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Without al-Mansur, the Abbasiya caliphate might have been a passing moment; instead he became founder of the most powerful state in the world, ruled by the Muhammad family for the next two centuries. It was when Caliph Bloodshedder died of smallpox at the age of thirty-two that his remarkable elder brother took the title al-Mansur – the Victorious.

Tall, thin, leathery-skinned, yellow-bearded, saffron-dyed, al-Mansur sensed that the greatest threat to him came from his enforcer, Ibn Muslim. Inviting Ibn Muslim to visit him in his tent, even while his soldiers were in the camp, al-Mansur clapped his hands, the sign for his bodyguard to slit the Khorasani’s throat. The body was wrapped in a carpet and left in a corner of the tent. When al-Mansur’s adviser asked where the warlord was, the caliph replied, ‘Rolled up over there.’ The remains were dumped in the Tigris. When Muhammad the Pure Soul, leader of the Ali family, senior line of House Muhammad, rebelled, al-Mansur had him killed and displayed his head on a silver platter.

After moving between Kufa and armed camps, al-Mansur decided to build his own capital and, rising at dawn every day, he supervised every detail, earning himself the nickname Abul Dawanik, Father of Pennies. Choosing a location on the Tigris, surrounded by fertile land, twenty miles north of Ctesiphon–Seleucia, whose bricks he purloined for its walls, he built a round city Medinat al-Mansur, soon known as Baghdad, setting up court in a vast Palace of the Golden Gate on the west bank of the river topped with a 130-foot gold dome. He himself often lived in a small tent. Then he moved into ‘a tiny apartment of one room’ with ‘a felt mat and nothing else except his quilt, pillow and blanket’.

Pious and austere, tempered by his obscure beginnings and violent rise, al-Mansur did not drink or party. He also respected his wife Arwa, descended from Yemenite kings, but he did prize a Christian concubine with the evocative name Restless Butterfly.

The wealth of the caliphate was based on an efficient tax system and on trade not just between east and west but also with east Africa. Arab merchants were starting to trade with the African coast, conveying to Iraq not just ivory and spices but humans: thousands of black slaves, the zanj, were sold to work the plantations of Iraq – the start of the east African slave trade.

Al-Mansur controlled the government through a wazir or vizier, premier of the empire, but it was a dangerous job. After eight years, al-Mansur’s first vizier and his family were executed, but by the mid-760s al-Mansur had found a sophisticated minister. This was Khalid, aristocratic Persian son of Barmak, a Buddhist priest from Balkh (Afghanistan) who had been respected as a doctor, treating Abd al-Malik’s sons Maslama and Hisham, before converting to Islam and joining the bureaucracy. Now as vizier Khalid became a munificent patron – the second family of the empire. Al-Mansur kept a wizened eye on his courtiers, once suddenly demanding a payment from Khalid al-Barmaki, who managed to pay it by borrowing from all the grandees that he had helped.

In 758, al-Mansur sent his crown prince al-Mahdi to govern Khorasan, where the boy was joined by Khalid’s son Yahya. When al-Mahdi’s favourite concubine, Khayzuran, gave birth to a son, Haroun, Yahya’s wife was given the honour of breastfeeding the baby prince while Khayzuran did the same for the Barmaki baby, Fadl. These milk-sharing arrangements gave the Barmaki a special intimacy.

Holding court in his iwan, with a mace by his side, al-Mansur was guarded by 4,000 mace-wielding palace guards, who doubled as executioners, and was attended by 700 courtiers in black, standing in ranks. He created a network of spies around the barid, the imperial mail. ‘I always need four people at my door,’ he said, ‘the judge, the police chief and the tax collector – and the chief of the barid to give me reliable intelligence on the first three.’ Al-Mansur relished the liquidation of his enemies, and was said to keep a secret cellar where he stored the heads of the Ali family, each meticulously labelled.

Only one enemy had escaped him: the boy prince of the Umayya, Abd al-Rahman.

THE FALCON OF AL -ANDALUS AND THE CROWNED DOVES OF AIX: ABD AL-RAHMAN AND CHARLEMAGNE