It seems almost impossible to excuse Hakim’s conduct at this period
by the supposition that he was an earnest but fanatical puritan: the
frequency of new regulations, the constant changes in so many details,
and the capricious character of his conduct all tend to make the theory
of so many contemporaries that he was insane the more plausible.

In Syria the prestige of Egypt increased. Mansur, the son of Luʿluʿ at
Aleppo, had to ask Hakim’s help against Abu l-Hayja, the grandson of Sayf
ad-Dawla, and this was given. In Ramadan of this year (404) Hakim issued
a charter granting to Mansur Aleppo and its dependencies which were thus
held as tributary to Egypt.

Early in 405 the Chief Qadi, Malik b. Saʿid al-Faraki, was put to death
after holding office for six years, nine months and ten days. His income
was estimated at 15,000 pieces of gold. In Jumada the chief minister,
Husayn b. Taher, was put to death and replaced by the two brothers,
ʿAbdu r-Rahim and Husayn, sons of Abu Saʿid. After holding office for
sixty-two days they were put to death and replaced by Fadl b. Jaʿfar,
who held office only five days and was put to death; then ʿAli b. Jaʿfar
b. Fallah. Maqrizi mentions no other holder, but it does not follow that
ʿAli held the post to the end of the reign as, for some reason, he omits
all mention of Hakim’s later years: no doubt the reason is to be found in
his unwillingness to treat the closing phase of Hakim’s strange career,
and to these last years he makes no reference in any part of his work.

The Chief Qadi was replaced by Ahmad b. Muhammad ibn Abi l-Awwam, who
retained his office until 413, the year following the close of Hakim’s
reign.

Hakim now increased his habit of riding out. He began to use asses in
preference to horses, and went out clothed plainly in black, wearing on
his head a little linen cap without a turban. Orders were given that when
he went out the officials were to remain in their offices and not form
an escort as had been the custom. As the year went on he went out more
and more frequently until he was usually out six or seven times a day,
sometimes riding on his ass, sometimes borne in a litter, and sometimes
going in a boat on the Nile. He became more lavish than ever with his
gifts, and presented estates to the owners of boats, to subordinate
officials of various kinds, and to the Arab tribesmen of the B. Qorra.
Amongst the gifts he made to these latter was the overlordship of the
city of Alexandria and its suburbs.

In Syria Saktekin Shams ad-Dawla was made governor of Damascus, and this
office he held until 408. He was a tyrannical and cruel man. Towards
the end of his career he built the “New Bridge” below the citadel at
Damascus, intending himself to be the first to cross it. One day when
it was nearing completion he saw a horseman riding across the bridge.
In great anger he sends down a messenger to arrest him. But the strange
horseman turned out to be a messenger from Egypt with orders for his
deposition from office.

At Aleppo Murtada ad-Dawla raised up many enemies. The Arabs of the B.
Kalab tribe took up arms against him; he pretended to agree to their
terms and invited them into the city to a feast: as soon as they entered
he had the gates shut, arrested the chief men, and slew about one
thousand. This took place in 402. Salih b. Mirdas, one of the chief men
who had been imprisoned, filed through his irons and escaped in this
year, 405. When he is at large he ravages the whole country, and when
Murtada goes out to check him he is himself taken prisoner by the Arab.
Salih, however, really desired peace, and agreed to liberate Murtada
for a ransom of 15,000 pieces of gold, 120,000 pounds of silver, and
500 pieces of stuff, the freedom of the women and others of his tribe
who were still in prison, the equal division of the towns and lands of
Aleppo between himself and Murtada, and the gift of Murtada’s daughter
in marriage. These extraordinary conditions were granted and Murtada was
set free. But then he proved unwilling to divide the lands and towns of
his principality or to give his daughter in marriage, so Salih makes war
again and blockades Aleppo and starves it into unconditional surrender.

In 406 a quarrel sprung up between Murtada and Fatah Kalai who was the
governor of the citadel. Murtada considered that he had been instrumental
in fomenting Salih’s rebellion. Finally Fatah openly revolted against
Murtada and sent him the message, “Go out of Aleppo, or I give the
citadel to Salih.” Soon after this, as Murtada was in his palace near the
gate Bab al-Jinan, he heard drums and trumpets and cried out: “Hakim, O
Mansur: Salih, O Mansur,” believing that the citadel was in the hands of
the Arab chieftain: so greatly was he frightened that, without enquiring
what was the real cause of the drums and trumpets, he fled out of the
city with his family and escaped to Antioch, where he was given an asylum
by the Greek Emperor. As soon as Fatah heard of his flight he proclaimed
Hakim as sovereign over Aleppo, made terms with Salih and gave him half
the revenues of the city and its suburbs, and presented to him the ladies
of Murtada’s harim whom he had not taken with him in his flight. Salih
sent all Murtada’s wives and the other ladies to Antioch, retaining only
Murtada’s daughter whom he married.

Fatah wrote an account of these events to Hakim, and the Khalif was
very well pleased that he was now not merely suzerain over the ruler
of Aleppo but the actual owner of the city. He conferred the title of
_Mubarak ad-Dawla wa-Saidha_ on Fatah. In the following year (407) Hakim
wrote to the citizens of Aleppo abolishing the imposts and various taxes
which had been paid. Fatah was given all the goods which had belonged to
Murtada and was sent as governor to Tyre, after handing over the citadel
of Aleppo to the Emir ʿAziz ad-Dawla, an Armenian slave who had belonged
to Manjutakin. On this slave Hakim conferred the title _Emir ul-Umara_
or “Supreme Prince,” and presented him with a pelisse of honour, several
horses with harness adorned with gold, and a sword of state. Later on the
Emir revolted against Hakim.

Meanwhile very curious events were taking place in Egypt. In the course
of 407 (though al-Maqin says 408), a Persian _daʿi_ named Muhammad
b. Ismaʿil Darazi arrived in Egypt, a Batinite who believed in the
transmigration of souls, and hoped to find at the Fatimid court a
congenial atmosphere for his mystic creed. He attached himself to the
Khalif, over whom he soon began to have great influence, and from whom he
received many gifts and favours. In due course he succeeded in persuading
the prince that he was an incarnation of the deity, and wrote a book in
which he taught that the Divine Spirit which God had breathed into Adam
had passed on in due succession from prophet to prophet, through the Imam
ʿAli, until at length it found its abode in the Imam Hakim. So great was
his influence over the Khalif that much of the public business was given
into his hands, and all who desired to approach the Khalif had to pay
court to the _daʿi_. The heir elect seems to have fallen into disfavour
about this time. He was sent away from Cairo but given the important
post of governor of Damascus. After he had been in Syria for some time
he was suddenly attacked by a band of men who, after slaying several of
his companions, put him in a box and carried him to Egypt. There he was
released and, a little later, was sent back to Damascus. No explanation
of this strange event is suggested, but it was generally believed that he
was thus treated by the Khalif’s orders.

Amongst some of the more advanced Shiʿites many were found to follow
the new doctrines of Darazi, and the _daʿi_ accompanied by a band of
followers went down to the Old Mosque where he read from the book he had
written. According to an account given by al-Masin a Turk, shocked at the
blasphemies which occurred in this reading, fell upon Darazi and killed
him, after which his house was pillaged, and a tumult followed which
lasted for three days. The Turk was arrested and put in prison, and was
then brought to trial on another charge for which he was executed. For
a long time the Turk’s grave was visited by the orthodox who regarded
him as a martyr. But this account is not strictly correct, for Darazi
was not killed at that time. According to Abu l-Mahsin, the most weighty
authority, Hakim did not openly endorse Darazi’s teaching; when the
tumult arose in the mosque Darazi escaped and received money from Hakim,
and with this retired to Syria where he preached in the mountainous
parts where the people were very ignorant, and amongst them he obtained
many disciples and founded a sect, the Druses, which still exists in the
Lebanon. In religion these Druses hold a kind of pantheism, which in
many respects verges upon agnosticism, but has a pure morality, in spite
of the many charges which have been made against this as against every
other religion which keeps its creed a secret from the outside world.

About the same time, or perhaps a little after, a Persian from Farghana
named Hasan al-Akhram, also appears as using his influence to persuade
Hakim of his deity, or to develop the ideas which Darazi had already
instilled into him. This man formed a party on the conventional lines
of the extremer Shiʿites, entirely discarding all the traditional
observances of the Muslim religion. One day he went with a band of fifty
followers to the Old Mosque, where he found the Qadi sitting and hearing
cases. After treating the by-standers roughly, they present a question to
the Qadi, beginning their words with the form “In the name of Hakim, the
merciful, the compassionate,” applying to him the terms usually applied
to God. The Qadi raised his voice and protested against this with great
indignation. The people were so angry at the blasphemy that they fell
upon Akhram and his followers: of the latter several were killed, but
Akhram escaped.

The most famous of these duʿat, who at this time advocated the
deification of Hakim, was Hamza b. ʿAli b. Ahmad Hadi, a native of
Zawzan in Persia. The Druses regard him as their founder, and date their
years from the “Era of Hamza,” which is placed in A.H. 408. It seems
that his teaching was earlier than that of Ahmad the Qadi (405), and so
probably he was in private conference with Hakim from somewhere about
405 until he made public declaration of his doctrine in 408. He dwelt in
the Mosque of Bir at Mantarea, originally the tomb of an ʿAlid who had
been put to death in 145, afterwards known as the Mosque of Tibr after a
minister who served under Kafur, and was one of those who had tried to
resist the entry of Jawhar. He preached and invited the people to accept
the teaching already expounded by Darazi, and sent out missionaries of
his doctrines to various parts of Egypt and Syria. Hakim was greatly
influenced by Hamza, and was induced by him to discard all the outward
observances of Islam, ceasing to visit the mosques, or to take part in
prayer. Under the pretext that the Arabs were a danger to travellers
he suppressed the pilgrimage to Mecca and ceased to send the veil to
the “House of God,” all of which caused great disgust to the orthodox.
Hamza and twelve of his disciples, the traditional number of the Shiʿite
_nakibs_, were in constant attendance on Hakim. It seems that Hamza was
the real founder and teacher of Hakim’s deity, and that Darazi was one
of his converts. But the details of the formation of this sectarian
development during the years 405-408 are full of obscurities: it does
not seem safe to follow the sacred books of the Druses who idealised
the whole matter. We do not find ourselves on solid ground until 408,
when the claims of Hakim to deity were publicly proclaimed and admitted
by the Khalif himself. It is said (by Severus) that Hakim claimed to
have a knowledge of secret things, and tried to support this claim by
evidence which he gleaned from his spies. But Severus’ evidence must be
regarded with some suspicion: a Syrian Christian he heard of the events
in Egypt only at second hand, and is very obviously influenced by strong
prejudices. He refers to this claimed omniscience of Hakim the incident
of the letter which read: “We have endured injustice and tyranny, but
we are not willing to endure impiety and folly. If thou knowest hidden
things, say the name of him who wrote this letter,” an incident which
seems to belong to the early days of the Khalif al-Mahdi in Kairawan.
Severus further tells us that when Hakim’s name was mentioned in the
_khutba_ all present rose out of respect; but in Fustat the people made a
prostration at this name. He is referring, no doubt, to reported conduct
of Hamza’s followers. He says further that there were some people who,
when Hakim appeared in the streets, used to prostrate themselves on
the ground and cry out: “O thou only one, thou alone, thou who givest
life and death”: this is exactly what might be expected of the extremer
Shiʿites, and is in no way incredible. At this time all persecution of
Christians and Jews entirely ceased; obviously the Khalif no longer
regarded Islam as in any way superior to those other religions. Persons
who had turned Muslims were permitted to return to their former beliefs;
contrary to Muslim law they were protected from all punishment, but it is
obvious that at this juncture Muslim law was not in any sense observed in
the Fatimid state. Severus tells us that some Christians and Jews came to
the Khalif and said: “My God, I desire to return to my former religion”:
and Hakim replied: “Do as seems good to you.” According to the books of
the Druses: “Although it is a precept to make war with the unbelievers,
our lord has abolished this precept so far as concerns Jews and
Christians.” The Druses refer this to the era of Hamza, _i.e._, 408 A.H.,
but Severus puts it in the year 736 of the “era of the Martyrs,” that is
A.H. 411, the closing year of Hakim’s reign, and dates the beginning of
the persecution of Christians from 402, taking the destruction of the
great Church in Jerusalem as the beginning of the persecution, that is to
say, the beginning of the time when active steps were taken which reached
to Syria as well as Egypt, and in this agrees with Abu l-Mahsin, but
Maqrizi puts the destruction of the Church of the Resurrection in 400 so
that the end of the persecution, which lasted nine years, would come in
408-409, when Hakim had assented to the public declaration of his deity
which seems to be the more probable date.

Towards the end of the nine years of persecution it was reported to Hakim
that some converts from Christianity had been celebrating the rites
of their former religion privately in houses, but he took no steps to
punish them, and this emboldened others to do likewise. If this was so
it would seem that there was no formal decree of toleration but simply
that the penal regulations were permitted to sink into oblivion. Then
some attended on the Khalif and asked permission to revert to their
former religion. Hakim asked where were their girdles, crosses, and
other badges?—they produced them from under their clothes. The Khalif
made no rebuke but told them that they could do as they pleased, and
sent them with an attendant to the office where they obtained letters of
protection. After this many unwilling converts did the same, until most
of those who had changed their religion from fear had returned to their
former faith.

