Early Islamic Egypt was a rich country. The taxes that could be gathered from the peasants of the Nile valley meant that, after the Sawād of Iraq, it was the largest contributor to the budget of the ‘Abbasid caliphs. The wealth of the area was not, however, translated into political importance and power. Under the Umayyads, the province was usually the apanage of a branch of the Umayyad family, while under the early ‘Abbasids the governors were often men of local importance only. Although richer, it was politically much less important than Syria or Khurāsān. The reason for this lay largely in the makeup of the population. As far as we can tell, there had been no significant Arab settlement in Egypt before the coming of Islam; and even after the Arab conquest, immigration was very limited. The small number of Arabs who did come lived almost entirely in the two main towns, Fusṭāṭ and Alexandria, apart from some bedouin in the Ḥawf region along the eastern borders of the delta. Conversion seems to have been slow, and the tightly knit Coptic community retained its loyalty to the church under Islamic rule as it had under the equally unsympathetic Byzantine government. Much of the local administration remained in the hands of local people, and the Arab impact on everyday life was probably very slight. This meant that there was no large body of Muslims who would provide a power base for an ambitious governor or would-be dynast. It was not until military forces from outside the country were established there in the third/ninth century that Egypt first became a political power within the Islamic world.
Early Islamic Egypt had been largely controlled by a group of Arab families in Fusṭāt. mostly of south Arabian origin and descended in the main from men who had arrived at or soon after the initial conquest. They provided the qāḍī and the Ṣāḥib al-shurṭa, the chief of police, who controlled the local militia and functioned as a chief adviser to the governor. The civil wars after Hārūn’s death destroyed the power of this élite, and when ‘Abd Allāh b. Ṭāhir brought the area back under the control of the Baghdad government during the reign of al-Ma’mūn, the administration was entrusted to outsiders, Turkish and Armenian soldiers. It was only a matter of time before one of these decided to use the resources of the area to improve his own position rather than to benefit the caliph.
The anarchy at Sāmarrā which followed the death of al-Mutawakkil in 247/861 meant that provincial governors throughout the Muslim world were forced to rely on their own resources, and many moved towards independence. In order to try to solve the problem of paying the Turkish troops, caliphs of the period took to granting the Turkish leaders revenues from provinces, which they could then distribute to their followers. And so in 254/868, al-Mu‘tazz granted Egypt to Bāyikbāk. He, in turn, appointed his stepson Aḥmad b. Ṭūlūn to govern the province in his name and so ensure that the revenues were collected and delivered. Aḥmad was himself of Turkish origin, his father having been sent from Bukhārā to serve in al-Ma’mūn’s entourage during the civil war which followed Hārūn’s death; Aḥmad was born in 220/835. He was given a military training in Sāmarrā and, more surprisingly, a theological education in Tarsus, and thus emerged as an Arabic-speaking Muslim rather than a first-generation Turkish immigrant from the central Asian steppes, a factor which was probably crucial in his success.
Such was the importance of the tax revenues of Egypt to the ‘Abbasid government that it was the custom that the financial administrator of the province should be independent of the governor and responsible directly to Baghdad or Sāmarrā. When Aḥmad arrived in the province, the financial administrator was the shrewd and often brutal Ibn al-Mudabbir, who had no intention of allowing the young governor to take over his role. For four years, the two were rivals for power, but in the end developments in Palestine and Syria swung the balance in Ibn Ṭūlūn’s favour. These provinces were disturbed by a series of local rebellions which the caliphs were unable to crush. They therefore turned to Ibn Ṭūlūn, who alone seemed capable of restoring order in the area. He used the opportunity to seize control of the financial administration from Ibn al-Mudabbir and to use the revenues of the province to recruit a large new army, some of them slaves, mostly Negroes and Greeks, and some of them professionals, mostly Greeks. This meant that for the first time, the revenues of Egypt were spent on raising and paying an army in the province under the control of the governor. Egypt began to acquire a political importance commensurate with its financial one, and Ibn Ṭūlūn became powerful in a way no previous governor of the province had been.
His financial and political independence was increased by the system of joint rule established in the caliphate between the Caliph al-Mu‘tamid and his brother, and effective military commander, al-Muwaffaq in the years after 256/870, for the caliph relied on Ibn Ṭūlūn as a counterweight to the vast power exercised by his brother and depended on him for contributions to his own treasury. Al-Muwaffaq clearly resented his situation but his energies were occupied in the long drawn-out campaigns against the Zanj rebels, and so he was unable to take any action against Ibn Ṭūlūn.
It would be a mistake, however, to regard Ibn Ṭūlūn as an independent breakaway ruler. His constitutional position remained that of deputy governor of Egypt. His methods of government were based on the model of the ‘Abbasid court in which he grew up, and his new suburb to the north of the old city of Fusṭāṭ, al-Qaṭā’i‘ was very much Sāmarrā on the Nile, even down to the style of the Great Mosque which was closely based on Sāmarrā patterns.
While Egypt seems to have enjoyed a period of peace and prosperity under Ibn Ṭūlūn’s rule, he was concerned, like all rulers of Egypt, with the stability of Syria and Palestine, and much of his diplomatic and military activities was concerned with ensuring his influence there. In 263/877, al-Muwaffaq attempted to regain control of Egypt, needing the resources of the province for his campaigns against the Zanj, and sent one of his leading Turkish generals, Mūsā b. Bughā, to displace Ibn Ṭūlūn. The attempt failed because Mūsā’s army disintegrated and Ibn Ṭūlūn now felt that he had to take the initiative and occupy Syria, participation in the jihād against the Byzantines providing the perfect justification. His relations with al-Muwaffaq remained cool and in 269/882 he tried to persuade the Caliph al-Mu‘tamid to come to Fusṭāt. and establish himself in Egypt away from the influence of his brother, but the scheme failed and led to a breakdown in relations. Al-Muwaffaq realized, however, that he had to come to terms with his Egyptian rival, and negotiations were in progress when Ibn Ṭūlūn died the next year (270/884). Ibn Ṭūlūn never repudiated the authority of the caliphate and seems to have continued to make some contribution to the ‘Abbasid treasury. The circumstances of the period, the anarchy in Sāmarrā followed by the period of dual control under al-Mu‘tamid and his brother al-Muwaffaq, coupled with the long and very costly war against the Zanj, meant that he was a provincial governor of great importance and independence; it did not mean that he was attempting to be an independent ruler in Egypt. In his policies, as in his upbringing, he remained very much a product of the ‘Abbasid establishment.
Before his death, Ibn Ṭūlūn had secured the acknowledgement of his son Khumārawayh as heir, replacing another son, al-‘Abbās, who had rebelled against his father. Khumārawayh now succeeded without opposition in Egypt, but al-Muwaffaq was determined to exploit his youth and inexperience to regain authority, and there followed three years of undistinguished campaigning before an agreement was reached in 273/886. This treaty stipulated that Khumārawayh would acknowledge the caliph and pay a substantial tribute (perhaps 300,000 dīnārs a year) in exchange for the governorate of Egypt, Syria and part of the western Jazīra for thirty years, the provisions being hereditary. In 279/892, the accession to the caliphate of al-Mu‘taḍid, son of Ibn Ṭūlūn’s old enemy, al-Muwaffaq, led to the confirmation of the treaty with minor changes, including the Tulunids’ loss of their Jaziran possessions.
Khumārawayh inherited the army his father had built up, and it was upon this that his power was based. He himself recruited a private guard from the Ḥawfī Arabs of Egypt to supplement the existing forces. His reign is usually considered one of luxury and decay, but it seems unlikely that the growing financial problems were purely a product of the ruler’s extravagance. The Tulunid court was based on the Sāmarrā model and it seemed that the system had some of the same weaknesses as were found in the ‘Abbasid system, notably the inability of the state to fund a large, mostly inactive army on a permanent basis. The solution to these financial problems was entrusted to a bureaucrat of Iraqi origins, ‘Alī b. Aḥmad al-Mādharā’ī, whose efforts were only partially successful, since when Khumārawayh was murdered in 282/896 by his own slaves, the treasury was empty. Despite this, however, the twelve years of his rule were largely peaceful and saw a measure of calm not only in Egypt but, more unusually, in Syria.
After his death, the decline of the power of the family followed with startling rapidity. He was succeeded by his youthful son Jaysh, who was soon deposed, and then by another son, Hārūn – but neither of these two boys was able to keep the state intact. In 292/905, Muḥammad b. Sulaymān and the ‘Abbasid army entered Fusṭāt. and brought an end to the Tulunid dynasty. The end of family rule may have been ignominious, but the memory of the Tulunids lingered on and showed that Egypt, under wise and energetic leadership and administration, could be the centre of a major regional power. Many later rulers were to develop the themes first worked out under their rule: careful financial administration, the recruitment of soldiers from outside the province and the concern to control Palestine and Syria.
The restoration of direct ‘Abbasid rule did not result in peace and prosperity. Once again, the resources of Egypt were exploited for the benefit of outsiders, or at least that was the theory. An element of continuity was provided by the fact that the Mādharā’ī family retained control over the financial administration. The governorship during this period was in the hands of Turkish generals, of whom Takīn b. ‘Abd Allāh was the only one to enjoy power for any significant length of time. It seems likely that the Baghdad government was reluctant to allow these any more power than was necessary for fear that they would try to emulate the career of Ibn Ṭūlūn. That this was indeed so is suggested by the fact that Takīn’s son, Muḥammad, attempted to secure his father’s position after his death in 321/933. Apart from the instability of governors, the most serious threat facing Egypt at this period came from the Fatimids, established in Tunisia since 297/909, who made two major attempts to conquer Egypt in 301–302/913–915 and 307–309/919–921. In order to counter these, Mu’nis, the military strongman of al-Muqtadir’s reign, was obliged to come west to undertake the campaign in person, suggesting again that the local governors were not allowed sufficient resources to do it.
‘Abbasid control over the area was at best precarious, and it effectively came to an end during the disturbances of the later years of al-Muqtadir’s reign. The beneficiary of this uncertainty was another military man of eastern Iranian extraction, Muḥammad b. Ṭughj. His grandfather had come from the Farghānā area of Khurāsān to the court at Sāmarrā where he was a contemporary of Ibn Ṭūlūn’s father. His son Ṭughj served the Tulunids as a governor in Aleppo and Damascus and it seems that his son, Muḥammad, who had been born in Baghdad in 268/882, was able to make use later of contacts established at this stage. Ṭughj himself joined Muḥammad b. Sulaymān and the ‘Abbasid forces against the last of the Tulunids but was arrested after the fall of Ibn Sulaymān and died in prison in 294/906. His son, Muḥammad, escaped and soon found himself a post under Takīn, the governor of Egypt, who appointed him to the ‘Ammān area. In 306/918, Mu’nis came to Egypt to defend it against the second Fatimid attack, and Ibn Ṭughj used the opportunity to gain the friendship of this powerful figure whose patronage was to be of key importance. In 316/928, he broke with Takīn, and it was probably Mu’nis’ influence which led to his appointment to Damascus three years later. After the death of Takīn in 321/933, he was briefly appointed the governor of Egypt itself, but the move came to nothing when Mu’nis fell from power. Only the fact that Takīn’s successor Aḥmad b. Kayghalagh was totally unable to keep order in the province allowed Ibn Ṭughj a second chance. In 323/935, he was again appointed the governor, probably with the intervention at court of al-Faḍl b. Ja‘far b. al-Furāt, who, like him, had been a supporter of Mu’nis.
