The middle of the eleventh century marked the end of the era in which political life of the Maghrib was dominated by the question of its relations with the Arab caliphate. From this time onwards no part of this region was ruled by leaders who were invested with authority by the caliphs or by ones who were brought to power by religio-political movements of opposition to caliphial authority. The Almoravids nominally recognized the authority of the ʿAbbasid caliphs, but this was an act of religious allegiance which had no real political significance. The founder of the Almohad state ʿAbdul-Muʾmin was the first non-Arab to assume the title of caliph. By the middle of the eleventh century the authority of the ʿAbbasid caliphs as well as that of their principal rivals, the Fatimids, had declined. When the Zirids renounced allegiance to the Fatimids, all the latter could do to punish them was to unleash the Arabian nomads against them. The ʿAbbasid caliphs themselves, whom the Ziris then recognized as suzerains, were not in a position to exercise any power in the Maghrib. Their state, already in decline, came to an end when the Monghuls conquered their capital Baghdad in 1258. The ʿAbbasid caliphs lived henceforth in Cairo and through their presence there legitimized the authority of the Mamluk sultans who ruled in Egypt from the middle of the thirteenth century, but did not themselves exercise any real power.