The monk Yamin next procured the exiled Patriarch Zacharias an interview
with the Khalif, which took place in the monastery of St. Mercurius
at Sahran. In the course of this interview Hakim gave permission to
the Christians to re-open their churches, to restore those which had
been destroyed, to recover building material removed at the time when
churches were being demolished, and to regain possession of gardens
and property attached to the churches and monasteries. The Christians
were no longer required to wear distinctive badges, or rather the
disuse of those badges was tacitly condoned, and were allowed to sound
bells. Ibn Khallikan refers this toleration to 411, which agrees with
Severus and with Bar Hebraeus, who speaks of this change as taking place
shortly before Hakim was killed, and adds that at this time many of the
Christians who had gone abroad returned to Egypt. Probably breaches of
the persecuting laws began to be condoned in 408 or soon after, and these
increased gradually as it was seen that they could be made with impunity.

Meanwhile the extremes to which the followers of Hamza were prepared
to go also increased. Some of the courtiers on entering the Khalif’s
presence saluted him, “Hail to thee, only and unique one, hail to thee
who givest life and death, who bestowest wealth and poverty.” Having in
view the peculiar religious tendencies of the extremer Shiʿite sects, it
must not surprise us that there were some apparently sincere in their
acceptation of the divine character of the Imam, although the bulk of
the people remained sober and orthodox Muslims. One of the adherents of
Hamza’s doctrines who was at Mecca struck his lance on the sacred Black
Stone and said: “Why, O foolish ones, do you adore and kiss that which
cannot be of any use to you nor injure you, whilst you neglect him who is
in Egypt, who giveth life and death?”

Ibn Khallikan tells us that one day a Qurʾan reader was reading at court
the verse: “And they will not—I swear by the Lord—they will not believe,
until they have set thee up as judge between them on points where they
differ” (Qur. iv. 68), pointing the while towards the Khalif. Ibn
al-Mushajjar, a devout man who was present, then recited the verse: “O
men, a parable is set forth to you, wherefore hearken to it. Verily, they
on whom ye call beside God, cannot create a fly, though they assemble
for it; and if the fly carry off aught from them, they cannot take it
away from it. Weak the suppliant and the supplicated” (Qur. xxii. 72). At
this the Khalif changed countenance; to Ibn al-Mushajjar he presented
100 dinars, to the reader he gave nothing. But afterwards a friend said
to Ibn Mushajjar: “You know al-Hakim’s character, and are aware of his
frequent prevarications: take heed lest he conceive a hatred for you and
punish you later. You would then have much to suffer from him. My advice
is that you get out of his sight.” Ibn al-Mushajjar took this advice
seriously and set out on the pilgrimage to Mecca, but was ship-wrecked
and drowned.

The years 408 to 411 were entirely abnormal in the history of Egypt.
It has been suggested that the entire change in Hakim’s conduct during
these years was due to his being now initiated into the higher grades
of the Ismaʿilian sect, and thus he was now disposed to disregard all
forms of religion. But it seems to be very dubious how far the regular
Ismaʿilian system had remained in vigour in Fatimid Egypt. The state
was professedly Shiʿite, the Chief Daʿi held the regular conferences
required by the rules of the brotherhood, and undoubtedly initiates
were admitted: but since the sojourn in Egypt it rather seems that the
sect as a religious organization had greatly weakened, save in the one
respect that it was regarded with loyalty by the extremer Shiʿites in
Persia, and that from Persia more especially there was a constant stream
of pilgrims, enthusiastic sectaries whose enthusiasm was, if anything, a
source of embarrassment to the Egyptian government, whose interests were
now plainly political. Hamza, Darazi, and, later on, the originators of
the sect of Assassins, were all Persian Shiʿites who came to visit Egypt.
It seems more probable that Hakim’s new attitude was entirely due to the
influence of these Persian visitors.

In the year 409 Hakim was riding in the streets and saw what he supposed
to be a woman standing in the street, a plain breach of the regulations
in force. At once Hakim rode over to her and found that she was holding
out a petition in her hand. He ordered one of his attendants to take the
paper and arrest the woman. When they laid hands on her it turned out
that it was only a guy of paper, and the document she held out was full
of charges against the chastity of the Princess Hakim’s sister. Hakim
went home in a towering rage. He abused his sister for giving ground for
such reflections to be made on her honour, and spoke to her many harsh
words. More than once before this he had treated her harshly when she had
ventured to remonstrate with him on his various cruelties, but this was
an attack graver than he had ever made previously.

Next day Hakim turned loose his mercenaries, Arabs, Berbers, Greeks, and
negroes, upon the city. For three days they broke open houses, pillaged,
slew those who resisted them, violated women, and carried off maidens of
the best families, and burned a great part of Fustat. Each day Hakim rode
out to the cemetery of Karafa and looked down on the suffering city. Many
of the citizens came around him to implore mercy, but he remained unmoved
and gave no sign of hearing them. On the fourth day the Sherifs assembled
in the mosques lifting Qurʾans to heaven and implored divine assistance.
So piteous was the condition of the people that many of the Turkish
guards were moved and took their part, and in this they were soon joined
by the Berbers, both doing their best to restrain the bestial ferocity
of the negroes, until the whole place was raging in civil war. At length
some of the Turks went to Hakim, and in no measured terms called on him
to interfere and stop this terrible state of affairs. Hakim replied quite
coolly deploring the excesses of the soldiery, and agreeing with the
Turks that it ought to be stopped. He then rode down into the city on his
ass and stopped the conflict. After that he called the Turks and Berbers
round him, expressed the greatest regret for the suffering which the
city had had to undergo, protested that he did not at all desire such an
unhappy event, and that it could not be avoided, and published a general
amnesty. As soon as things settled down it was found that about a third
of the city had been burned, and about a half pillaged. The citizens had
much trouble in recovering their ravished wives, daughters, and sisters,
most of whom had been dishonoured by the negro soldiers. Some of the
women had committed suicide to avoid this shame. Many of the citizens
went to Hakim and asked him to get back their women for them. Hakim told
them to ransom them from their captors and promised to reimburse any
sums which were laid out in this manner. One of the townsmen reproached
him very harshly for this great disgrace to a Muslim community, and
expressed the hope that the women of the Khalif’s own family would suffer
the same as their wives and daughters. Hakim bore this reproach patiently
and made a mild reply.

Although this atrocious deed had made Hakim feel that he had revenged
himself on those who had reflected on his sister, he had by no means
forgiven her. After upbraiding her in no measured terms he informed her
that he would send some women to examine her and find if she really
were a virgin or not. The Asiatic historians who make most reference
to the Princess describe her as a woman of the noblest character and
of the highest chastity, and represent this as a deliberate and insane
insult offered by her brother. It is not at all clear that this is a
true estimate. Later on we find her as a woman of undoubted ability,
but unscrupulous character. At the same time it is extremely probable
that the members of Hakim’s family had graver reasons for alarm than
anyone else, if indeed it be true that he was now showing plain signs
of a disordered brain. At any rate when Hakim made this threat she was
greatly alarmed; it may be that she feared such an examination, or it
may be that she deeply resented the insult. In her alarm she went to
Yusuf b. Dawwas ad-Dawla. Although one of the great nobles of Egypt Yusuf
abstained from attending the court and had so abstained for some time,
being thoroughly alarmed at Hakim’s conduct, and was careful to meet the
Khalif only at public functions which he could not avoid. One time Hakim
at such a parade asked him to visit him in his palace, but Yusuf did not
make the desired visit. The next time they met in public Hakim reproached
him for this, and Yusuf replied plainly that he would rather not go to
the palace; if Hakim had any evil intention towards him he would rather
wait at home to be summoned to death than to go to the palace, be killed
there, and thrown to the dogs. At this reply Hakim only laughed, but
Yusuf had serious fears that sooner or later the Khalif would have his
revenge, and probably a cruel one.

The Princess sent to Yusuf and asked for an interview with him at night.
This was arranged and she went to Yusuf’s house and explained to him
the great dangers threatening them both. The best thing to do would
be to arrange Hakim’s death: “You,” she said, “will be made general of
the armies, minister of the empire, and guardian of the young prince.
I shall live quietly in my palace as befits my sex and take no part in
business.” Some reports say that she also promised to marry Yusuf. To
all this Yusuf agreed. She asked him to supply two absolutely trusty
men, and these he provided. A plan of assassination was agreed upon, and
the two cut-throats were presented by her with a Maghrabi dagger each.
With reference to this account, which is given by Bar Hebraeus, and
outlined by al-Makini, Maqrizi says: “No credit should be given to what
the Asiatic writers say in their books, that this prince perished by
the plots of his sister. But God alone knows the whole truth” (Maq. ii.
289). It is important to note that Severus of Ashmunayn, who wrote only
thirty years after these events, makes no mention of the Princess in this
connection, though his tendency is to repeat all gossip unfavourable to
the Fatimids: he simply states that the details of Hakim’s disappearance
were unknown.

According to Ibn Khallikan, Hakim went out late in the night of 27th
Shawal 411, and spent the whole night going about on the Mokattam hill.
At daybreak he was near the tomb of Fokkai, and thence went east to
Hulwan, about five miles from Cairo, accompanied by two attendants. He
then met a company of Arabs, nine in number, who had a request to make
of him. He told them to go to the palace, and sent one of his attendants
with them. For some time he continued with the second attendant, then
told him to go back also. At that time he was still near the tomb of
Fokkai. The second attendant returned to the palace and left the Khalif
alone on Mokattam. Next morning he did not return, and for three days
no sign of him was seen; then, on Sunday, the 2nd of Dhu l-Zaʿda, the
eunuch Nesim, who was the chamberlain, and a number of other officials,
went out on the hills to make a search. At length they reached the
monastery known as Dayr al-Kosayr, and near there they found Hakim’s ass
with its saddle on but its legs hacked off. Following the footsteps of
the ass, which were accompanied by the footprints of two men they came
to a hollow where they found the Khalif’s clothes with marks of cuts,
but the buttons not undone. No body was ever found. It was assumed that
Hakim had been murdered, and that his arms had been cut off before the
clothes were removed. After the discovery of the ass and of the clothes
had been reported, the Princess considered it expedient to have Hakim’s
infant son proclaimed Khalif, thus avoiding the claims of ʿAbdu r-Rahim,
the heir designated by Hakim, and it seems that the main evidence for her
supposed complicity with the murder rests on this act which assumed that
he must be dead, though it is difficult to see how she could have acted
differently under the circumstances.

Al-Mahsin is reported as saying that Hakim went out, and that after
sending back Nesim and his squire, he had as companions only a page
and a young slave: at the time he was filled with apprehensions as he
knew from his horoscope that the night was one of great peril to him.
When he was on Mokattam he said: “We belong to God and return to him”:
then clapping his hands together he added, “Thou hast appeared then,
O dismal sign,” referring to the star whose appearance he took as the
warning of his death. Going along the hillside he met ten men of the B.
Qorra who had a request to make to him, and said that they had often
waited in vain at his palace door. Hakim orders them to be paid 10,000
pieces of silver from the treasury, and directs his page to go with them
and draw the money for them. They objected that it might be that the
Khalif was angry with them for interrupting his walk, and that perhaps
the order in the page’s hand might privately direct that they were to
be put to punishment, so they requested that he would also give them a
safe conduct, and this the Khalif gave. Hakim and the young slave then
go on and enter a valley where the two men sent by Yusuf are lying in
ambush. They came out and fell upon him just as the day was dawning. At
their appearance he cried out, “Wretches, what do you want?” They cut
off his two arms, open his stomach, and tear out the entrails, and wrap
the body in a robe. They then slew the slave, cut the traces of the ass,
and carried off the body to Yusuf. He took it to the Princess, who made
presents to him and to the two murderers. She then sent for the wazir,
revealed to him what had happened, and made him promise secrecy. She
persuaded him to write to ʿAbdu r-Rahim at Damascus, and at the same time
sent an officer named ʿAli b. Dawud to Ferma to seize ʿAbdu r-Rahim on
his way to Egypt and carry him to Tannis; and also she sent instructions
to the governor of Tannis. Next day it was observed that Hakim did not
return. Abu Arus would not allow the gates of Kahira to be opened,
stating that the Khalif had ordered them to be closed the day before, and
no search was made until the following day. The Princess had conferences
with the chiefs of the Katama tribe and other leading persons and, with
the help of lavish presents, induced them to recognise Hakim’s son as his
successor, although they had already given formal recognition to ʿAbdu
r-Rahim. On the seventh day she dressed the child in rich robes and sent
for Yusuf, whom she declared to be ustad or guardian. Then the child
was taken out in state, the wazir proclaimed him as Khalif, and he was
generally recognised.