Once appointed, he lost no time in restoring his control over Egypt. Ibn Kayghalagh, his predecessor, fled to the Fatimids, but he was able to win over both Takīn’s son, Muḥammad, and the Mādharā’ī financial administrators to his cause. In some ways, the Fatimid threat actually helped Ibn Ṭughj. He loyally supported ‘Abbasid claims, and the caliphs were prepared to give their approval to his rule in return. In 324/936, he defeated a third Fatimid attack and was rewarded with the title of ikhshīd. This had been the title held by the king of the Farghānā area from which his grandfather had come. There is no evidence that he was of royal descent, but the choice of the honorific shows how attached he remained to the memory of his family’s homeland. Like Ibn Ṭūlūn before him, the ikhshīd took care to build up a strong military force in Egypt, recruiting many blacks and Turks. In many ways, however, he was less ambitious than Ibn Ṭūlūn. In Syria, he was prepared to reach an accommodation with Sayf al-Dawla the Hamdanid in 334/945, which left the Hamdanids in control of Aleppo, Antioch and Homs, all areas which the Tulunids had ruled, while Ibn Ṭughj controlled Damascus and Palestine (see above, pp. 273–274). His only attempt to influence events in the rest of the Muslim world seems to have been in 333/944 when he met the Caliph al-Muttaqī at Raqqa. He tried to persuade the caliph, as Ibn Ṭūlūn had tried to persuade al-Mu‘tamid, to come with him to Egypt. The luckless ‘Abbasid allowed himself to be persuaded by the amīr al-umarā’, Tūzūn, to remain in Iraq, where he was blinded and deposed shortly afterwards.
Ibn Ṭughj died in 334/946. Although he lacked the flamboyance of the Tulunids and does not seem to have been a patron of the arts in any way, he followed them in making Egypt and its army the basis of his power and in concerning himself with the administration and agriculture of the province. In 333/944, he had made an agreement with the caliph whereby he was to have the governorate of Egypt for thirty years, and this was to be hereditable by his children. It is interesting to note that the terms were the same as Khumārawayh had made with the caliph in 273/886. When the ikhshīd did die shortly afterwards, his son, Ūnūjūr, succeeded him without any real opposition. The smooth transfer of power was arranged by the black eunuch Kāfūr. He had been recruited into Ibn Ṭughj’s service along with many of his compatriots, and he had come to the ruler’s attention because of his obvious talents. He was used on diplomatic and military missions and became a tutor to the young Ūnūjūr. On his father’s death, ūnūjūr succeeded to the throne, but the administration remained firmly in the hands of Kāfūr, who was to be the virtual ruler of Egypt for the next twenty-two years. The Ikhshidid princes (ūnūjūr, 334–349/946–961 and ‘Alī, 349–355/961–966) were little more than puppets in the hands of this gifted administrator, who preserved the substance of the state founded by the ikhshīd against outside attack from Hamdanids and Fatimids as well as internal disturbances and economic problems. With the death of ‘Alī in 355/966, Kāfūr took over power in his own right and remained the ruler of Egypt until his death two years later, an event which left the way open for the long-threatened Fatimid takeover.
The Tulunids and the Ikhshidids shared important characteristics. Both states were marked by an adherence to ‘Abbasid legality and the working out of treaty arrangements with the caliphs, and they were characterized by the development of powerful slave and mercenary armies recruited almost entirely from outside Egypt. They were also concerned with the economy of the country, and rulers of both dynasties tried to ensure that the prosperity on which their power was ultimately based remained intact. Indeed, it is the financial administrators who provide a major element of continuity through this period, the Mādharā’īs linking the Tulunids with the Ikhshidids, while the Fatimids employed Kāfūr’s financial official, Ya‘qūb b. Killis. The Fatimids, of course, rejected any allegiance to the ‘Abbasid caliphs, but in other ways they built on the foundations laid by their predecessors, and the Fatimid state can only be understood in relation to them.
The Fatimid caliphate emerged from the Ismā‘īlī movement of the third/ninth century. Towards the end of the century, the movement was divided by the claims of ‘Ubayd Allāh, then living in Salamiyya in Syria, that he was a descendant of Ismā‘īl and the true living imām. Many Ismā‘īlīs, notably those who were to form the Qarmaṭī movement, rejected these claims but others accepted them. Among the latter was the dā‘ī (missionary) known as Abū ‘Abd Allāh al-Shī‘ī, who spread the Ismā‘īlī message first in Yemen and then from 280/893 in the province of Ifrīqiya in north Africa (roughly modern Tunisia). Here, he avoided the plains around the city of Qayrawān, the stronghold of the Aghlabid dynasty, which had controlled the area since the time of Hārūn al-Rashīd, and travelled instead among the Kutāma Berbers of the Kabyle Mountains to the west. The Berber population of north Africa had always resented the rule of the Arabized élite of Qayrawān and expressed their disaffection by adopting heterodox approaches to Islam. In the Umayyad and early ‘Abbasid periods, Kharijism had attracted a wide following among these people, and it is not surprising that the wandering teacher and holy man Abū ‘Abd Allāh should be welcomed by them. Despite inevitable tensions, the Kutāma Berbers were to form the main support of the Fatimid dynasty for over a century to come. When the Qarāmiṭa threatened ‘Ubayd Allāh the Fatimid and forced him to leave Salamiyya, he made his way to join Abū ‘Abd Allāh among the Berbers. From their base in the mountains, they made a series of attacks on the Aghlabids which culminated in victory in 297/909 when they expelled the last Aghlabids and the Fatimid dynasty was established in Qayrawān.
The moment when a revolutionary movement achieves power is always of crucial importance. Fatimid propaganda seems to have promised the Berbers a divinely inspired imām, possibly capable of doing miracles, certainly providing charismatic leadership. ‘Ubayd Allāh, however, seems to have found these claims something of an embarrassment when power was eventually his. While the Berbers were dismayed to find their leader a mere mortal after all, ‘Ubayd Allāh was determined to establish his authority and he succeeded in executing Abū ‘Abd Allāh, his dā‘ī, and suppressing dissident movements among both the Kutāma and the settled peoples.
Having surmounted the original crisis, ‘Ubayd Allāh set about creating a state apparatus which was surprisingly conventional. Later, Ismā‘īlī groups, like the Assassins of northern Iran, tried to break away from the pattern of military government which had become usual in the Islamic east, but the Fatimids made no such attempt. ‘Ubayd Allāh was proclaimed the caliph with the messianic title of al-Mahdī and the claim to be the true leader of the Family of the Prophet. As such, he claimed authority not just over Ifrīqiya as the Aghlabids had done, but also over the entire Islamic world. Ifrīqiya was to play the role that Khurāsān had done in the ‘Abbasid revolution, while the Kutāma were to fulfil the role of the Khurāsāniyya. In order to do this, the Kutāma were formed into a regular, paid militia, while slaves were recruited from sub-Saharan Africans, Greeks and Ṣaqāliba, i.e. Slav and other European ghilmān employed by Spanish Muslim rulers. A navy was also formed, a development which was to be very important in the history of the caliphate. The first objective was to be the conquest of Egypt, and in 301–302/913–915, a Kutāma chief, Ḥabāsa, led the first expedition there. Although the Berber forces managed to maintain themselves in the country for some time, the expedition ended in failure when the local Turkish commander, Takīn, was reinforced by the general Mu’nis from Iraq. A second attempt five years later, led this time by the caliph’s son, Abū’l-Qāsim, ended in failure again, although this time the Fatimid army stayed two years in Egypt: the turning point was once again the arrival of Mu’nis from the east and the destruction of the Fatimid fleet by the fleet of Tarsus.
After these two failures, the caliphate developed more or less peacefully in north Africa. In 308/920, a new capital was built at Mahdiyya on the coast, a natural port and stronghold, away from the potentially hostile people of Qayrawān. The reconciliation of Ismā‘īlī ideals with the government of largely Sunnī people was gradually worked out. At one level, there was very little attempt at conversion and certainly no mass coercion. Ismā‘īlī beliefs remained the faith of the Kutāma and of other members of the governing élite. Among these was the qāḍī al-Nu‘mān b. Muḥammad, who worked out the theoretical nature of the Fatimid claims, attempting to clarify the genealogy and showing how the imāms were the natural, foreordained leaders of the entire Muslim community. This did not mean that all subjects had to become active Ismā‘īlīs; for those not involved in government, passive acceptance was enough.
After the two initial attempts to take Egypt, Fatimid expansion in the east came to a temporary halt. There were a number of reasons for this, notably the establishment of a fairly strong government in Egypt under Muḥammad b. Ṭughj and problems nearer home. From 331/943 to 335/947, Ifrīqiya itself was disturbed by the rebellion of a different Berber group, the Hawwāra of the Aurès Mountains under a charismatic Kharijite leader called Abū Yazīd, known as “the man on the donkey”. This rebellion nearly destroyed the Fatimids entirely, and after its defeat they were forced to pay more attention to affairs in the west. Here, they began a long drawn-out struggle for influence over the Maghrib (the areas of modern Morocco and Algeria) with the rival Umayyad caliphs of Cordova. It was not until 347–349/958–960, when Jawhar, now the leading Fatimid general, conquered Sijilmāsa and Fez, that the position was secured.
The Fatimids had not, however, lost interest in the east entirely. In particular, they seem to have renewed contact with their fellow Ismā‘īlīs, the Qarāmiṭa, now at a safe distance. In 339/951, they persuaded the Qarāmiṭa to return the Black Stone of the Ka‘ba, a sign of both their influence and their renewed determination to play a part in the affairs of the eastern caliphate. In 341/953, al-Mu‘izz succeeded to the Fatimid throne and seems to have been determined to pursue the eastern ambitions of the dynasty. The Fatimids had always had contacts in Egypt. At the time of the accession of Muḥammad b. Ṭughj, there had been a party of Maghāriba (westerners, i.e. north Africans) in the country who supported the claims of Aḥmad b. Kayghalagh against Ibn Ṭughj and his Mashāriqa (easterners or Turks), and after Ibn Ṭughj’s triumph, his defeated rival took refuge with the Fatimids. In the later days of Kāfūr’s reign, problems began to reassert themselves in Egypt and it became possible once again for the Fatimids to fish in troubled waters. A series of inadequate Nile floods resulted in discontent, famine and reduced revenue for the government. The governing class was increasingly divided between the civil administration, the kuttāb, led by Ja‘far b. al-Faḍl b. al-Furāt,1 and the army built up by the Ikhshidids. The Fatimids developed contacts with many groups in Egyptian society, among them were members of leading ‘Alid families and the financial administrator, Ya‘qūb b. Killis, who fled to the Fatimid court because of his hostility to Ibn al-Furāt. Fatimid propaganda in Fusṭāt. was organized by a rich merchant, Aḥmad b. Naṣr, whose activities became increasingly open in the last years of Kāfūr’s rule. He took care to assure all elements in Egypt that the Fatimid Caliph al-Mu‘izz really had their interests at heart. On the fringes of the Nile valley, Fatimid agents stirred up trouble among the bedouin of the Egyptian deserts, notably the Banū Qurra, now the leading group among the Arabs of the Ḥawf on the east of the delta, and the Banū Hilāl and Berber nomads of the western oases. In Syria, their allies, the Qarāmiṭa, attacked Ikhshidid possessions.
