A Tale of Two Murders

Цитата:
The Caliph al-Mustarshid was murdered in the year 529/1135, reportedly by a group of Isma'ili assassins, who, according to many of our sources, were hired by one or both of the Saljuq Sultans Sanjar and Mas'ud, his vassal. This murder was, most unusually, followed by the suspiciously similar murder of al-Mustarshid's son al-Rashid shortly thereafter. It should be noted that these successive assassinations mark the only occasion in the four hundred years between the 'Abbasid nadir in the ninth century and the end of the caliphate in the thirteenth century that two successive caliphs met with an unnatural demise. This double murder, which has never been closely analyzed byhistorians, is significant not just as a historical curiosity, but for the light it sheds on the political situation of the eastern Islamic empire generally at this time, and Saljuq-caliphal relations in particular.

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