The facts of Hakim’s disappearance were never fully known. One report,
as we have seen, was that he was murdered. Of the murder Maqrizi gives
another account which exculpates the Princess. He says: “Masihi relates
that in the year 415 a man of the family of Husayn was arrested after
raising up rebellion in the southern part of Upper Egypt. This man
confessed that it was he who had killed Hakim. He said that there were
four accomplices of the crime, and that they afterwards fled to different
parts. He showed a piece of the skin of Hakim’s head and a fragment of
the piece of cotton with which he had been clothed. He was asked why he
had killed him. He replied: “Out of zeal for the glory of God and of
Islam.” Further questioned as to the way in which he had committed the
crime, he drew out a dagger and striking it to his breast he cried, as he
fell dead, “That is the way I killed him.” His head was cut off and sent
to the Khalif with all that was found in him” (Maq. ii. 290).

The Druses of course believe that he disappeared like others of the Imams
before him, going away in sorrow from a world which was not worthy of his
pure doctrine and that he lives still in concealment to reveal himself in
due time when the world is ready for him. Other persons believed that
he had hidden himself because he was disgusted at the state of affairs
and weary of the throne, and was living contentedly in obscurity. Bar
Hebraeus tells us of a widespread belief in Egypt that Hakim had been
recognised as a Christian monk at Sketis. Severus says that for sixteen
years there were constant rumours of his return. A certain proselyte from
Christianity named Sherut claimed to be the Khalif and called himself Abu
l-ʿArab. In voice and appearance he very closely resembled Hakim and had
many followers. About 427 he was in Lower Egypt, and a certain Arab who
believed in him provided him with a tent where he lived for some time.
Very often he used to give the Arab rich presents of clothes and arms,
but himself lived in the strictest simplicity. At last the government
heard of him and he fled, after some twenty years’ personation of the
ex-Khalif. Abu l-Feda tells us of a pretender named Sikkin who revolted
in 434, and was seized and hanged (_Annal. Moslem_ iii. 119). De Sacy
thinks that this Sikkin was the same as the Sherut of Severus. Strangely
enough every one of these claimants found enthusiastic supporters, as
though Hakim had been the most popular of all the Khalifs of Egypt.

XI

THE SEVENTH FATIMID KHALIF, AZ-ZAHIR

(A.H. 411-427 = A.D. 1021-1035)

On the “Day of Sacrifice,” 411, seven days after Hakim’s disappearance,
his son Abu l-Hasan ʿAli az-Zahir li-ʿizazi-dini-llah (“the triumphant in
strengthening God’s religion”), then a boy of sixteen years of age, was
recognised as Khalif. The heir designated by Hakim, ʿAbdu r-Rahim, was
still in Damascus, but the Princess wrote to him ordering his immediate
return to Egypt. Instead of obeying this summons he declared himself
the independent ruler of Damascus, and made himself popular amongst the
citizens by repealing the many vexatious regulations which Hakim had put
in force. But this popularity did not last long: he soon made himself
odious by his avarice and grasping extortions, and craftily utilising
this, and the discontent of the soldiers who did not receive the
gratuities which they expected, the Princess contrived to gain a party
of supporters, and by their help had him arrested and sent in chains to
Egypt where he was imprisoned for some four years, then fell ill and
died, perhaps poisoned, three days before the Princess herself died.

For the first four years of az-Zahir’s reign the whole power was in the
hands of his aunt, the Princess Royal. According to Ibn Khallikan the
Princess sent for Yusuf b. Dawwas, the noble who the Syrian writers
describe as having conspired with her to arrange the murder of Hakim, and
made him a present of a hundred slaves. After the wazir had gone home she
sent the eunuch Nesim after these slaves, and conveyed her orders to them
that it was their duty to slay Yusuf, as he was the person responsible
for the late Khalif’s assassination. In consequence of this Yusuf was put
to death. Soon afterwards the Princess contrived the death of two of the
wazirs who succeeded him, and throughout the whole four years of her rule
she showed herself cruel and vindictive. She died in 416, and the chief
control then passed into the hands of a committee of three sheikhs who
paid a daily visit to the Khalif, but excluded him from all participation
in the administration.

The year of the Princess’ death saw the beginning of a terrible famine
in Egypt as the result of a series of bad Niles, and the resultant
distress lasted all through 416 and 417. In many cases the starving
villages took to brigandage, an evil to which the country is always more
or less exposed. Sometimes outbreaks are due, as in this case, to dire
distress and consequent recklessness; sometimes it means the revival of
ancient feuds between village and village, or family and family, so that
it is no more than an outlet for intermittent inter-tribal feuds and
private quarrels between villages or families; but in time of distress
these become more acrimonious and turn against strangers and travellers.
Even the pilgrims on their way through Egypt were attacked. Regulations
were passed to prevent the slaughter of cattle for fear that they would
be exterminated altogether; camels were scarce as many were killed
because it was impossible to provide them with food, and poultry could
hardly be procured. Crowds assembled before the palace crying, “Hunger,
hunger. O Commander of the faithful, it was not thus under thy father
and grandfather.” Then the slaves, starving and miserable, revolted and
swelled the numbers of brigands on the roads. In many places the citizens
formed themselves into “Committees of safety,” and the government
allowed them to arm and slay revolted slaves in self defence. The state
treasury was practically empty, for it was impossible to collect taxes,
and even the palace slaves and officials were in a starving condition.
The misery reached its height in 418 when ʿAli b. Ahmad al-Jarjarai,
the same whose hands had been cut off by Hakim, was appointed wazir. As
the year began (in the early part of February) the conditions were such
that barricades were erected across the streets of Cairo to keep out the
brigands and slaves, and the wazir himself was for some time a prisoner
in his official palace. Later in the year, however, there was a good
inundation, and this restored plenty, so that in 419 the country was once
more under normal conditions and order was restored.

A curious event of 416 was a persecution of the Malikite school of
jurists. At that time the Maliki system was the prevailing school of
thought in orthodox Egypt, though now it is for the most part confined
to Upper Egypt, the Shafiʿi system replacing it in Lower Egypt. Neither
of these, of course, was acceptable to the Shiʿites, who demanded that
the problems of canon law should be treated according to the teaching
of Jaʿfar as-Sadiq (cf. p. 96 above). Hakim had, in 400, founded and
endowed a college for instruction in the Malikite system, but in 404 it
was suppressed and its head was put to death. Nothing of this sort was
attempted now, but all the canonists of the Maliki school were banished
from Egypt. No doubt they were regarded as leaders of the Sunni element
as against the Shiʿite Khalifate.

In 418 when there was every prospect of a return to prosperity as the
result of an abundant Nile, the Khalif was able to make a satisfactory
treaty with the Greek Emperor, Constantine III. It was agreed that the
Fatimid Khalif should be prayed for in the _khutba_ in every mosque in
the Byzantine dominions, and permission was given for the restoration of
the mosque at Constantinople, which had been destroyed in retaliation for
the destruction of the Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem; whilst,
on the other side, the Khalif agreed to permit the rebuilding of the
Church at Jerusalem. This freed the Khalifate from one source of anxiety.

At the time of az-Zahir’s accession the authority of the Fatimids was
hardly recognised in Syria, but this was soon altered by the ability
and enterprise of Anushtegin ad-Dizbiri, who was the governor of
Caesarea. His first important action was against Salih b. Mirdas, the
Arab chieftain who had taken Aleppo from Murtada and had now established
himself as an independent prince. In 420 Anushtakin met him at
al-Ochuwana, a village near Tiberias, and defeated and killed him. He had
next to deal with Hasan b. Mufarraj, who was once more in revolt. This
he did so effectually that Hasan was obliged to flee and take refuge
amongst the Greeks. It is worth noting that the old mischief maker,
Husayn al-Maghrabi, who had fled from Egypt in 400, ended a career of
great vicissitudes in 418. After the failure of the revolt under Hakim he
had gone to the court of the Daylamite prince Baha ad-Dawla, and stayed
with his wazir Fakhr al-Mulk. But the Khalif of Baghdad suspected him
of being a Fatimite spy, and ordered Fakhr to get rid of him. Fakhr,
however, pleaded on his behalf, and at length obtained the Khalif’s
favour for the fugitive who was kindly received in Baghdad.

During the latter part of az-Zahir’s reign Fatimid influence had become
supreme in Palestine and Syria, save only in the few northern districts
which remained subject to the Greek Empire. It seemed indeed to be the
triumph of the Fatimids, but the appearance was fallacious. The Fatimid
Empire in Asia was held together only by the genius of Anushtegin, who
was able to avail himself of the favourable conditions which preceded the
great Turkish storm, which was even then gathering in the east.

It was the policy of the Princess Royal and of the committee which held
supreme power after her death to keep the Khalif in the background, and
exclude him from all real part in the work of government. It was as well,
perhaps, that his freedom was rather circumscribed for, as he grew up,
he gave signs of a cruel temperament which in some directions surpassed
that of his father. He was wholly occupied with the pursuit of pleasure,
finding his interest in the company of singing girls, buffoons, and
others of like kind, and showed no desire to take part in public affairs.
In 424 he invited the palace girls to the number of some 2,660 to a
festival: when they came to the feast they were led to one of the mosques
and taken inside; the doors were then bricked up and the unfortunate
girls were left to starve. For six months the mosque was left unopened
and the bodies unburied. Many other instances of wanton cruelty are
related of him.

In 427 az-Zahir fell sick of the plague, and as he grew worse he was
taken to the “Garden of the Strand” at Maqs, then the port of Cairo,
where he died on the 15th of Shaban, leaving the Khalifate to his son
al-Mustansir, then a child seven years of age.

XII

THE EIGHTH FATIMID KHALIF, AL-MUSTANSIR

(A.H. 427-487 = A.D. 1035-1095)

Abu Tamin al-Mustansir bi-llah (“the seeker of aid from God”) was
proclaimed Khalif at his father’s death on Sunday, the 15th Shaban, 427
(14 June, 1035). His reign has the distinction of being the longest of
all the Khalifates either in Egypt or elsewhere.

Again we find the influence of a woman of the royal family predominant
in the state, this time of a black ex-slave woman. In Cairo there were
two Jewish merchants, Abu Saʿd Abrahim and his brother Abu Nasr Saʿd
ad-Dahir, sons of Sahl. The Khalif az-Zahir had bought a black Sudani
slave girl from Saʿd ad-Dahir, and she was the mother of al-Mustansir.
During the earlier years of the reign the influence behind the throne
was in the hands of the Sudani Queen Mother and her former master, the
Jewish slave merchant. This influence was restrained so long as the wazir
al-Jarjarai lived, but all check upon it came to an end at his death in
436.

The old faction fights between Turks and Berbers had now long passed
away. Under Hakim we have seen the formation of new parties, Turks
and negroes, rival groups of mercenaries in the Khalif’s employ; the
Arabs and Berbers, so far as they were not absorbed in the mass of the
population, joining with the Turks in opposition to the negro regiments.
The Queen Mother, herself a Sudani negress, threw the whole weight of her
influence on the side of the black troops.

The period of al-Jarjarai’s administration was one of prosperity in Egypt
and, for the most part, of success in Syria. Syrian affairs mainly centre
round Aleppo where Hakim had appointed ʿAziz ad-Dawla governor in 406,
but his subsequent conduct was far from pleasing to the Khalif. After
renewing the fortifications and making his own treaty with the Greeks, he
commenced striking an independent coinage and then ceased to pay tribute
to Egypt. Indeed, at the time of his disappearance Hakim was actually
preparing an army to send against Aleppo. ʿAziz ad-Dawla, however,
managed to make peace with az-Zahir and the Princess Royal, and nothing
of importance transpired until his murder in 413 which popular opinion
ascribed to Badr the governor of the citadel. No doubt Badr expected
that getting rid of ad-Dawla would leave him supreme in the city, but
next year he was expelled by the Fatimid government and two entirely
independent governors were appointed, one for the city, the other for the
citadel.

Within the next few months a formidable rising took place in which all
the Arab tribes of Syria joined. They acted in three bodies, one led
by Salih b. Mirdas, who thought this a good opportunity of recovering
his former fief, attacked Aleppo; a second led by the old agitator
Hasan b. Mufarraj overran Palestine; and a third under Sinan moved
against Damascus. The Khalif sent his general Anushtakin to deal with
these revolts, but he received a serious check, and Salih, after taking
possession of Aleppo, passed on to Hims, Baʿalbak, and Sidon, so that in
416 the Fatimid power in Syria had almost passed away. In 420 Anushtakin
reinforcements had recovered possession of Damascus. Advancing against
Salih he had an engagement at Uqhuwana in which Salih fell, although
Asushtakin was not able to press on to Aleppo. The government of the city
was now divided between Salih’s two sons, Muʿizz ad-Dawla taking the
citadel, his brother Shibl ad-Dawla holding the city. After a short time,
however, Shibl ad-Dawla took command of the citadel as well, compensating
his brother with possessions outside the city. After this he commenced a
series of successful raids against the Greeks, and was able to inflict a
defeat upon the governor of Antioch. These raids became so serious that
the Greek Emperor made an expedition against Aleppo, but was defeated by
Shibl ad-Dawla and forced to retreat.

When al-Mustansir succeeded to the Fatimid throne in 427 Shibl ad-Dawla
thought it prudent to conciliate him by large gifts of booty won from
the Greeks, and the Khalif confirmed him as governor of Aleppo. Two
years later Anushtakin considered that the time had come to make another
attempt on Aleppo, and advanced against the city with a large army. Shibl
ad-Dawla went out against him, and a battle took place near the Orontes
in the month of Shaban 429, in which the forces of Aleppo were defeated,
Shibl ad-Dawla slain, and his brother Muʿizz ad-Dawla compelled to flee.
After this Muʿizz ad-Dawla went to ʿIraq, leaving deputies in charge of
Aleppo under whose rule the city quickly fell into a state of anarchy,
so that Anushtakin was able to take possession and appoint his own
governors, and thus Aleppo once more became part of the Fatimid empire.

