1. Al-Mu'tadid was the son of al-Muwaffaq, who was the regent and effective ruler of the Abbasid state during the reign of his brother, Caliph al-Mu'tamid.
16 Facts About Al-Mu'tadid
1. 2.
Al-Mu'tadid was renowned for his cruelty when punishing criminals, and subsequent chroniclers recorded his extensive and ingenious use of torture.
3.
Al-Mu'tadid's reign saw the permanent move of the capital back to Baghdad, where he engaged in major building activities.
4.
Al-Mu'tadid was born Ahmad, the son of Talha, one of the sons of the Abbasid caliph al-Mutawakkil, and a Greek slave named Dirar The exact date of his birth is unknown; as he is variously recorded as being thirty-eight or thirty-one years old at the time of his accession, he was born around either 854 or 861.
5.
Al-Mu'tadid soon succeeded in defeating the Tulunids and forcing them to retreat to Palestine, but after a quarrel with Ibn Kundaj and Ibn Abu'l-Saj, the latter two abandoned the campaign and withdrew their forces.
6.
Al-Mu'tadid swiftly took advantage of this and in 897 extended his control over the border emirates of the Thughur, where, in the words of Michael Bonner, "[he] assumed, after a long hiatus, the old caliphal prerogative of commanding the annual summer expedition and arranging the defence against the Byzantine Empire".
7.
Al-Mu'tadid sent Ahmad ibn Abd al-Aziz to seize Rayy from Rafi, who fled and made common cause with the Zaydis of Tabaristan in an effort to seize Khurasan from the Saffarids.
8.
Al-Mu'tadid deliberately encouraged Amr to confront the Samanids, only for Amr to be crushingly defeated and taken prisoner by them in 900.
9.
Al-Mu'tadid in turn conferred Amr's titles and governorships on Isma'il ibn Ahmad.
10.
Al-Mu'tadid introduced Tuesday and Friday as days of rest for government employees.
11.
Al-Mu'tadid completed the return of the capital from Samarra to Baghdad, which had already served as his father's main base of operations.
12.
Al-Mu'tadid took care to restore the city's irrigation network by clearing the silted-up Dujayl Canal, paying for this with money from those landowners who stood to profit from it.
13.
Al-Mu'tadid maintained good relations with the breakaway Zaydi imams of Tabaristan, but his pro-Alid stance failed to prevent the establishment of a second Zaydi state in Yemen in 901.
14.
Al-Mu'tadid actively promoted the traditions of learning and science that had flourished under his early 9th-century predecessors al-Ma'mun, al-Mu'tasim, and al-Wathiq.
15.
Al-Mu'tadid was the first Abbasid caliph to be buried within the city of Baghdad.
16.
Al-Mu'tadid had taken care to prepare his son and successor, al-Muktafi, for his role by appointing him as governor in Rayy and the Jazira.