Despite these favourable signs, the expedition was planned with great care to ensure that there would be no repetition of previous problems. In 357/968, Kāfūr died and power passed to the hands of the infant Ikhshidid, Aḥmad b. ‘Alī. Ibn al-Furāt, in charge of the bureaucracy, was confronted by the opposition of al-Ḥasan b. ‘Ubayd Allāh, who came from a branch of the Ikhshidid family established in Damascus, and Shamūl, leader of the army. The leader of the Fatimid expedition was Jawhar, an ex-slave probably of Greek origin who had risen by his abilities to a leading position in the Fatimid army and enjoyed the confidence of the caliph. In Rabī‘ I 358/February 969, he left Ifrīqiya with an army, said to have been 100,000 strong, mostly Berber horsemen. As he approached Egypt, he began negotiations with different groups. These were complex and resulted in a series of agreements, the basic outlines of which were that the kuttāb and the leading members of the civilian élite, including the qāḍī of Fusṭāṭ, were guaranteed their property and position. Agreement with the Ikhshidid military was more difficult and there were some violent confrontations, but the opposition was divided and leaderless, and in Sha‘bān 358/July 969, Jawhar entered the capital, and the prayers in the old mosque of ‘Amr, still the centre of religious devotion, were said in the name of the Fatimid caliph.
Jawhar remained an effective ruler of Egypt for the next four years until the arrival of his master al-Mu‘izz, and he was responsible for the main features of the post-conquest settlement. Jawhar inherited the Ikhshidid state apparatus. Ibn al-Furāt served the new administration as he had served Kāfūr and the Ikhshidids. More remarkable was the fact that the qāḍī of Fusṭāṭ, Abū Ṭāhir, an old man in his eighties, and the khaṭīb (preacher) of the mosque of ‘Amr, a member of the ‘Abbasid family, were both kept in office. There was continued opposition from some members of the Ikhshidid army, but most people seem to have welcomed the arrival of stable government, and Jawhar made no attempt to force Ismā‘īlī practices on an unwilling populace.
Jawhar’s most important act was the foundation of a new capital, al-Qāhira (Cairo), i.e. the Victorious, about 3 miles to the north of the old city of Fusṭāt. The foundation of a new settlement was not new in the history of Islamic Egypt; Fusṭāt. itself had been founded by the conquering Muslims outside the walls of the Roman fortress at Babylon, and Ibn Ṭūlūn had founded a new centre, complete with mosque, at al-Qaṭā’i‘, to house his newly recruited army. The Fatimid city was, however, the most ambitious and the most carefully planned of all these enterprises. The primary purpose of the new city was to house the government and the Berber army, many of whom remained to settle in Egypt. Here, they could be safe from popular disturbances, and the newly arrived troops would not clash with local inhabitants. From a religious point of view, it was important to have a mosque where the Ismā‘īlī rite could be celebrated without opposition, and Jawhar immediately began the building of the Azhar mosque, soon to become an important centre of Ismā‘īlī education and propaganda. Economic benefits accrued because of the state ownership of land in the city. When al-Manṣūr had founded Baghdad, he had left the development of the markets to his subjects, to whom the land was granted. In Cairo, however, the markets were state property, bringing in substantial revenue. Most of the new city was occupied by mosques and two vast palaces where the opulent, formal and hierarchic Fatimid court operated away from the public gaze. Throughout the Fatimid period, Cairo remained very much the government enclave. Fusṭāṭ, from which it was separated by a belt of gardens, remained the centre of population and economic activity. The three great mosques retained their separate identities: the mosque of ‘Amr was the centre of popular devotion and the place where the qāḍī of Fusṭāt. held court; the mosque of Ibn Ṭūlūn with the adjacent Dār al-Imāra (government house) was the site of the maẓālim court, where fiscal and political cases were dealt with; while the Azhar, soon to be supplemented by the mosque of al-Ḥākim, was the court mosque.
While the establishment of the Fatimids in Egypt was comparatively peaceful and successful, the question of Syria and Palestine was, and remained throughout the period, the government’s major preoccupation. This was partly for security reasons. As events were soon to show, Fatimid Egypt could not be held unless Palestine and Damascus at least were under the control of Cairo. There was also an economic aspect; Syria was an important alternative source of supplies in years when the Nile did not rise sufficiently to provide for the needs of Egypt. One of the reasons for the collapse of the Ikhshidids had been that the raids of the Qarāmiṭa had meant that grain could not be imported from Syria to relieve distress in Egypt. The Fatimid regime could not afford to allow the populace to go hungry.
There were two possible solutions to the Syrian problem. The less ambitious was the Ikhshidid approach. This consisted of basing power in Damascus and allowing northern Syria to remain independent under the Hamdanid dynasty. The second option was the Tulunid solution, which meant that all Palestine and Syria as far as the Byzantine frontier should be brought under Egyptian rule. The Tulunid option was tempting in that it brought more land under Fatimid rule and meant that the caliphs would have the prestige of defending Islam against Byzantine attacks. But it also led to problems. The Arab tribes of Syria were difficult to control – the people of Aleppo had strong separatist tendencies and were quite prepared to seek Byzantine support to preserve their independence from their Muslim neighbours. Direct confrontation with the Byzantines would demand all the military resources of the state, and there were practical problems in supplying and controlling a large army far from the centre of power. In the aftermath of the conquest, Jawhar sent a leading Kutāmī Berber general, Ja‘far b. Fallāḥ, to take over the remaining Ikhshidid possessions. The last Ikhshidid governor, al-Ḥasan b. ‘Ubayd Allāh, was captured at Ramla and sent to north Africa, and Damascus was occupied.
This was only the beginning of the problem, however, for the Fatimids now came into direct conflict with their sometime allies, the Qarāmiṭa. The Ikhshidids had been paying the Qarāmiṭa very large subsidies – 300,000 dīnārs a year – to keep them peaceful, but Ja‘far decided that these should be cut off. The response was swift. The Qarāmiṭa of Syria called on their fellows in Baḥrayn and secured arms and subsidies from the Buyid Bakhtiyār in Baghdad. Thus prepared, they killed Ja‘far and drove his Berber troops out of the city and back to Egypt. Nor did they stop there, but, recruiting disaffected supporters of the Ikhshidids en route, they marched on Cairo itself. Jawhar constructed a line of fortifications outside the city at ‘Ayn Shams. In Rabī‘ I 361/December 971, a fierce battle was fought around this line, and the Qarāmiṭa were defeated. It had been a near-run thing and the caliphate almost perished. After the battle, Berber reinforcements, led by al-Ḥasan b. ‘Alī, called Ibn al-‘Ammār, arrived from Ifrīqiya. Egypt was safe, although there was still opposition in some parts of the delta, but the problem of Syria was far from being solved. In the aftermath of victory, many Ikhshīdī supporters who had, or were thought to have, allied with the Qarāmiṭa were rounded up and imprisoned, but an attempt to regain Palestine was prevented by the Qarāmiṭa who occupied Ramla.
Early in 362/late 972, al-Mu‘izz left Ifrīqiya to come east. He brought with him his entire court, his possessions and the coffins of his ancestors; he did not intend to return. By Sha‘bān (May 973), he was at Alexandria where he held court at the foot of the Pharos, which had been restored by Ibn Ṭūlūn and was still largely intact. Here, he received the leaders of the bedouin tribes and the civil élite of Fusṭāṭ, accepting their professions of loyalty and explaining that he had only come to pursue the war against the infidels and to open the route to Mecca for pilgrims, the traditional public duties of the caliph. In Ramaḍān 362/June 973, he finally entered Cairo. Jawhar was retired with wealth and honour, although he remained a trusted counsellor, and al-Mu‘izz began his personal rule.
He brought with him two men who were to have an important influence on the making of early Fatimid policy: the wazīr Ya‘qūb b. Killis and the qāḍī, al-Nu‘mān b. Muḥammad. Ya‘qūb, a converted Jew, of Iraqi origin like so many of the Egyptian governing class, had been trained in administration under Kāfūr. Ideologically, he was a firm supporter of the Ismā‘īlī doctrine, produced a book of law based on the pronouncements of the Caliphs al-Mu‘izz and al-‘Azīz, which he caused to be used in the mosque of ‘Amr, and played a major part in the establishment of the Azhar as an Ismā‘īlī educational institution. In practical affairs, however, he tended to run financial and foreign policy as it had been under Kāfūr, thus ensuring a strong element of continuity in Egyptian government.
Soon afterwards, he and his colleague, the Berber ‘Uslūj b. al-Ḥasan al-Kutāmī, established themselves in the old Dār al-Imāra by the mosque of Ibn Ṭūlūn and began a searching investigation into the revenues of the government. They increased the tax farms and revised upwards the taxes they demanded at all levels, most noticeably from the textile towns of the delta, Tinnīs and Damietta. These taxes were to be assessed in the new, very fine gold dīnārs al-Mu‘izz now had minted. These measures put government finances on a secure footing and enabled the Fatimids to survive crises which would have destroyed a less prosperous dynasty.
The other figure, qāḍī al-Nu‘mān, who had long served the Fatimids in Ifrīqiya, died shortly after the Fatimids settled in Cairo, but his son, ‘Alī, inherited his position and took over from the ageing qāḍī of Fusṭāṭ, Abū Ṭāhir. In 365/975, ‘Alī began the teaching of Ismā‘īlī doctrine in the Azhar and remained until his death in 374/984 chief qāḍī of the caliphate and a leading adviser of the caliphs. He founded a dynasty of qāḍīs who were pillars of the regime for the next half-century.
Al-Mu‘izz, perhaps under the influence of these new arrivals, moved away from Jawhar’s tolerant policy on religious issues. There were four areas of change in public religious observance. The first was naturally the acceptance of the Fatimids as the rightful caliphs, which seems to have caused few problems, even in non-Ismā‘īlī circles. The second was the use of Shī‘ī law, particularly the pronouncements of Ja‘far al-Ṣādiq (d. 148/765), the sixth imām and the last to be accepted by all Shī‘īs. The third aspect was the distinctive Shī‘ī call to prayer (which includes the words “Come to the best of works” not used by the Sunnīs) and the fourth, that most contentious of issues, the particularly Shī‘ī festivals of Ghadīr Khumm (18 Dhū’l-Ḥijja) and the mourning for al-Ḥusayn (10 Muḥarram). The introduction of Shī‘ī law produced some resentment, notably in the case of inheritance law, where Shī‘ī fiqh gives women a larger share, but there was no widespread opposition. ‘Alī b. al-Nu‘mān was prepared to employ a Sunnī faqīh (expert in religious law) as a qāḍī on the understanding that he would judge according to Shī‘ī law. Jawhar had refrained from introducing the controversial Shī‘ī festivals, but al-Mu‘izz did, a move which led to open opposition on 10 Muḥarram 363/11 October 973 when Sunnī merchants in Fusṭāt. insisted on keeping the sūqs open in defiance of official pressure for them to shut as a sign of mourning, but again the disturbances seem to have been short-lived.
