When the Buyids, who were Shi‘ites, occupied Baghdad in 334 H (946 AD), the Sunni Abbasid caliph al-Muti‘ and his successor al-Ta’i‘ found themselves to be no more than puppets, entirely under Buyid control.

The Buyids were supplanted by the Great Saljuqs, who were Sunni, and were more favourably disposed to the Abbasid Caliphate. During the reign of Alp Arslan the caliph al-Qa’im recovered control of the Baghdad mint. From then on the Abbasids enjoyed administrative power in Baghdad but were required to acknowledge the overlordship of whichever Great Saljuq was in power.

When Saljuq power disappeared, the caliph al-Mustanjid (555-566/1160-1170) recovered political control of Baghdad and its surrounding territory, and no longer acknowledged any secular overlord.

While al-Mustanjid and his successor al-Mustadi had very little temporal authority, al-Mustadi’s ambitious son and successor, al-Nasir li-Din Allah, spent thirty-two years of his long reign trying to restore the power of the Abbasid Caliphate.

With the Ayyubids of Egypt and Syria at war with the Crusaders, and the Khwarazmshahs in the east fighting the various other Turkish dynasties, as well as trying to prevent the advance of the Mongols, the time was propitious.

Al-Nasir secured the allegiance of the people of Baghdad and became the effective ruler of what is now the core of modern Iraq.

While the gold coins of the Abbasid fourth period are still referred to as dinars, their weight and diameter are quite different from those of former Islamic gold coins. In fact they were no more than gold ingots, not struck to any definite monetary standard, but varying as much as from three to twenty grams in weight.

Their handsome traditional design is similar to the gold coinage of the neighbouring Zangid Atabegs of Mosul, but those were very frequently much less carefully struck.