Al-Mustansir_II_of_Cairo

Al-Mustansir II

Al-Mustansir II

1st Abbasid Caliph in Mamluk Cairo (died 1261)


Abu'l-Qasim Ahmad al-Mustansir (Arabic: أبو القاسم أحمد المستنصر), (c. 1210 – 28 November 1261) was the first Abbasid caliph to rule in Cairo and who was subservient to the Mamluk Sultanate. He reigned from June 1261 to 28 November 1261.

Quick Facts Abu'l-Qasim Ahmad al-Mustansir أبو القاسم أحمد المستنصر, 1st Caliph of Cairo ...

Life

Abu'l-Qasim Ahmad was a member of the Abbasid house who was imprisoned by his nephew the Caliph al-Musta'sim in Baghdad. Following the Sack of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258, he escaped to the Arab tribes in the desert, where he hid out for over three years, until after the Mamluks had driven the Mongols from Syria in 1260. After making his way to Cairo, Mamluk Egypt, al-Mustansir was installed as Caliph there by the Mamluk Sultan Baybars I in 1261. He was sent with an army to the east to recover Baghdad, but was killed in a Mongol ambush near al-Anbar (near Falluja in modern Iraq) in 1261, and was succeeded, though not immediately, by his rather distant Abbasid kinsman (and former rival caliph, having been proclaimed by the ruler of Aleppo) Al-Hakim I. Though he was not the direct ancestor of any of them, the line of Cairo caliphs Ahmad al-Mustansir founded lasted until the Ottoman conquest of Egypt in 1517, but they were little more than religious figureheads for the Mamluks.

References

  • "Biography of Al-Mustansir II" (in Arabic). Islampedia.com. Archived from the original on 2008-06-11.

Bibliography

More information Sunni Islam titles ...

Share this article:

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Al-Mustansir_II_of_Cairo, and is written by contributors. Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.