In general, the Ismā‘īlī rite was the faith of the ruling élite and the Berbers but it was not forced on others. The separation of the two communities helped as well, the Ismā‘īlīs being dominant in Cairo, while Fusṭāt. remained largely Sunnī. A man is said to have been expelled from Cairo for keeping in his house a Sunnī law book, the Muwaṭṭa’ of Mālik b. Anas. There was much less sectarian violence in Egypt than there was in Baghdad and Iraq during this period, and a contemporary observer, the geographer al-Muqaddasī, who visited Egypt at this time, stresses that there were few differences between the two branches of the faith. When popular disturbances did break out, as happened during the reign of al-‘Azīz, they took the form of anti-Christian riots rather than sectarian strife among the Muslims. At first sight, the imposition of an Ismā‘īlī ruling class on an essentially Sunnī, traditionist population would appear to have been a recipe for civil conflict – but in the event, realism and an element of give and take on both sides, coupled with stable government and economic prosperity, meant that religious differences never got out of hand.
In contrast to the comparative stability in Egypt, the Fatimid government continued to face serious problems in Syria and Palestine. In 363/974, the Qarāmiṭa again invaded Egypt but were defeated, and 1,500 prisoners were taken to Cairo, where they were executed. Syria was still disturbed when al-Mu‘izz died in Rabī‘ II 365/December 975. Of the promises he had made to the Egyptian leaders at Alexandria, one was fulfilled: in 364/975, the Ḥajj was able to travel overland from Egypt, and the Fatimid caliph was acknowledged at Mecca. Circumstances in Syria, however, meant that he was unable to pursue a campaign against the Byzantines, who had taken Antioch in the same year that Jawhar had entered Cairo. Furthermore, to the disgust of refugees from the recently conquered territories, Byzantine ambassadors were received in Cairo. The problems in Syria also meant that it was out of the question to launch any attempt to subdue Iraq and the eastern Islamic world, despite the claims of the dynasty to the leadership of the entire Muslim community.
Al-Mu‘izz was succeeded by his son, Nizār, who took the title of al-‘Azīz, and he and his wazīr, Ya‘qūb b. Killis, immediately addressed themselves to the problem of Syria. Ya‘qūb, in this as in other respects, followed the Ikhshidid tradition. He believed that the Fatimids should concentrate on controlling Palestine and southern Syria while leaving the north of the Hamdanids and their successors to form a buffer state against the Byzantines, with whom the caliph should try to keep on good terms. This modest strategy formed the basis of Fatimid policy throughout the early years of al-‘Azīz.
The government of Damascus remained the principal problem. The city had been occupied by the Berber troops of the Fatimids during al-Mu‘izz’s reign, but they had been ill-disciplined, and tensions with the citizens resulted in disturbances and a major fire. The Berbers were so unpopular that the people of the city turned to the Turkish leader Alptakīn, who, with 300 mounted followers, took the town just before the old caliph’s death. These Turks had come from Baghdad, whence they had been expelled by ‘Aḍud al-Dawla when he took over the city, and they now hoped to live off the revenues of the area while entering into negotiations with the Fatimids to see if they could take service with them. Alptakīn fulfilled the hopes of the people by restoring peace and driving the bedouin away from the Ghūṭa (the oasis of Damascus). He also secured an alliance with the Qarāmiṭa and took over many of the coastal cities, including Sidon, Beirut and Jubayl. The new caliph, al-‘Azīz, was determined to crush this emerging Syrian state and despatched a large force led by the veteran Jawhar, the original conqueror of Egypt, but Alptakīn and his Qarmaṭī allies were able to drive him back to Ascalon, where he endured a seventeen-month siege. Under pressure from his Kutāma followers, he finally entered into negotiations, agreeing that all of Palestine from Ascalon north should be under the control of the Turks, while the Fatimid presence was to be confined to Gaza in the extreme south. To sweeten the pill, Alptakīn agreed that al-‘Azīz should be formally acknowledged as caliph in the areas under his control. Jawhar and his men were allowed to return to Egypt.
Ya‘qūb b. Killis realized that this could not be the basis of a permanent settlement. Fatimid prestige had been severely damaged, and the presence of a potentially hostile power in Ascalon and Ramla left Egypt dangerously vulnerable. In addition, he himself, and no doubt other members of the Fatimid establishment, had valuable properties in the Damascus area which they were reluctant to relinquish. He persuaded the caliph to undertake a major campaign in person, and in Muḥarram 368/August 978, a massive Fatimid army defeated Alptakīn and the Qarāmiṭa in southern Palestine. The victory reestablished Fatimid prestige, but the victors realized that compromises would have to be made. The Qarāmiṭa were guaranteed a subsidy in return for their leaving for Baḥrayn, and the settlement marks the end of the Qarmaṭī threat to Syria. Ibn Killis also realized that Syria could not be held without the cooperation of the Turks; the disastrous attempt to govern Damascus through a Berber garrison had made this clear. He therefore arranged that the defeated Alptakīn should be reconciled with al-‘Azīz and taken into Fatimid service. He returned to Cairo with the caliph and was treated with great honour. The integration of Alptakīn and his Turkish followers into the Fatimid state marked a major change. Hitherto the Fatimid army had been composed almost entirely of Kutāma Berbers and black and Slav slaves, the Berbers forming the cavalry. Although Alptakīn himself died a few years after his arrival in Egypt, the Turks remained as a major influence in the Fatimid state. There developed a ghulām system very similar to that found in eastern Islamic lands, and it is interesting to note that the wazīr Ibn Killis acquired his own ghilmān, distinct from those of the caliph. The Turks were prominent in Cairo, often as rivals to the Berbers, but they were especially important in Fatimid Syria. The government of Damascus was often in Turkish hands, and continuing efforts were made to attract the services of successful Turkish condottieri in Syria.
The victory of 368/978 had not solved the problem of Damascus. With Alptakīn’s surrender, power in the city was taken over by local people, anxious no doubt to prevent another Berber occupation. The city was effectively controlled by a citizen called Qassām, supported by the local aḥdath (militia), a notable example of urban self-government of the period. The situation was complicated by the arrival of Abū Taghlib, the last Hamdanid ruler of Mosul, who, expelled from his own domains, now sought a position with the Fatimids, offering to take Damascus for them if they sent troops. There then followed a confused pattern of intrigue. Ibn Killis sent a ghulām of his, another converted Jew called al-Faḍl b. Ṣāliḥ, with a large army of Berbers. On the way, they entered into an agreement with the leader of the most powerful bedouin tribe in southern Palestine, Daghfal b. Mufarrij b. al-Jarrāh. al-Ṭayyī, guaranteeing him possession of Ramla, which he alleged was threatened by Abū Taghlib, a threat which was made more real by the fact that Abū Taghlib had with him a body of ‘Uqaylī bedouin who might have coveted the Ṭayy pastures. No serious attempt was made to take Damascus by force, although al-Faḍl did make a show of force in the coastal cities. On the way back, Ibn al-Jarrāh. and the Ṭayy, in alliance with al-Faḍl and his Berber troops, attacked and routed Abū Taghlib and his ‘Uqaylī followers, killing their leader, before al-Faḍl returned home. The whole confusing episode is of some importance. It showed that the Berber army was not strong enough to take Damascus. It marked, too, the establishment of Ibn al-Jarrāh Ramla and as a major figure to be reckoned with in the area. He recognized Fatimid sovereignty in theory but in practice was an independent agent. The victory of the Ṭayy over the ‘Uqayl meant that they were to be the major bedouin power in the area and a continuing problem for the Fatimid authorities. As in so many other areas at this time, we see the bedouin extending their authority over settled communities, in this case Ramla, while not abandoning their tribal lifestyle. The episode also shows the strength of Ibn Killis, operating through his ghilmān and making all the decisions of importance in the campaign.
The problem of Damascus remained. A further expedition in 369/979–980 under the Kutāmī chief Sulaymān b. Ja‘far b. Fallāh. (son of that Ja‘far b. Fallāh. who had been killed in 361/971) with 4,000 Berbers failed to achieve anything, while the problem of Ibn al-Jarrāh. became more pressing. Al-Faḍl b. Ṣālih. attempted to control him in alliance with the ‘Uqayl. Most serious, however, were the depredations of the bedouin in settled areas; Ramla was reduced to a ghost town by the activities of the Ṭayy, while the bedouin virtually destroyed the agriculture of the Ghūṭa of Damascus and the Ḥawran, causing great hardship in the city. The people were saved not by the Fatimid government, but by the Turk who governed Homs for the Hamdanids, Bakjūr, who produced supplies for the areas under his control. The failure of Ibn Fallāḥ’s Berber army to restore order or maintain its own discipline meant that the next Fatimid expedition to Syria was led by a Turk, Baltakīn, who had been one of Alptakīn’s associates. This was the first time a Turk had led a Fatimid army. The campaign was a conspicuous success. The bedouin Ibn al-Jarrāh. was forced to flee north to Byzantine territory and Qassām surrendered Damascus on terms which allowed him to remain the effective ruler under the nominal control of a Berber governor.
Fatimid policies were helped by the decline and impoverishment of the Hamdanid state of Aleppo under Sa‘d al-Dawla, which meant that many erstwhile supporters of the dynasty in Syria now entered Fatimid service. One such was Rajā’ al-Ṣiqlabī, who came over with 300 followers and was rewarded with the governorate of Acre and Caesarea – but the most important recruit was the governor of Homs, Bakjūr, who now offered to govern Damascus for the Fatimids. The offer produced a major rift in the Fatimid administration between the caliph and Ya‘qūb b. Killis. Baltakīn had become a protégé of the wazīr and Ya‘qūb was anxious to ensure that his man remained in control. Bakjūr, however, had made contact directly with the caliph. He offered al-‘Azīz the prospect of governing not just Damascus and Homs but Aleppo as well. Ibn Killis was opposed to such a forward policy. For the first time, however, al-‘Azīz overrode his mentor and Baltakīn was forced to hand it over to Bakjūr.
The disagreement over the appointment of Bakjūr was one of the causes of the brief estrangement between al-‘Azīz and Ibn Killis. At the same time, an inadequate Nile flood resulted in poor harvest, high prices and famine in Fusṭāt.. There were riots and Ibn Killis and his assistant al-Faḍl b. Ṣālih. were arrested. The confinement lasted only two months. On his release and reinstatement, the wazīr continued to work for the removal of Bakjūr, and in 377/989 he was able to persuade the caliph to appoint one of his (Ya‘qūb’s) ghilmān, Ya‘qūb al-Ṣiqlabī, to the post. The wazīr’s cause was aided by the fact that Bakjūr had made himself unpopular in Damascus by his cruelty, and when the Fatimid forces approached, he fled to Raqqa, which he used as a base to attack the Hamdanids, but he played no further part in Fatimid politics. Damascus was not the only military problem the caliphate faced. In the Ḥijāz, the bedouin were making the Ḥajj almost impossible and once again it was a Turk, Baltakīn, who was sent to rectify the position and a Fatimid garrison was established at Wādi’l-Qurra.