This was the zenith of the Fatimid power in Syria and was mainly due to
the capacity of Anushtakin, and after this the Fatimid Empire began a
rapid decline. Anushtakin had himself aroused the jealousy and suspicion
of the wazir al-Jarjarai, and had to meet his most serious opposition
from the court at Cairo. Ill-advised by his wazir, al-Muntasir granted
Aleppo as a fief to Muʿizz ad-Dawla, and Anushtakin was compelled to
conduct him to the city to be invested. On the way Anushtakin, already
ill and much mortified by the deliberate destruction of the work he had
so efficiently executed, died (_A.H._ 433), and his successor Nasir
ad-Dawla, whom we shall see afterwards as a sinister character in Egypt,
placed Muʿizz ad-Dawla in possession of the city.

To survey briefly the subsequent history of Aleppo which now ceased to be
of primary importance to Egyptian history: Muʿizz ad-Dawla was confirmed
in his appointment by the Khalif in 436, and at the same time made good
terms with the Greek Empress Theodora, and with the Saljuk Tughril Beg
who was Sultan at the court of the ʿAbbasid Khalif. In 449 he exchanged
Aleppo for Bairut, ʿAkka, and Jubail, being replaced by two Fatimid
governors at Aleppo. In 452 Mahmud, his nephew, tried to seize the city
and succeeded in occupying it for a short time, after which it was
re-taken by Muʿizz ad-Dawla, who then held it until his death in 453.
Before he expired he appointed his brother ʿAtiya as his successor, but
Mahmud made war against his uncle and, helped by the Greeks, recovered
Aleppo in 457. Soon after this, as Mahmud was convinced that the Fatimid
rule in Syria was in its final decay, he made his submission to the
Khalif of Baghdad and his Sultan Alp Arslan. This change was unpopular
in Aleppo where the people were attached to the Shiʿite sect; there was
no open resistance but clearly expressed discontent. The worshippers
stripped the great mosque of its prayer mats, saying that these had been
bought or given for Shiʿite services; let those who wished to pray in the
Sunni fashion buy others for themselves.

The wazir al-Jarjarai died in 436, the year following the death of
Anushtakin. His disappearance opened the way to an increase of faction
fighting and court intrigue in Cairo. The next wazir was Ibn al-Anbari,
who soon provoked the enmity of the Queen Mother. It seems that Abu Nasr,
Saʿd ad-Dahir’s brother, was insulted by one of the wazir’s servants,
and when Abu Nasr complained he only obtained a rough answer from the
wazir. By the plots of Sʿad ad-Dahir and harim influence, Ibn al-Anbari
was deposed and replaced by the renegade Jew, Abu Mansur Sadaqa, in whom
the Queen expected to find a docile instrument. But Abu Saʿd continued
his intrigues against Ibn al-Anbari, and finally secured his execution
in 440. But this proved his undoing, for Sadaqa began to fear that the
same fate might lie in store for him also, so he bribed the Turkish guard
to assassinate Abu Saʿd, and Abu Nasr was put to death on the same day.
In retaliation the Queen Mother procured the assassination of Sadaqa.
The next wazir was a mere creature of the Queen and imported more negro
troops in large numbers to counterbalance the Turkish guard, whilst
the Khalif and his supporters brought in more Turks and had the wazir
murdered. The next wazir held office only three months and then was
deposed. For the six years following (436-442) the domestic politics of
Egypt centered entirely in the struggle between the Turkish mercenaries
and the negro troops.

Then in 442 there came forward once more a capable wazir in the humble
fisherman’s son al-Yazuri, as his name denotes a native of the coast
village of Yazur, near Jaffa, and he held office more or less firmly for
a period of eight years.

There can be no doubt that he was a perfectly earnest reformer, so far
as his knowledge extended, and that some of his experiments were rash
and unsuccessful does not detract from his personal sincerity. One of
his first measures was to sell the government stores of corn at the
lowest current prices, thus bringing down the price of corn throughout
the country and forcing the merchants to put their stock upon the market
at prices which suited the people. Incidentally this involved a severe
loss to the revenue, and, a more serious result, there was nothing
available when soon afterwards a bad Nile produced general scarcity,
so the country had again an experience of famine and then of plague.
In these circumstances he appealed to the Greek Emperor, Constantine
Monomachos, and arrangements were made for a supply of some two million
bushels which eased the situation. For several seasons when the Niles
were bad this assistance continued until Constantine died in 447. The
next Greek ruler, the Empress Theodora, tried to drive a harder bargain
and stipulated for a full alliance, defensive and offensive, as the
price. To this the wazir was not willing to agree, for shortage in Egypt
might not happen every year, whilst such an alliance would be permanent.
As a result the supplies were stopped and minor hostilities took place in
the neighbourhood of Antioch. The stoppage was not of great importance
as next year there was an exceptionally good Nile and Egypt was filled
with abundance. Taught by experience the wazir bought freely and laid up
stores for next year’s possible requirements. At the same time he took
active measures to prevent money-lenders seizing the standing crops or
merchants buying the unreaped corn as it stood at a low figure, and so
protected the thriftless people from the wrongs which had most preyed
upon them in the past.

In his dealings with the Copts he was harsh. Again as in the
anti-Christian legislation of Hakim we observe the great unpopularity
of those who were hereditary tax-collectors and who were suspected, no
doubt with excellent reason, of defrauding the revenue. The strict
organization introduced under the first Fatimid Khalif had been allowed
to grow slack, its continuance meant constant effort and unceasing
supervision, and this sustained effort hardly lies within the oriental
character. As wazir Yazuri himself amassed great wealth, far beyond
what could possibly have come to him from the regular emoluments of his
office: a certain amount of perquisites, of a kind which the western
would be inclined to describe as bribery, is known and tolerated in
oriental administration and Yazuri, a minister who must be regarded as
a good and beneficent ruler in spite of this, was not the one to take
a high ground of morality in such matters. He imprisoned the Patriarch
Christodoulos whom he accused of persuading the Nubian king to withhold
tribute, a charge which does not seem to have had any foundation; then
laid heavy fines on the whole Coptic community, no less a sum than 70,000
dinars, and closed churches until none were left in use, and imprisoned
the bishops, all it would appear in the attempt to make the Copts pay
up the fine or, as Yazuri would no doubt have described it, to disgorge
some part of their plunder filched from the public revenue. It does not
seem that there was any sectarian motive or feeling in these measures,
although they are sometimes made to figure as religious persecution.

In 450 Yazuri died, poisoned by order of the Queen Mother with the
consent of the Khalif. The ostensible charge was that he had been
detected in treasonable correspondence with the court of Baghdad, but the
real reason seems to have been that his inordinate wealth, which could
only have been attained by defrauding the public revenue on a gigantic
scale, had awakened jealousy and suspicion.

It is interesting to turn aside for a moment to the Persian poet
Nasir-i-Khusraw, who visited Cairo in the years just preceding the
ministry of Yazuri and who left a most graphic account of the wealth and
splendour of the Fatimid court and the prosperity of Cairo even at that
period of comparative disorder. In the eyes of this traveller, familiar
with the most prosperous and cultured cities of Persia and ʿIraq, the
magnificence of Cairo and its court seemed astonishing, and exactly the
same impression was made years afterwards, after the Fatimids had long
passed the zenith of their glory, on the Crusaders from the west. Under
Fatimid rule, apparently, Cairo surpassed all the cities of the then
known world in its luxury, magnificence, and wealth. As we have already
noted ostentatious display was the besetting fault of the whole Fatimid
dynasty, but this, it must be remembered, is usually popular in oriental
circles. Nasir-i-Khusraw was a devout Ismaʿilian and regarded Cairo as
the metropolis of his religion and the Khalif as the true Imam, religious
beliefs which he expresses freely in his works. He was a secretary under
the government in Khurasan until he experienced a conversion to the
religious life and, resigning his office, became first a pilgrim and then
a _daʿi_ of the Ismaʿilian sect. In his best known work the _Safarnama_
he describes how, after he had turned to religion, he set out for Mecca
in 437, and relates the experiences of his journey. He reached Mecca in
439 and returned thence to Damascus, then went to Jerusalem, and then by
land to Cairo where he remained two or three years, and during his stay
was initiated into the higher grades of the Ismaʿilian fraternity. As
his work was intended for general reading he is cautious in referring to
the more intimate matters of religion, but makes it quite clear that he
believes in the allegorical interpretation of the Qurʾan, that he accepts
the Fatimid Khalif as the true Imam, and adheres whole-heartedly to the
doctrines of the Fatimite sect. He gives a most glowing description, not
only of the splendours; of the Cairene court, but of the extraordinary
wealth and prosperity of the bazars and their merchants, and this at a
time (circ. 440) which we generally regard as one of the less fortunate
periods of Fatimid rule. It is particularly interesting to note his
observations on the Egyptian army at the time when its factions were at
the bottom of all the domestic troubles of Cairo. He estimates the whole
army as about 215,000 men. Of the cavalry 35,000 came from North Africa,
Berbers and Arabs, 50,000 were Arabs from the Hijaz, and 30,000 were of
mixed composition. Of the infantry, where the racial elements are more
significant, 20,000 were black troops raised in North Africa, 30,000
were Ethiopians by which we must understand Nubians, Sudanis, etc.,
10,000 were Syrians, Turks and Kurds, 30,000 were slaves presumably from
central Africa for the most part, and 10,000 are described as the “palace
guard,” which seems to have been a kind of foreign legion of adventurers
from various parts of Africa, Asia, and Europe. We shall have to return
again to Nasir-i-Khusraw, for after leaving Cairo he became a _daʿi_ of
the Ismaʿilians in western Asia, and indirectly played an important part
in the formation of the off-shoot of the Ismaʿilians, which afterwards
became notorious as the “Assassins.”

Yazuri’s wazirate saw a great limitation of Fatimid control over
North Africa, where in 443 Ifrikiya definitely repudiated the Shiʿite
doctrines. At that time the ruler of Ifrikiya settled now at the town of
Mahadiya which had replaced Kairawan, was Muʿizz al-Himyari as-Sanhaji,
the hereditary chieftain of one of the more prominent Berber tribes,
and more or less hereditary governor of Ifrikiya. Hakim had conferred
on him robes of state with the title _Sharaf ad-Dawla_ (“nobleness
of the empire”) in 407. Up to this time the Hanifite system of canon
law had prevailed through North Africa, for the Shiʿite attempt to
introduce the system ascribed to Jaʿfar as-Sadiq seems to have been a
failure, but Muʿizz introduced the Malikite jurisprudence throughout his
governorate; this, it will be remembered, was the system banned by the
Khalif az-Zahir in Egypt, and by thus acting Moʿizz showed very plainly
his entire disregard of the Fatimid who claimed to be his suzerain. Now,
in 433, Muʿizz formally repudiated Fatimid authority, omitting the name
of Mustansir from the _khutba_, and replacing it with the name of the
ʿAbbasid Khalif of Baghdad. At this Mustansir wrote: “Thou hast not trod
in the steps of thy forefathers, showing us obedience and fidelity?”—but
Muʿizz replied: “My father and forefathers were kings in Maghrab before
thy predecessors obtained possession of that country. Our family rendered
them services not to be rewarded by any rank which thou canst give. When
people attempted to degrade them, they exalted themselves by means of
their swords.” Thus the Fatimids lost what had been the earliest part of
their dominions in Africa, although the loss was not without its benefit,
for Ifrikiya had always been a course of trouble and of little real
profit.

The defection of Ifrikiya was not followed in all parts of North Africa.
There were still devoted Shiʿites in those parts, and they revolted from
Moʿizz when the Fatimid sent the Arab tribe of Hilal to win back the
country. The Arabs succeeded in recovering Barqa and Tripoli, but were
unable to advance further west. At the same time various independent
states, for the most part professing to be Shiʿite, arose in Maghrab.

In 448 the Turk, Tughril Beg, was recognised in Baghdad as the Sultan and
lieutenant of the Khalif. The Saljuq Turks were strictly orthodox, and
indeed at this time recognised themselves as the champions of orthodoxy.
When, two years later, the general of the troops in Baghdad, a Turk named
Arslan al-Basasiri, revolted against the Khalif al-Kaʾim and expelled him
from Baghdad, he put the seal on his revolt by causing the _khutba_ to
be said throughout Mesopotamia in the name of the Fatimid al-Mustansir,
and sent him his protestation of allegiance. The expelled ʿAbbasir Khalif
took refuge with the Emir of the Arabs and stayed with him one year,
and then the Saljuq Tughril Beg came to his relief, and having attacked
and slain al-Basasiri, reinstated the ʿAbbasid in Baghdad. The Khalif
made his entry into the city exactly one year after his expulsion, so
that Fatimid al-Mustansir had just one year’s nominal recognition in
Mesopotamia, but this cannot be seriously regarded as an extension of the
Fatimid dominion.

