Note 482 — Chapter VI
Reading edition
This division is convenient, and may be justified on general grounds. In a strictly political sense, the period of decline begins thirty years earlier with the Caliphate of Ma’mún (813-833 a.d.). The historian Abu ’l-Maḥásin († 1469 a.d.) dates the decline of the Caliphate from the accession of Muktafí in 902 a.d. (al-Nujúm al-Záhira, ed. by Juynboll, vol. ii, p. 134).