In 380/991, the wazīr Ya‘qūb b. Killis died. More than anyone else he had guided the Fatimid caliphate through the difficult early years. Drawing on his experience under the Ikhshidids, he organized the administration of Egypt and pursued a cautious policy in Syria which, if it was not entirely successful, at least kept Egypt secure from invasion. He had also played a decisive part in reducing the monopoly of military power held by the Berbers. He had used his position to recruit and promote Turkish ghilmān, and the refugees who arrived with Alptakīn and their successors became a major force in the state.
The death of the old wazīr allowed the caliph a free hand to pursue a more aggressive and expansionist policy in Syria. Ya‘qūb’s nominee was immediately dismissed from the governorship of Damascus and replaced by one of al-‘Azīz’s own ghilmān, the Turk Manjūtakīn, who was to be the instrument of his new forward policy. In Manjūtakīn, al-‘Azīz found a capable and loyal commander. The prospects were further improved by the death of Sa‘d al-Dawla the Hamdanid in 381/991 and the takeover of power by Lu’lu’. In 381, 382, 383 and 384 (991–994), Manjūtakīn launched campaigns against the territory of Aleppo. He took Homs and the little towns of Apamea and Shayzar from their Arab rulers, but his attempts on Aleppo itself aroused the opposition of the citizens and brought the Fatimids for the first time into direct conflict with the Byzantines, who regarded the city as being under their protection. Manjūtakīn was powerful enough to defy the dux (governor) of Antioch, but in 385/995 the Emperor Basil II arrived in person and conducted a major show of force throughout northern Syria, forcing the Fatimid general to retreat to Damascus. Faced with this threat, the caliph himself decided to take the field in person as the champion of Islam against the aggressive Greeks, but he died before he could put the plan into effect. The land campaigns were accompanied by an increase in naval activity. A fleet prepared in the port of Cairo was destroyed by fire, apparently by accident, but the incident gave rise to serious anti-Christian riots. Another fleet was constructed and set sail to join Manjūtakīn in the siege of the small coastal town of Ṭarṭūs. Seaborne campaigns were always hazardous, and while Manjūtakīn waited for vital reinforcements, the ships were destroyed by a storm. The approach of the Greek army forced the Fatimid forces to retreat again. As Ibn Killis had foreseen, interference in the affairs of Aleppo, however tempting the prospects seemed to be, resulted in a conflict with Byzantium, a conflict both expensive and unproductive.
The situation in Syria remained unstable. The Fatimids controlled the coastal cities from Tripoli south and some inland areas like Tiberias. Ramla and southern Palestine under Ibn al-Jarrāh. and the Banū Ṭayy were frequently disturbed, and the activities of the bedouin in the area were to prove a continuing problem to the Fatimid authorities. Damascus, however, seems to have been brought firmly under control by Manjūtakīn, who used it as his base. It is interesting to note how Fatimid rule had changed the political and economic geography of Syria. In particular, naval activity had increased. Manjūtakīn’s army was largely supplied by sea through the port of Tripoli, which became a major commercial centre for the first time since the classical period. The governorships of coastal cities like Tyre, Sidon, Ascalon and Gaza became important offices. The Fatimid use of naval power to control Syria, in fact, seems to have led to the beginnings of a revival in the fortunes of the coastal towns which was to be continued in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The eastern Mediterranean was becoming the scene of peaceful navigation once again, not just a zone of conflict.
In other areas, too, the reign of al-‘Azīz had seen the increase of Fatimid influence and authority. The Fatimids took over the protection of the Ḥajj, at least of those pilgrims who came from the western Islamic world. This was an expensive operation – in 383/994, for example, the Ḥajj required an escort of 3,500 men, and the expenditure, including the cost of the new kiswa (the cover of the Ka‘ba), of 300,000 dīnārs. The prestige gained no doubt offset the cost. The eastern Ḥajj was also patronized and financed by local rulers, Badr b. Ḥasanūya in the late fourth/tenth century and Maḥmūd of Ghazna in the early fifth/eleventh, but it was the Fatimids who provided the kiswa and were acknowledged by the amīr of Mecca. Relations with the ruler of Mecca were polite rather than close. The amīr acknowledged the Fatimid as caliph while maintaining his independence. In 384/994, ‘īsā b. Ja‘far al-Ḥasanī, then amīr, came to Egypt and was given substantial gifts. Relations with Mecca were commercial as well as political, and al-Maqrīzī quotes an account of al-Mu‘izz buying ebony from Aden through a middleman in Mecca. In 382/992, the influence of the Fatimids spread farther and they were acknowledged as caliphs in Yemen, though without enjoying any real power there. Since the retreat of the Qarāmiṭa to Baḥrayn, they too recognized the Fatimid claims. The increased interest in the jihād and the care for the Ḥajj suggest that after the death of Ibn Killis, al-‘Azīz began to pursue a much more caliphal policy, that is to say that he demonstrated his ability and willingness to undertake the two major public responsibilities of a caliph, to safeguard the Ḥajj and to lead the Muslims against the infidel Byzantines. The acknowledgement of Fatimid claims in areas over which they had no direct political control bears witness to the success of this policy.
Fatimid policy towards north Africa, the cradle of the dynasty, is a conundrum. Nothing is more striking than the speed with which they were prepared to allow north Africa to go its own way. In the time of al-Mu‘izz and the early years of al-‘Azīz’s reign, there had been some continued emigration from Ifrīqiya to Egypt, but by the end of al-‘Azīz’s reign, this seems to have come to a halt. While the claims of the Fatimids to the caliphate were acknowledged in Ifrīqiya, practical power lay with the Zirid viceroys from the Ṣanhāja group of Berbers. In 382/992, al-‘Azīz appointed Bādīs b. al-Manṣūr b. Zīrī to be his father’s heir apparent, thus effectively making the dynasty hereditary. Relations were maintained by the exchange of sumptuous presents, but any claims to real political power were neglected. Ṣandal, the governor of Barqa, brought presents but again there is no sign of direct control.
In internal affairs, the departure of Ibn Killis led to some confusion and division of responsibility within the administration. The Berber military leader al-Ḥasan b. ‘Ammār refused to take over financial responsibilities, and these devolved at first on Ibn Killis’ old protégé al-Faḍl b. Ṣālih. and his rival, the qāḍī Muḥammad b. al-Nu‘mān. An attempt to persuade the veteran Ibn al-Furāt to take up office failed when he resigned after only a few months. Thereafter, administrative responsibility was increasingly taken over by the Christian Īsā b. Nasṭūris, who was given charge of all the dīwāns in 384/994. But this period does not seem to have been one of decline and confusion – indeed, a major reform of weights was undertaken.
In the last year of his life, al-‘Azīz was preparing to take up arms in person against the Byzantines and he ordered a massive mobilization of men and resources. Before he set out, however, he died on 28 Ramaḍān 386/14 October 996. He was only forty-two when he died but his long reign had shown him a firm but prudent ruler. The sources comment at length on his clemency, and his reign seems to have been remembered as a period of peace and prosperity. While he owed much to his wazīrs, notably Ibn Killis and Ibn Nasṭūris, his later years showed that he was no mere cypher and had determined views on the nature of the caliphate. Despite his predilection for hunting, he rarely left Cairo and its immediate surroundings. After his visit to Ramla at the instigation of Ibn Killis in 368/978, he never again left Egypt. This tradition of static monarchy was typical of the Fatimid caliphate, in contrast to the restlessness of the Buyids and Hamdanids. There was no problem about the succession; no sooner had he breathed his last than the eunuch Barjuwān sought out the caliph’s young son Manṣūr, placed on his head the jewelled turban and kissed the ground before him. So came to the throne the most famous of all the Fatimid caliphs, al-Ḥākim bi-Amr Allāh.
The new caliph was only eleven at the time of his accession. He was, of course, unable to exercise the autocratic control for which he later became famous. The accession of a minor gave the signal for various groups to try to redress their grievances. The last years of al-‘Azīz’s reign had seen the increased influence of the Turks, notably the general Manjūtakīn in Damascus, and of the Christian wazīr, Ibn Nasṭūris, in many ways the successor of Ibn Killis. This had caused great discontent among the leaders of the Kutāma Berbers, who felt that they had been deprived of their position in the state. Immediately after the death of the caliph, the Kutāma shaykhs made it clear that their allegiance to his son was dependent on their being given control of the government. Accordingly, al-Ḥasan b. ‘Ammār was made wāsiṭa (intermediary between caliph and people, in effect prime minister) and the Kutāma were rewarded with the choicest contents of the treasury. Ibn Nasṭūris, the leading survivor of the old regime, was executed. In Syria, this coup provoked an immediate response. The Turk Manjūtakīn decided to march on Egypt to redress the situation. The attempt was not a success. Ibn ‘Ammār mobilized the Berbers under the leadership of Sulaymān b. Ja‘far b. Fallāḥ, and Manjūtakīn was defeated by Ibn Fallāh. and taken to Cairo in captivity. Here, he lived in quiet retirement until his death ten years later in 397/1007. Sulaymān continued to Damascus to take over as the governor.
Ibn ‘Ammār’s government in Cairo soon began to get into trouble. The Kutāma Berbers who had brought him to power used the opportunity to pillage the state. Not only did they deprive the Turks and other military groups of their positions but they cut off the salaries of the kuttāb, the secretaries. The chaos could not continue for long, and after a year, fighting broke out between the Turks and Berbers. Ibn ‘Ammār was arrested and eventually killed, and the role of wāsiṭa was taken over by the young caliph’s tutor, Barjuwān; the excesses of the Berbers were halted and the position of the kuttāb restored. It was not a complete defeat for the Berbers, however. Sulaymān b. Ja‘far b. Fallāh. was replaced in Damascus by another Berber, Jaysh b. al-Ṣamṣāma, and both Sulaymān and his brother, ‘Alī, were to continue to play an important role in Fatimid government. It was rather an attempt to restore the balance as it had existed under al-‘Azīz, and Barjuwān chose a new Christian kātib, Fahd b. Ibrāhīm, to replace the dead Ibn Nasṭūris.
As had happened before, the attempt to rule the towns of Syria through Berber garrisons ran into difficulties. As usual, they were unpopular in Damascus, which was then entrusted to an old Ikhshīdī officer, Bishāra, but the fiercest resistance came from the coastal city of Tyre. It is indicative of the increasing importance of these coastal cities that one of them should have begun an open rebellion against the Kutāma garrison under the leadership of a sailor called al-‘Alāqa. The threat was increased when the rebels appealed to Byzantine support, but in the end they were obliged to surrender and the city was sacked by the army. Meanwhile in the north of the country, Jaysh b. al-Ṣamṣāma continued the war Manjūtakīn had conducted against the Byzantines and the remnants of the Hamdanid state, retaking Apamea and Shayzar. In reply to this, the Emperor Basil II launched a new and devastating campaign in northern Syria, and although he failed to take Tripoli, he pillaged Homs and the coast around Jubayl and Beirut in 390/999. It was after this that the Fatimids succeeded, through the intermediary of the patriarch of Jerusalem, in negotiating a ten-year truce. This was to be of the greatest importance in al-Ḥākim’s reign. The caliph and the emperor both had concerns elsewhere and were content to accept the status quo. Aleppo remained independent under Byzantine protection, while the cities of Antioch and Lattakia and their hinterland as far south as the Homs–Tripoli gap remained part of the Byzantine Empire. Tripoli itself remained in Muslim hands, usually acknowledging the Fatimids but effectively independent under its own governors and qāḍīs. Despite the strains caused in later years by the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and persecution of the Christians, the Byzantines responded by trade sanctions rather than warfare, and the peace in northern Syria remained almost uninterrupted. This long peace meant that military expenditure was reduced and may be one of the reasons why al-Ḥakim’s government survived despite the ruler’s eccentricities.