The proclamation of the Fatimid Khalifate in Baghdad and the exile of
the ʿAbbasid Khalif from his capital raised unduly high expectations
in Egypt. The more so as the official robe and jewelled turban of the
Baghdad Khalif, as well as the iron lectern, were carried off to Cairo,
and remained there until the fall of the Fatimids. Al-Mustansir was
confident that these symbols would be soon followed by the ʿAbbasid in
person, and laid out a large sum, stated to be no less than two million
dinars, in preparing the second palace which stood facing his own
dwelling across the great square in Kahira for the occupation, as he
hoped, of his illustrious captive.

In fact, however, the Fatimid Khalifate had already passed its happiest
hours and was rapidly approaching its decline. The Arabs still held
Tripoli and Barqa as subjects of Egypt, but this was the western limit
of Fatimid rule and the death of Anushtakin had practically ended its
authority in Syria.

Just about this time, however, there was a temporary restoration of
Fatimid authority in the Hijaz, and this not due to a rebel like
al-Basasiri, but to the work of a devout and earnest Shiʿite. Abu l-Hasan
ʿAli b. Muhammad b. ʿAli as-Sulaihi was the son of a Qadi of Yemen, a
strict and orthodox Sunni. The son, however, came under the influence
of an Ismaʿilian missionary named ʿAmir b. ʿAbdullah az-Zawwahi who,
concealing his Shiʿite opinions, was received into great favour by the
Qadi, but in private intercourse with the son taught him the Fatimid
system of canon law and the _tawil_ or allegorical interpretation of
the Qurʾan. For fifteen years as-Sulaihi acted as guide to the Meccan
pilgrims along the road between as-Sarat and Taif, then in 429 he broke
out in revolt against the established government and, at the head of
sixty followers, whom he bound by oath, seized upon Mount Mashar.
Secretly he supported the Khalifate of Mustansir, but this he concealed
for fear of Najah, the Chieftain of the Tihama. In 452 he presented Najah
with a beautiful female slave who, acting under his directions, poisoned
Najah and then released from all need of concealment openly proclaimed
the Fatimid Imamate. Three years later we find him the master of all
Yemen, having his headquarters at Sanaʿa, and for nearly twenty years
the _khutba_ in the cities of Yemen, and for part of that time also in
the holy cities of the Hijaz made mention of the name of the Khalif
al-Mustansir.

After the death of Najah he offered to give the chieftainship of the
Tihama to anyone who would pay him 100,000 dinars of gold. The sum was at
once paid by his wife on behalf of her brother Asaad b. Shihab. “Where
didst thou get this, mistress?” asked as-Sulaih. “From God,” she replied,
“God is bounteous without measure to whom he will (Qur. ii. 208).”
Perceiving that the money came from his own treasury as-Sulaihi smiled
and took it saying, “Here is our money returned to us” (Qur. xii. 65).

In 473 he made the pilgrimage to Mecca, taking with him his wife and all
the princes whom he thought at all likely to revolt during his absence.
Having appointed his son al-Malik al-Mukarram as his deputy at home he
set out with 2,000 horsemen and encamped outside al-Mahjam. Whilst there
he was sought out and found by Saʿid, the son of the poisoned Najah, who
had been roving about the country but had managed to evade the soldiers
of as-Sulaihi. At the very moment when Saʿid entered as-Sulaihi’s tent
5,000 horsemen were out in search of him. Entering his enemy’s tent
Saʿid at once cut off his head and then, escaping, went out and joined
himself to the horsemen who were searching for him; he announced to them
as-Sulaihi’s death, declared who he was himself, claiming to be one of
their own race and simply acting to avenge his father’s death. At once
the horsemen placed themselves under his command, and returning to the
camp fell upon as-Sulaihi’s guards and defeated them. As-Sulaihi’s head
was placed on the top of his own state umbrella and carried round to the
chanting of the verse, “O God, possessor of all power, thou givest power
to whom thou wilt, and from whom thou wilt thou takest it away. Thou
raisest up whom thou wilt, and whom thou wilt thou dost abase. In thy
hand is good; for thou art over all things potent” (Qur. iii. 25). Thus
as-Sulaihi’s kingdom came to an end and with it ceased the recognition of
the Fatimid Khalif in Arabia (Ibn Khall. 512, etc.).

Thus, from time to time, Muntasir received temporary recognition in
various unexpected quarters and seemed to bulk more prominently than any
of the preceding Fatimid Khalifs in the history of Islam, but meanwhile
his kingdom was on the decline and in Egypt was in evil condition, indeed
the period 450 to 466 shows the nadir of their authority in Egypt itself.

The death of Yazuri in 450 was a very serious loss as it once more
liberated the factions and forces of disorder, the evil influence being
the Turkish general Nasir ad-Dawla, the same who had succeeded Anushtakin
in Syria. After the murder of Yazuri there were forty different wazirs in
the space of nine years, many of these being put to death at the end of
their term of office, although about this time the more humane practice
came into force of appointing the deposed minister to some minor post,
very often some provincial government, from which it was quite possible
for him to rise to the wazirate again. None of these was a man of any
great weight or marked personality, so that the Khalif fell entirely into
the hands of mere court flatterers, altogether obscure and incompetent
persons, and himself developed a childish and petulant attitude. He was
especially annoyed at the frequent interference of the Queen Mother in
the affairs of the state, but had not the strength or courage to check
her.

The faction fights between the Turkish mercenaries and the negro troops
became more constant and violent under this weak and incompetent rule. At
length in 454 the Turks, led by Nasir ad-Dawla the Commander-in-Chief,
drove the negro regiments out of Cairo and chased them to Upper Egypt
where they were kept, although for some years they made regular attempts
to recover their footing in Lower Egypt. The victorious Turks dominated
Cairo, held the successive wazirs in subjection, treated the Khalif with
contempt, and used their power to deplete the treasury by increasing
their pay to nearly twenty times its former figure. At last Nasir
ad-Dawla’s tyranny made him offensive even to his own officers, and gave
the Khalif the opportunity of getting rid of him in 462. Though deposed
in Cairo he was able to hold his own in Alexandria where he had the
support of the B. Qorra Arabs and the Lawata Berbers. Thus the Arab and
Berber tribes under Nasir, helped by some of the Turkish mercenaries,
were in command of Alexandria and a considerable portion of Lower
Egypt, whilst the expelled negro troops were in possession of Upper
Egypt, the Khalif’s authority being limited to Cairo and its immediate
vicinity. Added to this was the fact that beginning with 458 there had
been a series of bad Niles followed by a famine of seven years duration
(459-465), whose later period was aggravated by Cairo being practically
isolated by the rebel forces to the north and to the south, the Berbers
in Lower Egypt deliberately aggravating the distress by ravaging the
country, destroying the embankments and canals, and seeking every way to
reduce the capital and the neighbouring districts by sheer starvation.
In the city a house could be bought for 20 pounds of flour, an egg was
sold for a dinar, a cake of bread for fifteen dinars, and even horses,
mules, cats, and dogs were sold at high prices for food. In the Khalif’s
own stable where there had been 10,000 animals there were now only three
thin horses, and his escort fainted from hunger as it accompanied him
through the streets. Many great princes and ex-officials of the court
gladly filled menial offices in the few houses where food was still
found, and sought employment as grooms, sweepers, and attendants in the
baths. Of all the Fatimids Mustansir had at one time enjoyed the largest
revenues and in 442 he had inherited the almost incredible wealth of two
aged ladies descended from his ancestor Moʿizz. But most of this had long
since been plundered by the Turkish guard, and now he also was reduced
to dire poverty. The Queen Mother and other ladies of the Khalif’s
family made good their escape and took refuge in Baghdad. At length the
people of Cairo were reduced to feeding on human flesh, which was even
sold publicly in the markets. Wayfarers were waylaid in the lonelier
streets, or caught by hooks let down from the windows, and devoured. As
an inevitable result of this protracted famine plague broke out, whole
districts were absolutely denuded of population, and house after house
lay empty.

Meanwhile the Turkish mercenaries had drained the treasury, the works of
art and valuables of all sorts in the palace were sold to satisfy their
demands; often they themselves were the purchasers at merely nominal
prices and sold the articles again at a profit. Emeralds valued at
300,000 dinars were bought by one Turkish general for 500 dinars, and in
one fortnight of the year 460 articles to the value of 30,000,000 dinars
were sold off to provide pay for the Turks. But this selling of the
valuable collections accumulated in the palace was as nothing compared
to the damage done wantonly by sheer mischief or unintentionally by
carelessness. The precious library which had been rendered available to
the public and was one of the objects for which many visited Cairo was
scattered, the books were torn up, thrown away, or used to light fires.

At length, after the Queen and her daughters had left Cairo, the Turks
began fighting amongst themselves. Nasir ad-Dawla attacked the city
which was defended by the rival faction of the Turkish guard and,
after burning part of Fustat and defeating the defenders, entered as
a conqueror. When he reached the palace he found the Khalif lodged in
rooms which had been stripped bare, waited on by only three slaves, and
subsisting on two loaves which were sent him daily by the charitable
daughters of Ibn Babshad the grammarian.

After this victory over the unhappy city Nasir ad-Dawla became so
over-bearing and tyrannical in his conduct that he provoked even his own
followers, and so at length he was assassinated in 466. But this only
left the city in a worse condition than ever, for it was now at the mercy
of the various Turkish factions which behaved no better than troops of
brigands.

At this desperate juncture al-Mustansir was roused to action and wrote to
the Armenian Badr al-Jamali, who had once been purchased as a slave by
Ibn ʿAmmar and was now acting as governor of Tyre, begging him to come
to the rescue. Badr replied that he would do so if he were allowed to
bring his own army with him and were given a free hand. This was granted,
and soon Badr was on his way. With courage quickened by the approach of
rescue the Khalif ventured to arrest Ildeguz, the Turkish governor of
Cairo, and thus put some check on the military tyranny. At his arrival
Badr was well received by the Turkish mercenaries who had no idea that he
had been invited by the Khalif. His first act was to invite the Turkish
leaders to a conference: each of his own chief officers was told off to
deal with one of these leaders and, at a given signal, each slaughtered
the man who had been designated. Badr then set himself to restore order
in Cairo, and this he did efficiently but with the severity rendered
necessary by the desperate condition of the city, and thus re-established
the Khalif as master. The grateful prince could not do too much to show
his appreciation of these services, and Badr was created wazir of the
sword and of the pen, _i.e._, chief minister of affairs military and
civil, Chief Qadi and Chief _Daʿi_. After reducing Cairo to complete
order he proceeded with his troops through Lower Egypt, putting down
brigandage and disorder until he reached Alexandria where he had some
resistance to overcome, but in due course that also was reduced. The
settlement of Cairo and Lower Egypt occupied the greater part of 467:
then in 468 he proceeded to Upper Egypt and succeeded in disbanding the
black troops which held out there, and reduced those parts also to good
order. Thus, once more, Egypt was under an efficient and firm government.
It is true that his efforts were greatly assisted by the fact that the
year 466 saw an exceptionally good Nile, so that prosperity and abundance
once more reigned through the land. It is interesting to note that the
Khalif set himself to the formation of a new library at Cairo as one of
his first tasks; it helps us to realize that the Shiʿites were then as
always the friends of learning.

Meanwhile difficult problems had arisen in Syria. The Saljuq Turks,
who were now dominant in Baghdad, were fanatically orthodox and set
themselves deliberately to root out the Fatimids from Islam. In 461,
during the period of disorder in Egypt, they had gained possession of
Jerusalem, and in 466 they took Damascus which never again acknowledged
a Fatimid ruler. The Saljuq general Atsiz then planned an expedition
against Egypt itself, and as this threat came just at the moment when
Badr was setting himself to the task of restoring order in Egypt he was
not in a position to attempt an expedition against the Saljuk Turks.
Ships were made ready to remove the court to Alexandria, and messengers
were sent out to attempt to bribe the Turkish general to retire. In
fact Atsiz was not well supported and felt himself not in a position
to press forward, so that this danger was averted. As soon as Badr had
reduced Lower Egypt he sent an expedition to recover Palestine and
Syria, and his army was able to gain possession of Jerusalem, where
Atsiz had been governor since 468. Hard pressed by the Egyptians Atsiz
appealed for help to the Saljuq general Tutush who had entered Syria
with large reinforcements, and at length evacuated from Jerusalem and
marched out to join with him. He met Tutush at Damascus, but the Saljuq
Commander-in-Chief severely rebuked Atsiz for quitting Jerusalem and
arrested and executed him (A.H. 471), and then himself took possession
of the whole of Syria. In 478 Tutush, now ʿAbbasid viceroy in Syria took
Aleppo, but soon after this he found himself opposed by his nephew
Barkyaruk, with whom he was compelled to wage war for some time until
he was slain in battle by his nephew’s forces in 488. Taking advantage
of this civil war Badr made another attempt upon Damascus, but this was
unsuccessful, although the Egyptians recovered Tyre and Akka. Shortly
after this success, in 487, Badr died and was succeeded as wazir by his
son Abu l-Kasim Shahanshah, commonly known as al-Afdal; and the wazir’s
death was soon followed by that of the Khalif Mustansir.

