Muhammad's progress. This point is controversial, but it is likely that the caliph had some contacts to the non-Muslims Mongols.

The caliph soon found Genghis Khan to be quite threatening. The steppes of Central Asia were set in motion by Genghis Khan, and his hordes put to flight the Khwarizm Shah, who died an exile in an island of the Caspian.

Al-Nasir spent his last three years paralysed and nearly blind. He suffered from dysentery for twenty days and then died.[3] He was succeeded by his Son Az-Zahir in the year 1225 as the thirty-fifth Abbasid Caliph.

• Al-Sarai Mosque
• Zumurrud Khatun Mosque and Mausoleum was built by mother of Al-Nasir and wife of Caliph Al-Mustadi.
• Shihab al-Din 'Umar al-Suhrawardi designated as Shaykh al-Islam by Al-Nasir.
• Baghdad School also known as the Arab school was an influential school of Islamic art developed during the late 12th century in the Abbasid capital Baghdad.

• Bosworth, C. E. (1968). "The Political and Dynastic History of the Iranian World (A.D. 1000–1217)". In Frye, R. N. (ed.). The Cambridge History of Iran, Volume 5: The Saljuq and Mongol periods. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 1–202. ISBN 0-521-06936-X.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• This text is partly adapted from William Muir's public domain, The Caliphate: Its Rise, Decline, and Fall.
• Hartmann, Angelika. An-Nasir li-Din Allah: Politik, Religion und Kultur in der späten Abbasidenzeit.