Al-Mustazhir, Abbasid Caliph - Baghdad 1117 AD

Product not suitable for children under 14 years - Kit not painted and not assembled

Abu al-ʿAbbās "al-Mustaẓhir bi-llah" Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Muqtadi (Arabic أبو العباس "المستظهر بالله" أحمد بن عبد ا لله المقتدي‎), which went down in history with the honorific name (laqab) of al- Mustazhir bi-llah (trans.: the Invocation of God ) was the 34th Abbasid Caliph and was born near Baghdad in the spring of 1078. Son and heir of the Caliph al-Muqtadi , he ascended the throne in 1094 AD. His father had at court a concubine, the favorite, named Taif Al-Afwah , a woman of Egyptian origin who gave birth to the future al-Mustaẓhir bi-llah. When his father died on 3 February 1094 at the young age of 37, his son found himself assuming the position of Caliph at just sixteen. The adolescent boy thus found himself surrounded and advised by a cosmopolitan court - even if often dedicated to palace intrigues - to manage with difficulty a great political and spiritual power over a territory which, in the years of his regency, between 1094 and 1118 , ranged from the coasts of North Africa to the steppes of Central Asia. Although less known than other protagonists of the Arab history of the period of the crusades, and although considered irrelevant on the chessboard of events by much classical historiography, he continues to remain important in the context of the more limited scenario of the dynasty to which he belongs and, in particular, precisely in reference to the season of the First Crusade ... (extracted from the guide sheets contained in the Assembly Kit)