The rule of Badr was especially associated with a great development
of building, and especially with the construction of new walls and
gates round Cairo. In this work Badr employed Syrian architects who
introduced Byzantine styles of architecture and of fortification, and
made a greater use of stone in place of the brick which predominated in
the older constructions. The existing gates known respectively as the
Bab an-Nasr, the Bab al-Futuh, and the Bab az-Zuwayla, are specimens of
Badr’s work, and show an almost purely Byzantine style in marked contrast
to the native Egyptian work, and so the outpost tower called by the
unintelligible name of the Burg adh-Dhiffir. All these formed part of the
south boundary of the ancient Kahira, but are now included within the
area of the modern city. To the same period belongs the restoration of
the Nilometer in the island of Roda (A.H. 485).

In 483 Badr made a new assessment and return of taxation for Egypt and
Syria. Under his rule the annual revenue had risen from 2,000,000 dinars
to 3,100,000, and peace and prosperity reigned in all the land of Egypt,
though war prevailed in Syria, the mark of the first waves of Saljuq
invasion.

Before closing the narrative of the reign of Mustansir we must take
note of a visit to Egypt paid by a Persian missionary in 471, closely
connected with the visit of Nasir-i-Khusraw some years before, and
important in its bearing upon events which followed soon after
Mustansir’s death.

This Persian missionary, Hasan-i-Sabbah by name, was born in Qum whither
his father had removed from Kufa. Like his father he was a Shiʿite of
the “Twelver” sect, but came under the influence of Nasir-i-Khusraw who
was an active propagandist, although at the time Ismaʿilian doctrines
were not making much progress in Asia. After considerable hesitation he
became a proselyte of the Ismaʿilians and took the oath of allegiance to
the Fatimid Khalif. In 464 he came under the notice of the overseer of
the mission work in the district (_bahr_, literally, “sea”), of Isfahan,
and was advised by him to make a pilgrimage to Egypt. After spending
two years as assistant to the overseer of Isfahan he set out in 467 and
reached Cairo in 471 where he was well received by the Chief _Daʿi_ and
other leading persons, but was not allowed to have an interview with
the Khalif. At the time, it appears, the court was divided into two
factions over the question of the succession, the one party holding to
the Khalif’s elder son Nizar, the other to a younger son named Mustali.
In one place Nasir-i-Khusraw says that the Khalif told him that his
elder son Nizar was to be his heir, and the succession of the older son
would be in accordance with the doctrines of the sect as already proved
by their adherence to Ismaʿil, the son of Jaʿfar as-Sadiq. But Badr and
the chief officials were on the side of the younger son Mustali, and
it was probably the knowledge that the Persian visitor was opposed to
them on this question which stood in the way of a personal interview
with Mustansir. After eighteen months in Egypt Hasan-i-Sabbah was forced
to leave because, according to his own statement, he had provoked the
suspicion of Badr. So in 472 he embarked at Alexandria. His ship was
wrecked on the coast of Syria, and after much wandering he at length
made his way overland to Isfahan where he arrived in 473. At once he
commenced propaganda amongst the Ismaʿilians in favour of Nizar as the
chosen heir to the Imamate. In this work he was successful, and in 483
he obtained possession of the castle of Alamut (“the eagle’s teaching”)
which he made the headquarters of his branch of the Ismaʿilian sect. As
supporters of the claims of Nizar the members of this branch were known
as “Nizarites,” but later the name of “Assassins” became their commoner
designation. This term represents the Arabic _Hashishi_, that is to say,
user of Indian hemp or the “Faqir’s herb” (_cannabis Indica_), as this
was used as a means of intoxication and exaltation to arouse the members
of the sect charged with peculiarly difficult duties. In a later chapter
(cf. pp. 213, etc.) we shall see that these duties, the acts which are
now especially associated with the term assassin, were performed by
quite subordinate members of the sect; but these members entrusted with
the performance of deeds of violence and daring were prepared by being
worked up into a frenzy by the use of this drug whose peculiar influences
are well known in the east. From 473 to the date of Mustansir’s death
in 487 these “Assassins” were occupied in preaching the claims of the
prince Nizar to the Imamate, but they did not definitely separate from
the Ismaʿilian body or from their allegiance to the Fatimid Khalif until,
at Mustansir’s death, the elder son Nizar was formally excluded from
the succession, so that our further consideration of the sect is best
deferred to the next reign. A large literature exists on the history of
the Assassins. The most important authority is the “Adventures of our
master” (_i.e._, of Hasan-i-Sabbah), a lost work included amongst the
books in the great library at Alamut and examined by ʿAta Malik Juwayni
before it was burned with other heretical works, and from it he makes
important citations.

The longest Khalifate of Muslim history closed with the death of
Mustansir on the 18th of Dhu l-Hijja, 487 (A.D. 1094), and at once the
wazir al-Afdal announced the accession of the younger son al-Mustali.

XIII

THE NINTH FATIMID KHALIF, AL-MUSTALI

(A.H. 487-495 = A.D. 1094-1101)

As soon as al-Mustansir was dead the wazir al-Afdal al-Juyush entered
the palace and placed Abu l-Kasim Ahmad al-Mustali, a youth of eighteen
years of age and the youngest son of the late Khalif on the throne. At
the same time he sent for the other sons of Mustansir who were near at
hand, Nizar the eldest son, and his brothers ʿAbdullah and Ismaʿil,
bidding them come quickly. As soon as they entered the room where the
wazir awaited them and saw their youngest brother enthroned they were
filled with indignation, and when al-Afdal bade them do homage to Mustali
as the new Khalif, Nizar burst out, “I would rather be cut in pieces
than do homage to one younger than myself, and moreover I possess a
document in the handwriting of my father by which he names me successor,
and I shall go and bring it.” At this he went out, presumably to get
the document, but as he did not return the wazir sent after him, and it
was found that he had left the city. Very soon afterwards he appeared
at Alexandria, supported by his brother ʿAbdullah and an emir named Ibn
Massal, and there he assumed the title of Khalif with the surname of
al-Mustafa li-dinillah (“the chosen for God’s religion”), and received
the oath of allegiance from the Alexandrians. He promised Nasir ad-Dawla
Iftikin, the Turkish governor of Alexandria, that he should be wazir.
As we have already seen, there was a party ready to support Nizar even
before Mustansir’s death, and his claims seemed to have fair prospects
of success. No doubt we may say that the sectarian supporters of the
Fatimid Imamate were with him, whilst al-Afdal headed the secularist
party: but there would, no doubt, be many aggrieved with the existing
administration, and even perhaps remnants of those whom al-Afdal’s father
had suppressed with such severity, who were ready to throw in their lot
with the opposition to the wazir’s nominee in Cairo.

In 488 al-Afdal found it necessary to take the field against Nizar and
his followers, but suffered a sharp repulse in the first engagement.
Encouraged by this the Nizarites laid waste the country north of Cairo.
Again al-Afdal prepared his forces and marched this time to Alexandria
and laid siege to it. During this siege Ibn Massal had a dream in which
he seemed to be riding on horseback and al-Afdal was following him on
foot. He consulted an astrologer as to the meaning of this dream, and
was informed that it signified the ultimate success of al-Afdal, for
those who walk the earth are those who will possess it. Ibn Massal took
this very seriously and thought it prudent to leave Nizar’s party, so
he departed and retired to Lukk near Barqa. This defection marked the
turning point of Nizar’s career for, after losing Ibn Massal and his
men, his fortunes gradually declined. Convinced that resistance could
not endure for long he sent out and asked al-Afdal if he would spare
his life if he submitted. Receiving a favourable answer the gates of
Alexandria were opened to the wazir who took possession of the city and,
after putting an end to all resistance, returned to Cairo with Nizar and
ʿAbdullah. Nizar’s subsequent life is totally unknown. He was either
imprisoned in absolute secrecy, or put to death: stories were told of
both these ends, but nothing was ever known for certain. A certain
Muhammad afterwards claimed to be Nizar’s son, and had a following in
Yemen: he was brought to Cairo and crucified in 523. In all probability
he was an imposter.

The suppression of Nizar and his partisans meant the triumph of al-Afdal,
and during the rest of Mustali’s reign the Khalif was entirely without
authority in the state, and came out only as required at public functions.

The suppression of Nizar involved a definite separation between the
Fatimids of Cairo and their court on the one side and the Asiatic
adherents of Nizar’s Imamate on the other, and so from 488 onwards the
Assassins formed a distinct sect, as much opposed to the Fatimids and
their followers as to the orthodox Muslims. The founder, Hasan-i-Sabbah,
had now fully organised that sect on lines which were in general outline
imitated from the traditional system of the Ismaʿilians, but differed in
detail. There were grades and successive stages of initiation, and the
real beliefs of the higher grades were of the same pantheistic-agnostic
type as in the Ismaʿilian body, and similarly the members of those upper
grades were keen students of the science and philosophy which had been
derived from Hellenistic tradition. When the headquarters of the sect at
Alamut were finally taken they were found to contain a vast library as
well as an observatory and a collection of scientific instruments. In
fact we may say with confidence that the Assassins represent the highest
level of scholarship and research in contemporary Asiatic Islam, if we
can indeed regard them as within the Islamic fold; an island of culture
and learning in the midst of reactionary orthodoxy and actual ignorance,
the result of the submerging of Asiatic Islam beneath the flood of
Turkish invasion. Far away in the west a purer culture was beginning
to dawn in Muslim Spain, but in Asia philosophy and science were being
rapidly obscured by the reactionary flood.

As organised by Hasan-i-Sabbah the Assassins appear in six grades. The
highest of these was filled by the “Chief Daʿi” who recognised the Imam
alone as superior on earth. So long as Mustansir lived he was regarded
as the true Imam; after his death Nizar was his successor, and later on
we find the Chief Daʿi claiming descent from Nizar, but this was as yet
in the future. It was the same development as that which we have already
observed in the history of the Shiʿite sect founded by ʿAbdullah b.
Maymun. Amongst outsiders the Chief Daʿi commonly went by the name of
“Sheikh of the mountain,” _i.e._, of the mountain stronghold of Alamut
which formed the headquarters of the sect, and this is reproduced as “the
old man of the mountain” in the records of the Crusaders. Under the Chief
Daʿi were the “Senior Missionaries” (daʿi-i-kabir), each supervising
a diocese or _bahr_ (“sea”), and under these were the ordinary
missionaries. Thus far the organization merely reproduced that already
prevalent in the Ismaʿilian propaganda. Beneath the missionaries were the
ordinary members in two main grades known respectively as “companions”
(rafiq) and “adherents” (lasiq), the former more fully initiated in the
batimite or allegorical interpretations of doctrine than the latter.
The sixth grade, theoretically the lowest, was peculiar to the Assassin
sect, and consisted of “devoted ones” (fidaʿi) who do not seem to have
been initiated, but were bound to a blind and unquestioning obedience
which has its parallel in the discipline of the various darwish orders,
but was here carried to exceptional extremes. These _fidaʿis_ were
carefully trained and were especially practised in the use of various
forms of disguise, after all only a more perfect refinement of the
methods originally evolved by the Hashimite missionaries; but these were
not disguised for the purpose of acting more efficiently as missionaries
and for penetrating different communities as teachers, but solely for
the purpose of carrying out the specific orders of the Chief Daʿi, and
thus formed a most formidable branch of what soon became an exceptionally
powerful secret society. In many cases the acts entrusted to the
_fidaʿis_ were acts of murder, and it is from this that the name of
“assassin” has received its peculiar meaning in most of the languages of
Western Europe. The _fidaʿi_, trained to the use of disguise, sometimes
as a servant, or as a merchant, or darwish, or as a Christian monk, was
able to penetrate into almost any society and to strike down suddenly
the victim marked out; and counted it a triumphant success if this act
involved his own death as well. A deliberate effort was made to surround
the sect with an atmosphere of terror; a Muslim prince would be struck
down whilst he was acting as leader at prayer, or a Crusading knight as
he was attending high mass at the head of his troops, or if there was
not actual murder, a leader might wake up in his tent to find a message
from the Assassins pinned by a dagger to the ground beside his couch, or
a doctor of the law would find a similar message between the pages of
the text book from which he was lecturing. All this was developed more
elaborately as time went on, but already in the days of Mustali the sect
had rendered itself prominent by getting rid of some leading men whom it
regarded as its enemies, such as in 485 Nidhamu l-Mulk the great wazir
of the Saljuq sultans, in 491 ʿAbdu r-Rahman as-Samayrami the wazir of
Barkiyaruq’s mother, and in 494 Unru Bulka, the rival of Nidhamu l-Mulk
and the emir of greater influence in Isfahan. The higher members of the
sect were domiciled at Alamut, or in some one or other of the various
mountain fortresses they secured in Northern Persia and afterwards in
Syria, but adherents were found everywhere scattered through western
Asia. In its development the sect of Assassins was almost entirely
Asiatic, but as professed adherents of Nizar the eldest son of Mustansir,
the Assassins were, at least nominally, of Egyptian origin.

