suggested al-Muktafi's 13-year-old brother Ja'far, on the grounds that he would be weak and pliable, and easily manipulated by the senior officials. The choice of Ja'far, who became Caliph al-Muqtadir (), was, in the words of historian Hugh Kennedy, "a sinister development" and inaugurated one "of the most disastrous reigns in the whole of Abbasid history [...] a quarter of a century in which all of the work of [al-Muqtadir's] predecessors would be undone". Al-Muktafi seems to have recovered just enough to sanction his brother's nomination, before dying on 13 August 908. Like his father, he was buried in the Tahirid Palace in Baghdad. Al-Muktafi's death marked the "high point of the Abbasid revival" that had been spearheaded by his father and grandfather. Over the next 40 years, the Caliphate would face a succession of power struggles, and lose its outlying provinces to ambitious local dynasts; with the rise of Ibn Ra'iq to the post of in 936, the caliphs became mere puppet rulers, and Baghdad itself would finally be captured by the Iranian Shi'a Buyid dynasty in 946. During these turmoils, al-Muktafi's posthumous son, Abdallah, was installed as caliph by the warlord Tuzun in 944–946, with the regnal name al-Mustakfi. Abu Ahmad Muhammad, who had wed al-Qasim ibn Ubayd Allah's daughter, was himself involved in a conspiracy against al-Muqtadir in 930, and was briefly a candidate for the caliphal throne in 932, after al-Muqtadir's downfall. He died in 933. Footnotes References Sources 870s births 908 deaths Arab Muslims Year of birth uncertain 10th-century Abbasid caliphs Governors of the Abbasid Caliphate Sons of Abbasid caliphs