The adoption of the mamluk* institutions by the abbasids was followed almost immediately by [the] . . disintegration of the state. . the disintegration of the abbasid state was an intensely painful process in which it seemed at times as if the very venture of islam was coming to an end, like that of alexander the great before it. . indeed, that islam was soon to disappear was the very premise upon which the [shi‘ite] revolutionaries held out their promise of a moral and material recovery: nothing less . . could now save the marriage between religion and power to which the islamic [state] owed its existence.