Abbasid Caliphate extinguished after five centuries

1258

With the death of al-Musta'sim beneath Mongol hooves, the caliphate that had once stretched from Spain to Sindh ceased to exist. A shadow caliph would be installed in Cairo by the Mamluks, but the fiction fooled no one. The symbolic center of Sunni Islam had been trampled into the mud of the Tigris.