An-Nasir li-Din Allah was the 34th Abbasid

Abbasid

The Abbasid Caliphate or, more simply, the Abbasids , was the third of the Islamic caliphates. It was ruled by the Abbasid dynasty of caliphs, who built their capital in Baghdad after overthrowing the Umayyad caliphate from all but the al-Andalus region....

 Caliph

Caliph

The Caliph is the head of state in a Caliphate, and the title for the ruler of the Islamic Ummah, an Islamic community ruled by the Shari'ah. It is a transcribed version of the Arabic word   which means "successor" or "representative"...

 in Baghdad

Baghdad

Baghdad is the capital of Iraq, as well as the coterminous Baghdad Governorate. The population of Baghdad in 2011 is approximately 7,216,040...

 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

Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...

 and Persia.

Besides his occasional conquests, he consistently held Iraq from Tikrit

Tikrit

Tikrit is a town in Iraq, located 140 km northwest of Baghdad on the Tigris river . The town, with an estimated population in 2002 of about 260,000 is the administrative center of the Salah ad Din Governorate.-Ancient times:...

 to the Gulf

Persian Gulf

The Persian Gulf, in Southwest Asia, is an extension of the Indian Ocean located between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula.The Persian Gulf was the focus of the 1980–1988 Iran-Iraq War, in which each side attacked the other's oil tankers...

 without interruption. His long reign of forty-seven years is chiefly marked by ambitious and corrupt dealings with the Tartar

Tatars

Tatars are a Turkic speaking ethnic group , numbering roughly 7 million.The majority of Tatars live in the Russian Federation, with a population of around 5.5 million, about 2 million of which in the republic of Tatarstan.Significant minority populations are found in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan,...

 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.

Biography

Al-Nasir's reign is unusual for the rise of the futuwwa

Futuwwa

Futuwwa is a Sufi term that has some similarities to chivalry and virtue. It was also a name of ethical urban organizations or "guilds" in mediaeval Muslim realms that emphasised honesty, peacefulness, gentleness, generosity, avoidance of complaint and hospitality in life. According to Ibn...

 groups in his reign, connected to Baghdad's long-standing ayyarun

Ayyarun

Áyyār, refers to a person associated with a class of warriors in Iraq and Iran from the 9th to the 12th centuries. The word literally means vagabond...

. These urban social groups had long existed in Baghdad and elsewhere, and they were often involved in urban conflicts, especially sectarian riots. Al-Nasir made them into an instrument of his government, reorganizing them along Sufi lines and ideology.

In the early years of his caliphate, his goal was to crush the Seljuq

Great Seljuq Empire

The Great Seljuq Empire was a medieval Persianate, Turko-Persian Sunni Muslim empire, originating from the Qynyq branch of Oghuz Turks. The Seljuq Empire controlled a vast area stretching from the Hindu Kush to eastern Anatolia and from Central Asia to the Persian Gulf...

 power and replace it with his own. He incited rebellion against the Seljuq Sultan of Persia, Toghrul III. The Khwarizm Shah, Ala ad-Din Tekish, at his instigation, attacked the Seljuq forces, and defeated them in 1194; Toghrul was killed and his head exposed in the caliph's palace. Tekish, recognized now as supreme ruler of the East, bestowed on the Caliph certain provinces of Persia that had been held by the Seljuqs.

Al-Nasir sent his vizier

Vizier

A vizier or in Arabic script ; ; sometimes spelled vazir, vizir, vasir, wazir, vesir, or vezir) is a high-ranking political advisor or minister in a Muslim government....

 to Tekish with some gifts, but the vizier irritated Tekish, who attacked the Caliph's troops and routed them. Thereafter hostile relations prevailed for many years. The Caliph assassinated a governor of Tekish by using an Ismaili

Ismaili

' is a branch of Shia Islam. It is the second largest branch of Shia Islam, after the Twelvers...

 emissary. Tekish responded by having the body of al-Nasir's vizier, who died on a campaign against him, exhumed, and the head stuck up at Khwarizm. Irritated at this and other hostile acts, the Caliph retaliated by treating with indignity the pilgrims who came from the East under Khwarizm's flag. But beyond such poor revenge, he was powerless for any open enmity.

Tekish's son, Muhammad II

Muhammad II of Khwarezm

Ala ad-Din Muhammad II was the ruler of the Khwarezmid Empire from 1200 to 1220. His ancestor was a Turkic slave who eventually became a viceroy of a small province named Khwarizm. After his father died, Muhammad inherited his father's lands, and it was from there he began expanding outwards...

 (1200-1220), annoyed at the actions of the Caliph, set up a Shi'a caliph to paralyse al-Nasir's spiritual power. Following up this act, he turned his army on Baghdad. In response, some medieval historians write that al-Nasir appealed to Genghis Khan

Genghis Khan

Genghis Khan , born Temujin and occasionally known by his temple name Taizu , was the founder and Great Khan of the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history after his death....

, the rising Mongol chief, to check Muhammad's progress. This point is controversial, but it is likely that the caliph had some contacts to the non-Muslims Mongols.

The caliph soon found Genghis Khan to be quite threatening. The steppes of Central Asia were set in motion by Genghiz Khan, and his hordes put to flight the Khwarizm Shah, who died an exile in an island of the Caspian

Caspian Sea

The Caspian Sea is the largest enclosed body of water on Earth by area, variously classed as the world's largest lake or a full-fledged sea. The sea has a surface area of and a volume of...

. Meanwhile Saladin

Saladin

Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb , better known in the Western world as Saladin, was an Arabized Kurdish Muslim, who became the first Sultan of Egypt and Syria, and founded the Ayyubid dynasty. He led Muslim and Arab opposition to the Franks and other European Crusaders in the Levant...

, when hard pressed by the Crusaders, appealed for help to al-Nasir, who contented himself with sending a store of naphtha

Naphtha

Naphtha normally refers to a number of different flammable liquid mixtures of hydrocarbons, i.e., a component of natural gas condensate or a distillation product from petroleum, coal tar or peat boiling in a certain range and containing certain hydrocarbons. It is a broad term covering among the...

, with men to use it against the invaders in the field.