The Abbasid caliph whose civil war with his brother al-Ma'mun devastated Baghdad and ended with his own death — a fateful fracture in the dynasty.
Life
Al-Amin (reigned 809–813), son of Harun al-Rashid, inherited the caliphate under his father's plan to share the empire with his brother al-Ma'mun, governor of the east. The compact collapsed into civil war; al-Ma'mun's forces besieged Baghdad, and al-Amin was captured and killed in 813, shifting Abbasid power eastward.