Al-Nasir

Al-Nasir li-Din Allah (1158 – 4 October 1225) (Arabic: الناصر لدين الله‎) was the 34th Abbasid Caliph in Baghdad from 1180 until his death. His laqab literally means The Victor for the Religion of God. He attempted to restore the Caliphate to its ancient dominant role and achieved a surprising amount of success, despite the fact that the caliphate had long been militarily subordinated to other dynasties. He not only held Baghdad (the capital of the Abbasid empire), but extended his dominion into Mesopotamia and Persia. According to the historian, Angelika Hartmann, Al-Nasir was the last effective Abbassid caliph.

Besides his occasional conquests, he consistently held Iraq from Tikrit to the Persian Gulf without interruption. His long reign of forty-seven years is chiefly marked by ambitious and corrupt dealings with the Tartar chiefs, and by his hazardous invocation of the Mongols, which so soon brought his own dynasty to an end. But in his day, there was comparative peace at Baghdad; learning flourished; while refuges for the poor, and other works of public interest, were encouraged.

Muhammad al-Nasir

Muhammad al-Nasir (الناصر لدين الله محمد بن المنصور, an-Nāṣir li-dīn Allah Muḥammad ibn al-Manṣūr, died 1213) was the fourth Almohad caliph from 1199 until his death.

On January 25, 1199, al-Nasir’s father Abu Yusuf Yaqub al-Mansur died; al-Nasir was proclaimed the new caliph that very day. Al-Nasir inherited from his father an empire that was showing signs of instability. Because of his father’s victories against the Christians in the Iberian Peninsula (Al-Andalus), he was temporarily relieved from serious threats on that front and able to concentrate on combating and defeating Banu Ghaniya attempts to seize Ifriqiya (Tunisia). Needing, after this, to deal with problems elsewhere in the empire, he appointed Abu Mohammed ibn Abi Hafs as governor of Ifriqiya, so unwittingly inaugurating the rule of the Hafsid dynasty there, which lasted until 1574.

Dynasty and Iberian presence

He now had to turn his attention back to Iberia, to deal with a crusade proclaimed by Pope Innocent III. This resulted in his defeat by a Christian coalition at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa (1212). He died the following year, and was succeeded by his young son Yusuf al-Mustansir, born of Christian slave Qamar.