So far the danger most threatening to the Fatimids had been the advance
of the Saljuq Turks, pledged to the destruction of the Ismaʿilian heresy,
from the east: but in the fourth year of Mustali’s reign a new danger
appeared. This was the appearance of the Franks embarked on the First
Crusade, who reached Syria in the year 490, when the Saljuq influence was
already on the decline. The great Saljuq leader Tutush had died in the
preceding year, and his two sons at once became rivals, the one, Duqaq,
established at Damascus, the other, Rudwan, at Aleppo. Rudwan was anxious
to obtain Fatimid assistance and inserted Mustali’s name in the _khutba_,
but the Fatimid state regarded the Saljuqs with dread and suspicion, and
was disposed to welcome the Franks as possible allies against the Turks.
Jerusalem remained in Saljuq hands under the control of the sons of Ortuk
b. Aksab who had governed in the name of Tutush, and they formed an
outpost of the Saljuq empire which the Fatimid government regarded as its
chief enemy in the east.

The Crusaders professed to be the champions of the Christian religion
and declared their aim as being the deliverance of the sacred sites from
the occupation of the Muslims. Before reaching Syria, however, they had
made it plain that this was not to be understood in a literal sense, for
they had shown marked hostility towards the Greek Church, and throughout
the whole of their career they were the uncompromising enemies of all
the eastern churches. No doubt this can be partly explained by a total
lack of understanding or sympathy towards religious bodies whose general
customs and external organisation, and more particularly whose liturgy,
differed so markedly from the forms developed in the west; but the fact
remains that their fellow Christians in the east soon came to regard the
Crusaders with as much dislike as the Muslims. This antagonism towards
the Greek and eastern churches generally was fully defined before their
arrival in Syria. But in fact they were not even the champions of Latin
Christianity. Some, no doubt, were sincere in their desire to rescue
the Holy Land from non-Christian occupation, but for the most part
they were adventurers desirous of carving out principalities in lands
which they were well aware were much richer and more prosperous than
their own countries in the west. From their own point of view the time
at which this Crusade arrived was exceptionally promising: the Saljuq
power was broken and there was a temporary lull in the migration of the
virile and warlike Turkish races westwards, whilst the Muslim community
was divided between ʿAbbasids and Fatimids beyond the possibility of
united resistance. Twenty years earlier, or fifty years later they would
certainly not have been able to establish themselves in Palestine, but
just at the moment circumstances were favourable.

Arriving in Syria in A.H. 490 the Crusaders under Baldwin (or Bardawil
as he appears in the Arabic writers) took the city of Edessa and then
proceeded to lay siege to Antioch which fell into their hands on the 16th
of Rajab 491 (20th June, 1098). News of their arrival and first successes
had early reached Egypt, and al-Afdal prepared to welcome them as likely
auxiliaries against the Turks: it seemed fully possible that the Franks
and Fatimids might divide Western Asia between them, and such indeed
would have been feasible. Under this impression al-Afdal sent an army
into Palestine and wrested Jerusalem from Sokman the son of Ortuk, who
held it as a part of the Saljuq empire, at the same time sending forward
an embassy to the Franks welcoming them and asking to make an alliance
with them. The Franks absolutely rejected these proposals and declined to
accept any friendly overtures from Muslims. Very soon they proceeded to
attack Jerusalem, and in the month of Shaban, 492, took it, plundering
the mosques, slaughtering the Muslim population, and showing themselves
hostile to orthodox and Shiʿite alike. This disillusioned al-Afdal
and made it clear to him that it was impossible to expect any sort of
alliance with the new-comers. After taking Jerusalem and expelling the
Fatimid government the Franks elected Godfrey king of Jerusalem, a rank
which he held until the following year, and during this time he did his
best to introduce western customs and jurisprudence in the city as well
as the Latin rite in the churches.

In the following year (493) the Franks attacked the Egyptian army before
Ascalon, which now remained the only important possession of the Fatimids
in Palestine. Before the battle the wazir sent an envoy with a flag of
truce, but this the Franks disregarded and made an assault upon those
who, according to the customary usages of war, should have been sacred.
In the ordinary way such attacks made in disregard of a flag of truce,
reported in practically every war, ought not to be treated too seriously
by the historian: it is almost impossible, even in the best disciplined
army, to make sure that no abuse of this kind shall ever occur, but in
the case of the Crusaders there seems to have been a deliberate intention
to treat the Muslims as outside the ordinary conventions which were
more or less observed amongst Christian nations: although it must be
remembered that we are dealing with times before the rise of chivalry
and the humaner attitude which characterised mediaeval warfare, all more
fully developed after contact with the Muslims who did much to refine
Frankish manners and usages; and, moreover, the very mixed multitude
loosely held together in the Crusading ranks was undisciplined even
beyond the wont of those days. In the succeeding engagement the Franks
defeated al-Afdal and his forces, and he was compelled to embark for
Egypt. Ascalon, however, was not taken as the citizens, alarmed by the
recent savagery of the Franks in Jerusalem and perceiving that they were,
for the most part, simply out for booty, bribed them to leave the city
alone.

Two years later (495) the Franks gained another victory over the
Egyptians near Jaffa and began seriously to consider the prospect of
invading Egypt.

At this juncture al-Mustali died. At the moment, fortunately, the wazir
al-Afdal was in Egypt, and on the day of his death proclaimed his son
al-Amir Khalif in his place.

XIV

THE TENTH FATIMID KHALIF, AL-AMIR

(A.H. 495-524 = 1101-1131 A.D.)

At Mustali’s death al-Afdal at once proclaimed Abu ʿAli al-Mansur al-Amir
bi-ahkami-llah (“the ruler by the decrees of God”), then only in his
fifth year, as Khalif, retaining the government in his own hands as had
now become the established custom at the Fatimid court. Al-Afdal was
an able and efficient ruler, whilst the young Khalif was of the type
so common in oriental courts, a mere votary of pleasure and an idler.
The wazir restrained the indulgence of his tastes and kept him closely
confined in the palace. Al-Amir does not seem to have been at all
aggrieved at being excluded from the government, but he certainly chafed
at the restrictions which the wazir considered suitable to apply to his
pleasures.

The centre of interest still lies in the Crusaders who had now
established a firm hold in Palestine and were threatening Egypt. In 497
they took possession of Akka (Acre), and this increased the anxiety
felt in the Fatimid court. In the same year al-Afdal sent his son in
command of an army to Palestine, and he was successful in inflicting a
severe defeat on the Franks: many were put to flight, and Baldwin, who
had succeeded Godfrey as king of Jerusalem, was compelled to hide in a
haystack. The Egyptians then advanced and took Ramla and, after slaying
a large number of the vanquished, sent three hundred knights prisoners
to Egypt. Later in the year both sides were reinforced, the Egyptians
receiving an accession of four thousand cavalry as well as the support
of a fleet, but no decisive step was taken and no progress made on
either side. At this time nearly all Palestine was in the hands of the
Franks save the coast towns, and the struggle centered round Ramla. The
Fatimids had the advantage of an alliance with Tughtegin, the Saljuq
governor of Damascus, for the Turks had at last perceived that it was
necessary for all Muslim powers to unite against those who had proved to
be a common enemy. A battle took place between Ascalon and Jaffa, but
without any important result.

Nothing of marked importance took place during the next three years,
but in 502 the Franks succeeded in taking the important coast town of
Tripolis on Monday, the 11th of Dhu l-Hijja. When they entered the town
they plundered and slaughtered indiscriminately and seized many of the
inhabitants for slaves; they destroyed the library of the college and
tortured their prisoners in a barbarous manner. The Egyptian wazir had
sent an army to the relief of the town, but it arrived too late to be of
any service.

After the fall of Tripolis the Muslim forces centered at Tyre. In the
following year (503) the Franks took Bairut, and in the year after Sidon,
so that the Fatimid possessions were reduced to a precarious hold on
Ramla.

Thus affairs stayed for some six years, then in 511 Baldwin attempted
the invasion of Egypt. He took Farama, burning the mosques, houses, and
suburbs, and then advanced to Tinnis. Near this town he was taken ill,
and shortly afterwards died at al-Arish. At his death the projected
invasion was abandoned and the Frankish army retired, bearing with it the
king of Jerusalem’s body which was ultimately buried in the Church of the
Resurrection.

Egypt had practically lost all hold upon Palestine, but yet the
threatening horde of Franks was held off from Egypt itself, and this
check was in no small degree creditable to the wazir al-Afdal, who
meanwhile maintained a firm though not absolutely pure government at
home. But gradually the Khalif became more and more restive under the
severe tutelage of his wazir, and always there were intrigues of the
aggrieved and the ambitious to urge him on, as well as the ever present
influence of the harim which, in almost all oriental countries, is the
centre of intrigues against the established powers. In 515 the Khalif
began to plot definitely against his wazir, and one day as al-Afdal rode
out towards the Nile he was attacked and severely wounded, so that he
was carried home to die. The Khalif visited him on his death-bed and
expressed great sympathy and regret for the accident which had befallen
him, an accident whose real nature was perfectly well known to both: as
soon as the wazir breathed his last the Khalif commenced plundering his
house which was the depository of enormous wealth, and this occupied him
forty days (Ibn Khall. i. 614, cf. Jamal ad-Din).

After al-Afdal’s death al-Amir appointed Muhammad b. Abi Shujaa b.
al-Bataihi al-Maʾmun as wazir. This new officer was a capable financier
but harsh and tyrannical, and restrained the Khalif more rigorously than
his predecessor had done. He was the builder of the “grey mosque” (Jamiʿ
al-Akmar), so called from its being one of the earliest buildings in
which stone was used almost exclusively, and completed the “Mosque of the
Elephant” (Jamiʿ al-Fil) which had been commenced by al-Afdal in 498. He
held office until 518 when he was arrested and his property confiscated.
Three years later, in 521, he and five of his brothers, as well as the
pretender who claimed to be Nizar’s son, were put to death.

After the fall of Ibn al-Bataihi the Khalif determined to act as his own
wazir, and in this was assisted by the Christian monk Abu Najah b. Kanna,
who undertook the department of finance. The monk’s method was to farm
out the taxes to Christian collectors for a net sum of 100,000 dinars,
which he paid in to the treasury. But Abu Najah made himself extremely
offensive by his arrogant airs and by being the scape-goat of the harsh
exactions of the collectors, the inevitable result of this system, and
after a brief try the Khalif was persuaded to depose him, and he was
flogged to death. Al-Amir continued, however, to act as his own wazir
until his death in 524, and this made his office universally detested and
justifies the custom of appointing a wazir or deputy on whom the odium of
the harsher details of the executive should lie, and against whom there
might be, at least in theory, an appeal to the throne. Indeed, during
these years 519 to 524 the Khalif seems to have been more heartily hated
than any other of his dynasty before or after. At length the end came in
524 by the hands of Ismaʿilian Assassins who had undertaken the duty of
ridding the country of the tyrant. On Tuesday, the 3rd of Dhu l-Qaʿdah,
the Khalif proceeded to Fustat and thence to the island of Roda, where
he had built a pleasure house for a favourite Baidawi concubine. “Some
persons who had plotted his death were lying there concealed with their
arms ready; it being agreed among them that they should kill him as he
was going up the lane through which he had to pass in order to reach the
top of the hill. As he was going by them, they sprang out and fell upon
him with their swords. He had then crossed the bridge and had no other
escort than a few pages, courtiers, and attendants. They bore him in a
boat across the Nile, and brought him still living into Cairo. The same
night he was taken to the castle and there he died, leaving no posterity
... al-Amir’s conduct was detestable: oppressed the people, seized on
their wealth and shed their blood: he committed with pleasure every
excess which should be avoided, and regarded forbidden enjoyment as the
sweetest. The people were delighted at his death” (Ibn Khall. ii. 457).

During the latter part of al-Amir’s reign the Franks continued to
consolidate their kingdom in Palestine. On Monday, the 22nd of Jumada II.
518, they took Tyre, and only Ascalon remained to the Fatimids of their
former possessions in Asia. About this time the Franks began to strike
their own coinage, after issuing coins in the name of the Fatimid Khalif
for three years.

XV

THE ELEVENTH FATIMID KHALIF, AL-HAFIZ

(A.H. 524-544 = A.D. 1131-1149.)

The Khalif al-Amir left no son, but at the time of his death one of his
wives was pregnant, and it was possible that she might give birth to
an heir. Under these circumstances Abu l-Maymun ʿAbdu l-Hamid al-Hafiz
li-dini-llah (“the guardian of the religion of God”), son of Muhammad,
one of the brothers of Mustali, and consequently cousin to the late
Khalif, was declared regent, and as such received the oath of allegiance
from the citizens of Cairo on the very day of al-Amir’s murder, and on
the same day the wazir Abu ʿAli Ahmad, son of al-Afdal, received the
oath of allegiance from the troops. The regent al-Hafiz expressed his
confidence that the child about to be borne to the deceased Khalif would
be a son. “No Imam of this family,” he said, “dies without leaving a
male child to whom he transmits the Imamate by special declaration” (Ibn
Khall. 430). Although the late Khalif’s cousin was thus declared formal
regent the wazir Ahmad put him in confinement and took the whole power
into his own hands, and this received the ready acquiescence of the court
and of the troops and people, for everyone regarded the late experiment
of the Khalif acting as his own wazir as disastrous. The new wazir
ruled justly and well, and restored to each the property which had been
confiscated by al-Amir, so that as a ruler he was greatly esteemed.

