Al-Muktafi

al-Muktafī bi-llāh
Gold dinar of al-Muktafi, minted at Baghdad in 904/5
17th Caliph of the Abbasid Caliphate
Reign	5 April 902 – 13 August 908
Predecessor	al-Mu'tadid
Successor	al-Muqtadir
Born	877/8
Died	13 August 908 (aged 31) Baghdad, Abbasid Caliphate, now Iraq
Issue	al-Mustakfi
Dynasty	Abbasid
Father	al-Mu'tadid
Religion	Sunni Islam

Abū Muḥammad ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad (Arabic: أبو أحمد علي بن أحمد‎‎; 877/878 – 13 August 908), better known by his regnal name al-Muktafī bi-llāh (Arabic: المكتفي بالله‎‎, "Content with God Alone"), was the Abbasid Caliph in Baghdad from 902 to 908. More liberal and sedentary than his militaristic father al-Mu'tadid, al-Muktafi essentially continued his policies, although most of the actual conduct of government was left to his viziers and officials. His reign saw the defeat of the Qarmatians of the Syrian Desert, and the reincorporation of Egypt and the parts of Syria ruled by the Tulunid dynasty. The war with the Byzantine Empire continued with alternating success, although the Arabs scored a major victory in the Sack of Thessalonica in 904. His death in 908 opened the way for the installation of a weak ruler, al-Muqtadir, by the palace bureaucracy, and began the terminal decline of the Abbasid Caliphate.

Ali ibn Ahmad was born in 877/8, the son of Ahmad ibn Talha, the future caliph al-Mu'tadid (r. 892–902) by a Turkish slave-girl, named Čiček ("flower", Jījak in Arabic).

At the time of his birth, the Abbasid Caliphate was still reeling from the decade-long civil war known as the "Anarchy at Samarra", which had begun with the assassination of Caliph al-Mutawakkil (r. 847–861) by dissatisfied soldiers and ended with the accession of al-Mu'tamid (r. 870–892). Real power, however, lay with al-Mu'tamid's brother, al-Muwaffaq, Ali's paternal grandfather. Al-Muwaffaq enjoyed the loyalty of the military, and by 877 had established himself as the de facto ruler of the state. Caliphal authority in the provinces collapsed during the "Anarchy at Samarra", with the result that by the 870s the central government had lost effective control over most of the Caliphate outside the metropolitan region of Iraq. In the west, Egypt had fallen under the control of Ahmad ibn Tulun, who also disputed control of Syria with al-Muwaffaq, while Khurasan and most of the Islamic East had been taken over by the Saffarids, who replaced the Abbasids' loyal client state, the Tahirids. Most of the Arabian peninsula was likewise lost to local potentates, while in Tabaristan a radical Zaydi Shi'a dynasty took power. In Iraq, the rebellion of the Zanj slaves threatened Baghdad itself, and it took al-Muwaffaq and al-Mu'tamid years of hard campaigning before they were finally subdued in 893.