Abdallah ibn al-Mu'tazz (861 in Samarra – 908 in Baghdad) is persuaded to assume the role of caliph of the Abbasid dynasty following the premature death of al-Muktafi.
He succeeds in ruling for a single day and a single night, before he is forced into hiding, found, then strangled in a palace intrigue that brings al-Muqtadir, then thirteen years old, to the throne.
Ibn al-Mu'tazz is best known, not as a political figure, but as a leading Arabic poet and the author of the Kitab al-Badi, an early study of Arabic forms of poetry.
This is considered one of the earliest works in Arabic literary theory and literary criticism.