In Rabī‘ II 390/April 1000, the young caliph decided to show his independence. With the aid of a servant, he in person murdered his tutor and guardian Barjuwān. Aged only fifteen, he was now an absolute master of the state. His personality has been the subject of much controversy. The main sources we rely on, which are not on the whole anti-Fatimid in tone, present a picture of an unstable psychopath, ruling by whim and terror. His disordered personality showed itself in his attacks on Christians, Jews and his closest servants. All but a very few of those who served al-Ḥakim in senior offices were done to death, usually suddenly without trial or explanation. At times, whole classes of troops and palace servants and even common people were threatened by his vengeful cruelty, but more often it was leaders of the military and the kuttāb who suffered from his murderous proclivities. His eccentricity was not confined to murder, however. He introduced dietary regulations, including the banning of alcoholic drinks, and the prohibition of watercress and fish without scales and such general social matters as the forbidding of chess and the killing of dogs. At the beginning of his reign, he demanded that the sūqs be kept open all night for his amusement. The most striking feature of his decrees is, however, their inconsistency. Regulations would be introduced and abandoned without warning. At one time, the appearance of the cross in the streets was forbidden as an anti-Christian measure; yet shortly afterwards, all Christians were obliged to wear large crosses, thus making nonsense of the previous decree. His attitude to Islam was varied. At some times, he encouraged the spread of Ismā‘īlī customs, while at others, he seems to have permitted Sunnī practices which had been banned by his father. Towards the end of his reign, he is alleged to have neglected the conventional demands of religious law entirely, to have become increasingly ascetic and considered himself divine.
Various attempts have been made in recent years to make sense of this picture. Vatikiotis has suggested that he was the only Fatimid to take the idea of the divinely appointed monarch seriously and that his behaviour was necessary to sustain Ismā‘īlī morale and protect the state against its enemies.2 Shaban has argued that his apparently bizarre dietary regulations are in fact sound measures to protect the rural economy.3 But it is hard to see how the prohibition of chess fits into these explanations. In the most thoughtful recent appraisal of the problem, Forsyth, while stressing the strong irrational element in his behaviour, has drawn attention to the populist nature of some of his policies.4 Certainly, his measures against the Christian and Jewish communities, and even his attacks on senior Muslim army officers and financial officials, may have gained some popularity, but the sources make it clear that the terror was by no means confined to the upper classes, and the burning of Fusṭāt. at the end of the reign was a culmination of previous acts of random brutality. While it would be wrong to see al-Ḥākim as a populist ruler, appealing over the heads of the administrative and military classes to the common people, it is striking that there was no concerted rebellion against his rule in either the cities or the countryside. The only serious challenge came from nomad groups who had many reasons for opposing settled authority, and it seems to have been almost unconnected with the caliph’s bizarre conduct.
It seems most likely that, as was suggested by the chronicler Yaḥyā b. Sa‘īd, who knew him personally, al-Ḥakim was mentally unbalanced. It is not difficult to see why. Perhaps already psychologically disturbed, he came to the throne in early adolescence and was surrounded by people who at one and the same time assured him that he had absolute authority over a vast empire and attempted to manipulate him for their own purposes. The delight in his own power, the ability he discovered at the time of Barjuwān’s death to quite literally get away with murder, completed his development. Chroniclers note that he was not without virtues. He could be generous, and rigorous in enforcing justice. He often refrained from confiscating the goods of men he had murdered and allowed their families to inherit to demonstrate his incorruptibility. He also founded an institute of learning, the Dār al-‘Ilm, but it must be said that he later murdered many of the teachers he had appointed. In his personal behaviour too, he showed some qualities. Especially towards the end, he seems to have tried to escape the pomp of his position, wearing ragged clothes and forbidding visitors to kiss the ground. But none of this was consistent or reliable. Even his most intimate assistants might suddenly be murdered, and the terror he inspired gave rise to moments of general panic when all classes petitioned the caliph for guarantees of their personal safety.
In the immediate aftermath of Barjuwān’s death, the caliph set about creating a new government. Ruling in person without a wāsiṭa, he kept on the Christian, Fahd b. Ibrāhīm, as the secretary, who was given the title of ra’īs (chief). Military power was entrusted to al-Ḥusayn, the son of Jawhar, who had led the original Fatimid conquest of Egypt and a man who was acceptable to the Berbers as well as having his own following among the Ṣaqāliba ghilmān. The caliph was also careful to conciliate both Berbers and Turks; throughout his reign, he does not seem to have favoured either group at the expense of the other but to have kept a balance. He also employed other experienced officers at court, notably al-Faḍl b. Ṣāliḥ, and the family of ‘Alī b. al-Ḥusayn b. al-Maghribī, kuttāb who had been in the service of the Hamdanids and now, like many others from the Hamdanid court, sought employment with the Fatimids. Syria, in the meantime, was ruled by Berber chiefs in Damascus; Jaysh b. al-Ṣamṣāma, who died in 390/1000, was soon succeeded by the Kutāma leader, ‘Alī b. Ja‘far b. Fallāḥ, who had succeeded his brother, Sulaymān, as the head of his family. ‘Alī was to prove the great political survivor of the reign, dying only shortly before the caliph after a riding accident.
Few of his fellows were so lucky. In 393/1003, al-Ḥākim began the first of his series of purges of political leaders. Fahd b. Ibrāhīm was executed, but his death was to be only the first in a long and grisly series. At the same time, the persecution of Christians and the destruction of churches began, and by the next year (394/1004) the situation was so threatening that the Kutāma en masse petitioned the caliph for a guarantee of safety, which was granted. The caliph next turned on the chief qāḍī, al-Ḥusayn b. al-Nu‘mān, who had succeeded his father ‘Alī and his uncle, Muḥammad, in office. Al-Maqrīzī records that he was the first qāḍī whose body was burned after he was killed. He was not to be the last.
The year 395/1004–1005 saw an intensification of the terror. It was at this stage that al-Ḥākim began to introduce the public cursing of the first caliphs, a Shī‘ī measure which always produced violent resentment among Sunnīs and one which his father had avoided. This was combined with further measures against the Christians, including, in 400/1009, the demolition of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and the dietary prohibitions. More groups followed the Kutāma example and asked for guarantees of safety from their unpredictable ruler. The kuttāb begged his forgiveness for their no doubt imaginary crimes, while different elements in the army – Turks, ghilmān and followers of the Hamdanids – all sought to avail themselves of this protection.
There was no effective internal opposition to the caliph, and when trouble came it seems to have originated outside Egypt and to have had little or nothing to do with his tyrannical behaviour. In 395/1005, an adventurer of Umayyad descent arrived from Spain to Barqa in Cyrenaica and began to stir up trouble among the Sunnī Berber tribesmen. Although his real name was al-Walīd b. Hishām, he was generally known as Abū Rakwa in Egypt. He was joined by the Banū Qurra, the leaders of the bedouin Arabs of the Ḥawf district, who had caused trouble in Egypt since Umayyad times. Having taken Barqa and defeated the first military expedition sent by al-Ḥākim, Abū Rakwa and his followers, with their families and flocks, set out for Egypt. The arrival of this large force faced al-Ḥākim with a major crisis. He responded by summoning Arab tribes from Syria to his aid, notably the shaykhs of the Ṭayy tribe, the Banu’l-Jarrāh.. These were given money and arms to oppose the rebels. In his anxiety, the caliph also relaxed many of his dietary and anti-Sunnī measures to placate the people. He need not have worried; the people of the towns may have been in terror of al-Ḥākim but they showed no wish to welcome a horde of wild Arab and Berber tribesmen. Abū Rakwa scored one significant victory against ‘Alī b. Ja‘far b. Fallāḥ, now returned from Damascus, at Giza, and there was panic in Cairo. But he allowed himself to be diverted to the Fayyūm, where he was defeated in Dhū’l-Ḥijja 396/August 1006 by al-Faḍl b. Ṣālih.. The Banū Qurra were persuaded to desert his cause and he fled to Nubia, where he was captured, brought to Cairo and executed. The whole episode had been dangerous for al-Ḥākim, but there was no sign of rebellion against his cruelty or of an alliance between the Sunnī population of Fusṭāt. and the Sunnī invaders. As long as they had no support from the people of Egypt, the nomad invaders were unable to achieve any permanent gains.
The removal of the external threat allowed al-Ḥākim to pursue his policies with greater severity. The next few years were a time of increasing hardship, and a series of bad Niles led to high prices and food shortages. They were also a period of growing terror. Christian churches were destroyed, and the kuttāb and Ṣaqāliba were killed in mass nighttime executions. In 399/1009, al-Faḍl b. Ṣāliḥ, the man who had saved al-Ḥākim from Abū Rakwa’s forces, was summarily executed. The next year, two other leading figures, al-Ḥusayn b. Jawhar and the qāḍī ‘Abd al-Azīz b. al-Nu‘mān, fled for their lives but were persuaded to return by offers of safe conduct. Their trust was entirely misplaced; in 401/1010, they shared the fate of so many of their colleagues among the ruling class.
More wary than either of his colleagues was the kātib al-Ḥusayn b. al-Maghribī. Himself a refugee from the Hamdanid court, he may have been more adaptable than his fellows raised in the Fatimid ambience. He, too, fled Cairo but took refuge with Ibn al-Jarrāḥ, the Ṭayy leader of southern Palestine, a man always ready to defy the powers of central government, in 402/1011–1012. Ibn al-Maghribī refused al-Ḥākim’s blandishments and persuaded the bedouin chief to break with the Fatimids altogether. Instead, he invited the ‘Alid amīr of Mecca, al-Ḥasan b. Ja‘far, nominally a vassal of the Fatimids, to come to Palestine as the caliph in 403/1012. It was the high point in the fortunes of the Jarrahid leaders. All Palestine from the borders of Egypt to Tiberias was in their hands except for the coastal cities. In an effort to win further support, al-Ḥasan encouraged the restoration of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and the appointment of a patriarch. But the nomad domination had a negative aspect as well; it was marked by the destruction and desolation of many of the settled communities and, as elsewhere in the Fertile Crescent at this period, the extension of nomad-controlled areas at the expense of the urban and agricultural areas. The ‘Alid was established at the Jarrahid capital at Ramla, but his moment of glory was to be short-lived. Not for the first time, the Jarrahids allowed themselves to be bought by the Fatimid government, and the discomfited ‘Alid pretender was soon obliged to return to the Ḥijāz. Ibn al-Maghribī left for Iraq, where he was to enjoy a distinguished career with Qirwāsh, the ‘Uqaylid ruler in Mosul, and then with the Marwanids of Mayyāfāriqīn. The bid for independence turned sour for the Jarrahids. Al-Ḥākim sent ‘Alī b. Ja‘far b. Fallāh. and his Kutāma army against them. They were heavily defeated and the bedouin were forced to abandon their hold on Ramla.
