Al-Mu'tasim

Born in October 796, a younger son of Harun al-Rashid, he climbed to power by recruiting Turkic ghilmān into a personal guard that his half-brother al-Ma'mun used to check rival factions. When al-Ma'mun died on campaign in August 833, he took the caliphate with backing from the chief qādī Ahmad ibn Abi Duwad and pressed ahead with Mu'tazilism and the miḥna. In 836 he founded Samarra as a new capital, centralizing control around his Turkish generals—Ashinas, Wasif, Itakh, Bugha—while sidelining the Arab and Iranian elites who had built the early Abbasid state. His general al-Afshin broke the Kh…