Post-classical usage According to some authors, the more spiritual definitions of jihad developed sometime after the 150 years of jihad wars and Muslim territorial expansion, and particularly after the Mongol invaders sacked Baghdad and overthrew the Abbasid Caliphate.The early Muslim era of expansion (632–750 CE, or the Rashidun and Umayyad eras) preceded the "classical era" (750–1258 CE) which coincided with the beginning and the end of the Abbasid Caliphate. Historian Hamilton Gibb stated, "in the historic [Muslim] Community the concept of jihad had gradually weakened and at length it had been largely reinterpreted in terms of Sufi ethics." notes that "despite the theoretical importance of the idea of jihad in classical Islamic juristic thought", by the time of the Abbasids, the concept was no longer central to statecraft.
Post-classical usage According to some authors, the more spiritual definitions of jihad developed sometime after the 150 years of jihad wars and Muslim territorial expansion, and particularly after the Mongol i,nvaders sacked Baghdad and overthrew the Abbasid Caliphate.The early Muslim era of expansion (632–750 CE or the Rashidun and Umayyad eras) preceded the "classical era" (750–1258 CE) which coincided with the beginning and the end of the Abbasid Caliphate. Historian Hamilton Gibb stated, "in the historic [Muslim] Community the concept of jihad had gradually weakened and at length it had been largely reinterpreted in terms of Sufi ethics." notes that "despite the theoretical importance of the idea of jihad in classical Islamic juristic thought", by the time of the Abbasids, the concept was no longer central to statecraft.