In domestic policy, the reign of terror continued. Al-Ḥākim himself began to assume an ascetic lifestyle, cutting down on the pomp and circumstance of court life and beginning those wanderings which were to lead to his eventual disappearance. At this time, too, Christians were permitted to leave Egypt for Byzantine territory to escape persecution, and many of them, including the chronicler Yaḥyā b. Sa‘īd of Antioch, took advantage of this. While he took measures to placate the army and distributed iqṭā‘s generously to them, his own servants and ministers, all by now men whom he himself had raised to favour, were still the victims of his murderous caprice; his only regret when the kātib Zur‘a b. Nasṭūris died of natural causes was that he had not been able to execute him himself. Among the Muslims, it seems that he increasingly abandoned orthodox Ismā‘īlī or Shī‘ī practice. While he now forbade the cursing of the first two caliphs and became the first Fatimid to take prayers in the old mosque at Fusṭāṭ, a stronghold of Sunnism, much of his policy was simply antinomian, abandoning all the practices of ordinary Islam. As he renounced the conventional splendours of Fatimid rule, he lost interest in the Ḥajj and the celebrations of the Islamic calendar.
This may have been connected with the strangest events of his final years, the beginning of the Druze religion. Ismā‘īlī doctrine had always stressed the authority of the divinely appointed imām, but since the time of the qāḍī al-Nu‘mān, writers and caliphs alike had stressed that the caliph/imām was not himself divine. But just as the Rāwandiyya had ascribed divine powers to the ‘Abbasid Caliph al-Manṣūr, some Ismā‘īlīs sought to proclaim the divinity of their own ruler. This was not a break with the Ismā‘īlī tradition so much as a development of one aspect of it. Al-Manṣūr had rejected all attempts to ascribe divine status to himself, but al-Ḥākim was more susceptible to the idea. It seems to have been in 408/1017–1018 that Muḥammad b. Ismā‘īl al-Darazī, probably of Persian origin, began to spread the doctrine that al-Ḥākim was in fact God. Al-Ḥākim does not seem to have dissuaded him, but for others this was simply too much and al-Darazī was set upon by some Turkish soldiers and murdered. This was not, however, the end of the affair, for his work was continued by one Ḥamza b. Aḥmad, who is alleged to have proclaimed not only the divinity of the caliph but the abolition of the Sharī‘a. The role of the caliph in this is not clear; his behaviour became more eccentric and he is said to have made a point of eating in the mosque during Ramaḍān. It is also alleged that the burning of Fusṭāt. at the end of his reign was intended to punish the fiercely Sunnī inhabitants for rejecting his divinity. But al-Ḥākim’s madness was always guided by a kind of shrewdness, and he was careful not to become too closely involved. It is quite possible that he advised Ḥamza to leave Egypt and preach his message in Syria, where the Druze religion was to take root, and where it exists to this day.
Al-Ḥākim’s death in 411/1021 was as mysterious and bizarre as his life. The most prosaic version is that he was murdered during one of his solitary rambles in the Muqaṭṭam hills on the outskirts of Cairo on the orders of his sister, Sitt al-Mulk, who had become alarmed that he was turning against her. But his body was never found and, in the opinion of the Druzes, he simply disappeared and will come again at the end of the world.
The reign of al-Ḥākim is dominated by his bizarre personality. Few Muslim rulers can have exercised so absolute an authority over their subjects, both great and small. There are features which remain a puzzle: why was there no organized attempt to remove this dangerous lunatic from power? Furthermore, the period showed no real diminution of Fatimid authority in the international sphere. It is true that Ifrīqiya became increasingly independent, but this was simply a culmination of earlier developments and does not seem to have caused any real concern in Cairo. In Palestine, the power of the Jarrahids was kept at bay, while Damascus was always under Fatimid authority. The temporary allegiance of Mosul to the caliphate in 401/1010 had more to do with the politics of Qirwāsh b. al-Muqallad al-‘Uqaylī than al-Ḥākim, but the fact remains that the Fatimid caliphate was a credible alternative to the ‘Abbasids. Much of the secret of al-Ḥākim’s success must have lain in his personality. He picked off his enemies one by one, including virtually all the old guard of the Fatimid state, and there seems to have been no shortage of men willing to serve him, although increasingly they were slaves or ex-slaves. He also inspired great awe and fear among his entourage. He was careful to placate the army, not just slave soldiers but the Kutāma Berbers who followed his most trusted military commander, ‘Alī b. Ja‘far b. Fallāḥ, and the power of the Berbers within the Fatimid state was probably greater under al-Ḥakim than it had been under his father. The paradox remains that after a quarter of a century of al-Ḥākim’s mad rule, the Fatimid state seems to have been as powerful as ever.
The disappearance of al-Ḥākim left power firmly in the hands of his sister, Sitt al-Mulk, known as al-Sayyida, the Lady. She was determined to control the succession to her own advantage. Her instrument in this was a Kutāmī Berber leader, al-Ḥusayn b. ‘Alī b. Dawwās, and together they were responsible for the elevation to the throne of al-Ḥākim’s sixteen-year-old son ‘Alī, who took the title of al-ẓāhir li-I’zāz Dīn Allāh. There was little opposition, only one Turkish ghulām protesting that he would not swear allegiance until he knew his old master was dead, a protest which rapidly led to his own death. The beginning of the new reign was almost as bloodthirsty as the end of the old. Sitt al-Mulk, according to the chronicler al-Maqrīzī, was determined to hide her participation in her brother’s death, and soon all who had been involved in the conspiracy, if such there was, were killed, including her right-hand man, Ibn Dawwās. His two successors as wazīr enjoyed very short tenures of office, but thereafter the administration became more stable. For the first five years of the reign, until her death in 415/1024, Sitt al-Mulk had effectively ruled the country, appointing the ministers and keeping the treasury full. Three years after her death, effective power was taken by the man who was to be wazīr for the next eighteen years: Aḥmad b. ‘Alī al-Jarjarā’ī. He came from a bureaucratic dynasty of Iraqi origin and had rashly taken service with al-Ḥākim, during which time he had had his hands cut off. Despite this handicap, he was able to assume the wazirate and became the most successful incumbent of the office since Ibn Killis. Much of the comparative peace of al-ẓāhir’s reign must be ascribed to his talents.
For the rest of al-Ẓāhir’s reign, the Egyptian annals are very scanty. It would seem that the caliph devoted most of his time to pleasure. The only major disturbance was an outbreak of trouble between the Berbers and the Turks in Cairo in 420/1029. Significantly, the Berbers seem to have enjoyed popular support, and a large number of Turks were killed in the fighting. In the end, peace was restored, but most of the Turks left Egypt, and this may have been a contributory factor in the subsequent weakness of the state. The balance between Berber and Turk which al-‘Azīz had created and al-Ḥākim had been careful to maintain was now upset.
Against the comparatively peaceful state of Egypt in these years, the very disturbed state of Syria must be set. The last years of al-Ḥākim’s reign had seen the extension of Fatimid power farther than ever before, especially to Aleppo which, more by diplomacy than military conquest, came under Fatimid rule from 404/1015 to 414/1023. This picture was, however, threatened by the growing power of the bedouin tribes. The Banū’l-Jarrāh. of Palestine had threatened Ramla and Fatimid control in that area for many years but had usually been kept in check. More ominous was the growing power of the Banū Kalb in the Damascus area and the Banū Kilāb around Aleppo. In 415/1024–1025, the main bedouin leaders, Ṣālih. b. Mirdās of the Kilāb, Sinān b. ‘Ulyān of the Kalb and Ḥassān b. al-Jarrāh. of the Ṭayy, met and agreed to work together against the Fatimid and to effect a complete takeover of Syria. The reign of al-ẓāhir saw the crisis of nomad expansion in the area of Syria and Palestine, its check and the beginning of decline.
The man responsible for stemming the nomad advance was the Fatimid commander in Syria and Palestine, Anūshtakīn al-Dizbarī, one of the most successful soldiers and administrators of his day. He was a Turk born in the little mountain principality of Khuttal in Transoxania whence he was captured and taken to Kashgār. He escaped from there to Bukhārā, from where he was brought, as a slave, to Baghdad and then to Damascus, which he reached in the middle of al-Ḥākim’s reign in 400/1009–1010. Here, he was bought by a Daylamī condottiere, Dizbar, who had worked for the Hamdanids and from whom he was to take his name. Three years later, he was sent with a group of ghilmān to Cairo for training at the Fatimid court. He proved himself extremely able and when the training finished in 405/1014–1015, he secured himself a position at court. The next year, he was sent back to Damascus, where he took care to look up his old master, Dizbar, and make himself generally appreciated, and soon after he was given his first independent appointment, as the governor of Ba‘albak. Here, he acquired a good reputation with the local people and a patron in Fātik, the Armenian ghulām who governed Aleppo for the Fatimids. His reputation led to promotion, first to Caesarea as the governor and then in 414/1023 to the whole of Palestine. Here, he began to take severe measures against the depredations of the Arabs and came up against the opposition of the Ṭayy leader, Ḥassān b. al-Jarrāh.. The conflict was fought out in the field in Palestine and at the court in Cairo. In 417/1026, Ḥassān persuaded the wazīr, al-Ḥasan b. Ṣālih. al-Rudhbārī, to recall Anūshtakīn to the capital. The bedouin chief’s triumph was short-lived. Anūshtakīn continued to keep himself well informed about affairs in the area by special messengers. When the new wazīr, al-Jarjarā’ī, was looking for a commander to lead an expedition to take action against the bedouin, he naturally turned to Anūshtakīn. He was duly despatched with 7,000 new troops to Ramla and then to Jerusalem, collecting more reinforcements on the way. Meanwhile, the bedouin confederation gathered their forces, Ṣālih. b. Mirdās coming south from Aleppo. In 420/1029, the two armies met at al-Uqḥuwāna near the Sea of Galilee. The outcome was a decisive victory for the Fatimid forces. Ṣalih. b. Mirdās was killed and the bedouin coalition dispersed.
Anūshtakīn became the governor of Damascus and Syria, a post he held until his death in 432/1041. During the later years of al-Ḥākim’s and the early part of al-ẓāhir’s reign, Damascus, ruled by Turkish soldiers and members of the Hamdanid family, had suffered greatly from the depredations of the bedouin who invaded the Ghūṭa and destroyed agriculture. The victory at al-Uqḥuwāna seems to have changed the position, and the period of Anūshtakīn’s rule was remembered in the city as one of peace and prosperity. His career demonstrates how the ghulām system allowed men of humble origins but proved ability to rise to the highest ranks. In other ways, he was exceptional among the ghilmān of the age. He was a successful administrator as well as a soldier, and he was a family man, having a son, who died young, and four daughters. He used his marriages, and those of his daughters, to develop contacts with important figures in Syria and the Fatimid court. In Palestine, he broke the power of the Jarrahids; there were still nomads in the area but never again was a nomad chief able to threaten the settled cities of Palestine as Ḥassān b. al-Jarrāh. had done. In a real sense, al-Uqḥuwāna represented the high-water mark of nomad activity.
