Decline paradigms have long dominated the modern historiography of the pre-modern Middle East. In particular, the alleged decadence of the Abbasid caliphate after its loss of military power in the middle of the 10th-century has been seen as an index of the “decline” of Islamic civilization generally. This judgment, however, has usually been taken without much actual reference to the later history of the Abbasids. A thorough examination of the primary sources of medieval Islamic history – Arabic chronicles – reveals a much more nuanced picture of the later caliphate. Each chronicler was in some way connected to a ruling court, and their perspectives vary accordingly. An overemphasis on chroniclers connected to the non-caliphal courts, such as the Buyids (e.g., Miskawayh) and the Salj?qs (e.g., Ibn al-Ath?r), has contributed to the perception of the caliphate as an institution held hostage by outside powers, because those writers were focused mainly on the dynasties that patronized them. A closer reading of all such chronicles reveals that the caliphs’ authority allowed them to bestow titles upon the rulers whom they chose, and amirs and sultans were only legitimate when the caliphs had their names recited in the Friday khut?ba. The caliphs also exercised practical power, especially with the weakening of the Buyid amirate after 1000 C.E. With the caliph al-Q?dir (d. 1030), the Abbasids controlled judgeships, intervened in urban politics and led the struggle for religious orthodoxy. Their increasing power is especially apparent in the works of those writers connected to the caliphate, such as Ibn al-Jawz? (d. 1201) and Hil?l al-??bi’ (d. 1056). The expansion of the caliphs’ wealth and power was not truly interrupted by the coming of the Salj?qs to Baghdad in 1055, and when the Salj?q sultanate fragmented a century later, the caliphs re-emerged as military leaders. In this period, the caliphs co-existed and shared power with various sultans and amirs. However, even in the eyes of the most rigorously orthodox, including the H?anbal? scholar Ibn al-Jawz?, mere co-existence with such “secular” powers did not make a travesty of Islamic government, nor did it mean the impotence of the caliphate. In the later Abbasid period, legitimate Islamic government did not imply caliphal autocracy, and the co-existence of multiple Muslim rulers was not perceived as a cause of “decline.” The Islamic caliphate is still invoked as a concept today, but usually without an understanding of its flexibility in the Abbasid era.