In 427/1036, the Caliph al-Ẓāhir died. He does not seem to have been a very forceful politician, and authority was exercised by the capable wazīr al-Jarjarā’ī in Cairo and the military commander Anūshtakīn al-Dizbarī in Syria. While these two did not always see eye to eye and there were disagreements, especially about policy towards Aleppo, their partnership had assured stability and peace in the later part of the reign. al-Ẓāhir was succeeded by his son Ma‘add, who took the title of al-Mustanṣir. The new caliph was only seven years old, but his accession was not contested. In striking contrast to the Umayyad and early ‘Abbasid caliphs, succession disputes did not play an important part in the political life of the Fatimid caliphate. Al-Ḥākim, al-Ẓāhir and al-Mustanṣir all succeeded to the throne as boys, but no attempt was made to challenge their right to rule, and not until the death of al-Mustanṣir himself in 487/1094 was the succession disputed. One reason for this was the emphasis that Ismā‘īlī thought put on the inherited nature of authority. The Fatimid claim to legitimacy was based on the notion of direct descent from ‘Alī. The Fatimids therefore had a theory of hereditary succession which the Umayyads and ‘Abbasids never fully developed. To challenge the right of the heir to succeed challenged not just his right but the whole justification for Fatimid sovereignty. There were other reasons, connected with the power structure of the state. The members of the Fatimid family played very little part in politics. The leading men were wazīrs and qāḍīs from the civilian élite, and Berber and Turkish military men. On the whole, members of the Fatimid family neither governed provinces nor led armies, not even appeared as advisers at court. This meant that none of them built up independent power bases or attracted groups of supporters. Rather than succession disputes of the sort that were common in contemporary Buyid politics, debate and dispute in the Fatimid caliphate were concentrated on controlling the office of wazīr and governorates in Syria and, above all, on policy towards Aleppo. This was the main point of difference between al-Jarjarā’ī and Anūshtakīn. Like many of the Turkish troops based in Syria, Anūshtakīn sought the outright conquest and occupation of the city, while al-Jarjarā’ī, following the tradition of Ya‘qūb b. Killis, preferred friendly relations with a Mirdasid buffer state.
The early years of al-Mustanṣir’s reign were in all respects a continuation of his father’s rule. In 429/1038, Anūshtakīn achieved his ambition and captured Aleppo, driving out the Mirdasids and appointing two of his ghilmān to govern before returning to Damascus. But inevitably the conquest was threatened by the Byzantines, who wanted the city to remain independent, and by the Mirdasids, who never lost the support of the Kilābī bedouin to the east of the city. In 432/1041, Anūshtakīn was able to defeat a Byzantine counterattack, which was supported by the Mirdasids, but his triumph was short-lived because he died, of natural causes, later in the year (432/1041). The Fatimid Empire was soon to suffer from the loss of his strong authority. The immediate result was the return of the Mirdasids to Aleppo. Thimāl b. Ṣālih. was able to retake the city with little difficulty, and the caliph, presumably guided by al-Jarjarā’ī, acknowledged his authority without hesitation. Anūshtakīn’s position in Syria was taken over by al-Ḥasan b. al-Ḥusayn, a member of the Hamdanid family, the son of that al-Ḥusayn b. al-Ḥasan who had made the final attempt to restore Hamdanid authority in Mosul in 379/981 and grandson of the amīr Nāṣir al-Dawla. He took the honorific title of Nāṣir al-Dawla, once held by his grandfather.
In 436/1044–1045, al-Mustanṣir seems to have taken the initiative in a renewed propaganda offensive in the Muslim world, sending dā‘īs (missionaries) to Iran and Transoxania. While some of these were executed, their preaching seems to have had some effect. We have the diary of an Iranian convert, Nāṣir-i Khusrau, who came from his homeland in Khurāsān to visit the Fatimid capital at this time. His book, while it is undoubtedly a propagandist work, makes a clear contrast between the impoverished state of much of Iran and the prosperity of coastal Syria and above all of Egypt. His account of the capital shows the Fatimid caliphate at the height of its power and prosperity; the caliph rich and awesome, surrounded by a ceremonial more elaborate than any other Muslim dynasty had attempted. He also witnessed a display of military power, a review of the vast cosmopolitan Fatimid army, which showed a military strength vastly superior to the puny armies of the Buyids or the bedouin hordes of the ‘Uqaylids.
In 436/1045, the wazīr ‘Alī b. Aḥmad al-Jarjarā’ī died. He had run the Fatimid state for the previous eighteen years, and his passing marked the end of an era of peace and prosperity. No one was able to inherit his authority. The anarchy of the Fatimid state in the next generation lies beyond the scope of this volume, but the outlines of the problem began to emerge as soon as the old wazīr was dead: the rivalry between his protégés for control of the administration; the attempts by ambitious wazīrs to favour the Berbers in the army at the expense of the Turks and so attract their support; the role of the ambitious Hamdanid Nāṣir al-Dawla in stirring up and leading the Turks; and the growing unrest among the bedouin Banū Qurra. Underlying all these was a fundamental problem which had existed from before the Fatimid conquest of Egypt. At the beginning of this chapter, it was stressed that the Muslim community in early Islamic Egypt was comparatively small, and this meant that there was not a numerous and powerful local ruling and military class. Instead, from the third/ninth century onwards, Egypt became the centre of a struggle between the Mashāriqa (easterners), represented by the Turks and the Iraqi immigrants who ran much of the bureaucracy and the commercial life of the country, and the Maghāriba (westerners), mostly Berbers but including some Arabs from north Africa and Spain. The Ikhshidid government had been based on the Mashāriqa, and at first the Fatimid conquest had represented a victory for the Maghāriba, at least in military affairs. Almost the only people of local Egyptian origin who played an important part in the Fatimid caliphate were the Christians who were so often employed in the bureaucracy right up to the highest levels. When Ya‘qūb b. Killis, himself an easterner, began introducing Turkish troops into the army, the Maghāriba were obliged, often unwillingly, to share power. Under strong rulers, a rough balance could be kept between these two factions, but without that it could develop into civil war. This is what happened in the mid-fifth/eleventh century, and when order was eventually restored, this was only achieved by another outsider from a different background, the Armenian Badr al-Jamālī.
The success of the Fatimid caliphate from the time of al-Mu‘izz’s arrival in Cairo to the crisis of the reign of al-Mustanṣir, in spite of these divisions, was in great measure a product of the financial health of the state, what it is fair to describe as the Fatimid economic miracle. The evidence is for the prosperity not just of the state but of many of its citizens. Contemporary accounts are full of references to the splendour of court ceremonial, the jewels and the fabrics, and the contrast is made with the poverty of the ‘Abbasid caliph during the time of al-Qādir (381–422/991–1031). It was this money which enabled the caliphs to pay their troops and avoid, at least for a time, the military mutinies and disorders which were typical of the Buyid state. The wealth of Egypt also led to a major emigration of talented and skilled men from Iraq to Egypt. Many of the great Fatimid wazīrs, Ibn al-Furāt, Ya‘qūb b. Killis, Aḥmad b. ‘Alī al-Jarjarā’ī and, during the reign of al-Mustanṣir, al-Ḥasan b. ‘Alī al-Anbārī and Hārūn b. Sahl al-Tustarī, had Iraqi backgrounds. Nor was this migration confined to the bureaucratic élite. The Geniza documents reveal that many of the merchants whose activities are described had migrated from the east to make their fortunes in Egypt. This migration was both a cause and a sign of the prosperity of the area.
The reasons for this wealth are complex. As always with the economic history of this period, our sources document trade much better than agriculture, but there can be no doubt that agriculture was the main source of wealth. Despite periodic failures of the Nile, and the resultant famines, it would seem that Egyptian agriculture was prosperous at this time. Certainly, the expanding urban community of Cairo must have created a market for surpluses, and the evidence suggests that the Egyptian farmers could, in most years, produce enough to support immigrants from east and west who settled in the city. The role of the state in agriculture was limited. Perhaps the most important contribution was the peace and stability of the early Fatimid years. Apart from the revolt of Abū Rakwa and occasional bedouin incursions, there were no major civil wars to damage the rural economy. Nor were the military given a free hand, as in contemporary Iraq, to exploit the country as they wished. Apart from the bizarre enactments of al-Ḥākim, there is no evidence of government decrees to help farmers, but the fact that the opening of the canals which marked the beginning of the Nile flood was one of the great state occasions of the Fatimid court is an indication of government concern at the highest level. In addition, the Fatimid government patronized the textile industry, which, in turn, boosted demand for flax and other agricultural products necessary for textile manufacture. Finally, and fundamental for the understanding of the wealth of Egypt at this time, was the fact that revenues collected in the country were largely spent there; apart from the endless Syrian wars, and the more productive expenditure on the Ḥajj, the taxes raised in Egypt remained there. The Fatimid court and administration were fixed in Cairo, and the wealth they collected, they spent in Egypt.
But it is the commercial prosperity of the state which has left most trace in the records. Fatimid Egypt was a centre of manufacturing and of international trade. One reason for this was the gold trade of the Nile valley from Nubia. Nubia, along with Ghāna,5 was the main source of gold for the Mediterranean and Islamic worlds, and Egypt benefited greatly from the influx of precious metal. The dīnārs of the Fatimid caliphs were of an unrivalled fineness, and sound coinage certainly helped assure the loyalty of soldiers and bureaucrats alike. In Fatimid times, Egypt also became the main transit market between the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean worlds. Essentially, Cairo took over the role of Baṣra, reduced by the instability of Iraq and sacked by the Qarāmiṭa. The evidence suggests that the Red Sea route, via the port of ‘Aydhāb and Qūṣ on the middle Nile, came to replace the Gulf/southern Iraq route from the Indian Ocean to the central Islamic lands. Equally significant, however, was the changing nature of trade in the Mediterranean. Much of Egypt’s trade in the early Fatimid period was with Muslim north Africa, by sea and by overland caravan, but trade with Christian Europe was also becoming significant. This was essentially a result of the growing prosperity of western Europe. For the first time since antiquity, western Europe became a significant market for the luxury products of the East, the fine textiles and above all the pepper and spices of the Indian Ocean area. From the reign of al-‘Azīz, shortly after the establishment of the Fatimids in Egypt, there are references to merchants from Amalfi in southern Italy in Cairo and by the mid-eleventh century they had their own hospice and church in Jerusalem. The Geniza documents are full of references to the arrival of the Franks at Alexandria and the effect this had on prices and local prosperity. Nor was this prosperity confined to Egypt – Nāṣir-i Khusrau observed that ships sailed from Tripoli, in Syria, to western Europe. Fatimid policy itself helped to revive the Syrian coastal ports, used to transport men and supplies to Fatimid armies in the area. Government policies towards trade seem to have been very much laissez-faire, and apart from the patronage of the Egyptian textile industry to supply the needs of the court, there was little active encouragement. What the Fatimids did was to assure a measure of security and a sound coinage, but much of Fatimid greatness and prosperity was founded on changing economic patterns which they did little to cause. If the ‘Abbasid caliphate was destroyed by economic collapse in Iraq, the Fatimid caliphate was in a sense created by economic prosperity in Egypt.