In other respects, however, his conduct throws a strange light on the
conditions prevailing in the Fatimid state at this period. The Fatimids
claimed to be not only rulers of Egypt, but the legitimate Khalifs in
true descent from the Prophet, and also Imams divinely appointed as
guides and teachers of Islam. The whole Fatimid state was bound up with
this religious theory, although it was one which did not command the
sympathy of the bulk of the subject population, and a distinct tendency
had more than once appeared to discard it for frankly secular claims.
Under the wazir Ahmad this theory on which the Fatimid claim rested was
formally discarded by the government. Ahmad himself was a Shiʿite, but
of the sect of the “Twelvers” and so a follower, not of the Fatimid Imam
under whom he held office, but of the hidden and unrevealed Imam who,
under the name of Muhammad al-Muntazir, had disappeared in 260. For the
present, therefore, the Friday prayer in the mosques was offered for the
invisible “al-Kaʾim,” and his name appeared on the coinage. To us such
a condition seems almost incredible, even though during the time the
titular head was merely regent and not fully recognised as Khalif. When
al-Amir’s wife was delivered her child was a daughter, but for all that
al-Hafiz remained simply regent until 526.

Dissatisfied with his dubious position and the restrictions imposed by
the wazir Hafiz plotted against him, and Ahmad was assassinated in the
“Great Garden” as he was on his way to play polo on the 15th of Muharram
526 (Dec., 1131). At his death Hafiz received the oath of allegiance as
Khalif, and was acclaimed by his bodyguard, the “Young Guard,” although
his reign is usually dated from the date of his cousin’s death. At this
time al-Hafiz was fifty-seven years of age.

He appointed as wazir an Armenian named Yanis who had been a slave of
al-Afdal, one of the Armenian mercenaries whom he had brought from Syria.
Yanis turned out to be a severe and hard ruler, and in the following
year he was poisoned by the Khalif’s order. In spite of the warning of
al-Amir’s reign al-Hafiz then resolved to act as his own wazir, and in
this he did well and was generally regarded with respect and attachment.
His court was, however, divided into factions as the result of quarrels
about the heirship between his two sons Hasan and Faʿiz, each supported
by one of the two great bodies of negro mercenaries, the elder Hasan by
the Rayhaniya regiment, the younger by the Juyushiya. At length these
quarrels resulted in open warfare, and the victorious Juyushiya to the
number of 10,000 assembled before the royal palace and demanded the
head of the prince Hasan. The Khalif was not in a position to refuse
this demand and sent for one of the court physicians, a Jew named Abu
Mansur, and asked him to poison Hasan, but the Jew prudently declined the
dangerous task. He then sent for a Christian physician named Ibn Kirfa
who performed it, and the dead prince’s head was given to the rebels.
But the Khalif never forgave Ibn Kirfa for what he had done, and before
long an excuse was found to imprison the Christian physician, and in due
course he was executed.

After their successful revolt the troops elected as wazir the Armenian
Bahram. But he very soon made himself unpopular by showing marked
favouritism towards his fellow countrymen who, for the most part, had
entered the country in the company of the Armenian Badr al-Jamali. As
a result he was deposed and most of the Armenians expelled from the
country. Bahram ended his life as a monk.

In 532 Rudwan was appointed wazir and was the first official in Egypt to
assume the title of “king.” But he held office only for a few months, and
in 534 was cast into prison.

Meanwhile the Franks had met with several checks. The Turks under Zengi
defeated them at Atharib in 525, and in 539 took Edessa from them.
Thus the Franks began to be threatened from the north-east, and their
opponents were consciously making plans for their final subjugation or
expulsion. In 541 Zengi died and was succeeded by his son Nur ad-Din,
who becomes the decisive factor in the affairs of western Asia and Egypt
within the course of the next few years. At this time the Franks were
distinctly on the decline, and the hopes built on the foundation of
Jerusalem and other Latin kingdoms in Palestine and Syria were not being
realised. The West began to feel that the First Crusade had failed in
its effort, and so the Second Crusade, mainly the work of St. Bernard
whose aims and intentions were above question, set out in 542 and
attacked Damascus in the following year, the Crusaders then marching on
Jerusalem. But the Second Crusade was an immediate and marked failure.
Conditions were greatly changed from what they had been when the former
Crusade arrived: there was now a strong Turkish power in Syria, and
this was inclined and prepared to be aggressive. The Second Crusade was
necessarily a failure. The only important result of Frankish invasion was
the kingdom of Jerusalem which had been the work of the First Crusade.

At this period of Egyptian history we are able to avail ourselves of
the very interesting record which Osama has left of his own experiences
in Syria and Egypt, a record which has been rendered accessible in the
French translation of Derenbourg (_Vie d’Ousama_, Paris, 1886-93). Osama
left Damascus in 538 and went to Cairo, where he was well received by
al-Hafiz, who gave him a robe of honour and a house and other gifts. So
long as Hafiz ruled Osama took no part in the public affairs of Egypt,
but has left observations upon the course of events, but in the next
reign he comes forward prominently as an adviser, and usually as an
adviser of evil.

When the ex-wazir Rudwan had been ten years in prison he contrived to
bore his way out through the prison walls by the help, it is said, of a
rusty nail, and, joined by many of his friends, went to Gizeh intending
to seize the wazirate by force. There was a great ferment in Cairo;
many persons went out to join themselves with him, whilst the Khalif’s
guards prepared for defence. At the head of a large band of followers he
forced his way across the Nile, defeated the Khalif’s army, and marched
into Cairo where he made his headquarters in the Grey Mosque. There he
was joined by many of the emirs who brought supplies of men, arms, and
money. The Khalif assembled his negro troops, treated them to wine and
then, in a half intoxicated state, they marched out and demanded the head
of Rudwan. A great tumult ensued in which the emirs, frightened by the
apparent ferocity of the negro guard, left Rudwan, and his supporters
were scattered. Rudwan himself was alarmed and went out of the mosque
intending to escape, but his horse which should have been at the gate was
missing. A young guard offered his horse, and as the ex-wazir approached
to avail himself of this offer, he cut him down. Very soon the negroes
came up and finished him, then “the people of Misr share the morsels of
his flesh which they eat to give themselves courage” (Derenbourg: _Vie
d’Ousama_, p. 212).

This took place in 543 and led to a period of general disorder, for the
negro troops called out by the Khalif soon passed beyond his control,
the streets became unsafe, and faction fights between the Rayhamites who
were loyal to the Khalif and the Juyushites, Alexandrians, and Farhites
once more broke out just as sixteen years before. Again the Juyushites
were victorious, greatly to the annoyance of al-Hafiz who determined to
revenge himself upon them. But this resolve he was not able to carry out
as he died in 544.

Al-Hafiz was an old man at the time of his decease, fully seventy-six
years, and for some time had been in failing health suffering from
colic. It is said that Shirmah the Daylamite, or else Musa an-Nasran,
made for him a drum of seven metals, each welded at the moment when the
appropriate planet was in the ascendant, and that this drum when beaten
relieved the wind from which the Khalif suffered. After his death this
drum was preserved in the treasury, but was incautiously tapped by a
Turkish soldier at the time of Sala d-Din’s conquest, and that he,
astonished at the surprising result produced, dropped it and it broke to
pieces.

The writer Abu Salih describes Hafiz as particularly well disposed
towards the Christians, and especially fond of visiting the gardens of
some of the monasteries near Cairo, where he showed his goodwill by many
gifts and acts of kindness. He even visited the Christian churches, but
was careful to enter backwards lest the stooping necessitated by the low
door-ways might appear to be an act of reverence to the cross which stood
within.

XVI

THE TWELFTH FATIMID KHALIF, AZ-ZAFIR

(A.H. 543-549 = A.D. 1149-1154)

At the death of Hafiz in October, 1149, _i.e._, A.H. 543, his youngest
son Abu Mansur Ismaʿil az-Zafir li-ʾAdai dini-llah (“the conqueror of
the enemies of God’s religion”) was proclaimed Khalif in accordance
with the late sovereign’s orders. The new Khalif was then only sixteen
years of age, frivolous in his tastes, and much given to the society of
concubines and to listening to vocal music. One of his first acts was to
select Najm ad-Din b. Masal as his chief minister, thus displacing the
Emir Sayf ad-Din Abu l-Hasan ʿAli as-Sallar, whom he sent to a provincial
administration. This new minister Ibn Masal was a native of Lukk, near
Barqa, where he and his father had been horse breakers and falconers.

But Ibn Sallar was not disposed to take his deposition from office
tamely, and soon assembled a band of armed supporters to help him to
recover the wazirate. When the news of this revolt was brought to
Cairo the Khalif assembled a council of all the emirs of the state and
discussed with them the measures necessary to be taken. All professed
unqualified loyalty to the Khalif’s nominee Ibn Masal, until a certain
aged emir proposed that, if this profession represented their real
attitude, they should join in passing a decree of death against the
ex-wazir Ibn Sallar. This they unanimously refused to do. “Very well,”
said the old emir, “then act accordingly.” At this the council broke up,
all the emirs leaving the city and joining themselves to the party of Ibn
as-Sallar. The Khalif gave large sums of money to his nominee Ibn Masal,
but it was impossible to raise any supporters in Cairo. Meanwhile Ibn
as-Sallar was gathering his forces at Alexandria and advanced along the
left side of the Nile until he reached Giza on the 14th of Ramadan, 544,
and the following day entered Cairo without meeting with any resistance
and established himself in the official residence of the wazir, taking
over the control of the affairs of state. At Ibn as-Sallar’s advance Ibn
Masal fled, having held office only fifty days, and went to the Hawf east
of the capital where, with the help of the funds supplied by the Khalif,
he raised a force of supporters. As soon as he was firmly established
in Cairo Ibn as-Sallar went out to deal with his rival, but Ibn Masal
evaded him and took refuge in Upper Egypt whither Ibn as-Sallar followed
him. A pitched battle took place at Dilas, south of Wasta, in which
Ibn Masal was killed, his forces scattered, and his head cut off to be
carried to Cairo as a trophy. Thus Ibn as-Sallar was left without rival,
and the Khalif was compelled most reluctantly to recognise him as wazir.
Naturally the young sovereign had no love towards such a minister, and
almost immediately began to make plots to rid himself of him.

Although wazir under a Fatimid Khalif, Ibn as-Sallar was strictly
orthodox and gave the whole of his patronage to orthodox teachers of
the Shafiʿite school. This position in Alexandria gained him many
adherents, and their attachment was still more secured by his foundation
of a Shafiʿite college there. He continued the same attitude after his
assumption of office at Cairo, so that he was regarded by the people of
Egypt as an orthodox champion against the heretical Khalifate. By nature
he was cruel and vindictive. An anecdote is related of him that when he
was in the army in the days before he held office he had to apply to Ibn
Masum, the Secretary of War, for help to defray extraordinary expenses
incurred by him in the administration of the province of Gharbiya, as
the result of which he found himself heavily in debt. The Secretary only
replied: “By God, thy discourse entereth not my ear,” and Ibn as-Sallar
left his presence full of indignation. Long afterwards, when he had
risen to a high position, he made search for Ibn Masum, who hid himself
fearing retaliation from the one whom he had treated contemptuously as
a petitioner. At last the Secretary was found and brought before the
wazir who had him lain on a board and a nail driven through his ear, Ibn
as-Sallar asking him at each cry he uttered, “Doth my discourse yet enter
thy ear or not?” (Ibn Khall. ii. 351).

In the plots against the wazir, az-Zafir’s chief confidant was a young
man of his own age, Nasir ad-Din Nasir, the son of the general ʿAbbas
who, next to the wazir, was the most powerful man in Egypt. About this
time ʿAbbas was setting out with an army against the Franks taking with
him his son Nasir. For a moment we must pause to consider the position
of this son, the favourite of the young Khalif. Many years before, in
503 Bullara, the wife of Abu l-Futuh had come to Egypt with a child
ʿAbbas. Some time afterwards the wazir as-Sallar married her, and in due
course his step-son ʿAbbas grew up and became a general in the Egyptian
army, and had a son, Nasir, who was brought up by his grand-mother in
the house of Ibn as-Sallar. Now this youth went with the army which Ibn
as-Sallar was sending against the Franks in the company of his father
and the Syrian Osama. At Bilbays, on the point of quitting the land of
Egypt, ʿAbbas can only talk about the delightful climate of Egypt, its
many beauties, and regret that he is being exiled to the comparatively
unattractive land of Syria. But Osama interrupted his discourse and asked
him why, if he liked Egypt so much, did he not get rid of the wazir Ibn
as-Sallar and take the wazirship himself, then he would be settled in
Egypt permanently. ʿAbbas gave serious attention to these proposals and
brought in his son Nasir, and the project was discussed by the three, the
father ʿAbbas presumably being well aware of his son’s plotting with the
Khalif against the wazir who had sheltered that son in his home and was
the husband of his grand-mother. It was finally agreed that Nasir should
go back to Cairo and murder the wazir. He, as an inmate of the house,
would be the best able to get into his presence and do the deed without
premature discovery. So the army remained at Bilbays and Nasir returned.
The wazir’s house was guarded, but Nasir was well aware of the minister’s
habits and went direct to the harim which was in a detached building.
He had brought a small body of men with him, and together they went
through the grounds to the harim, where Nasir found the wazir asleep
and murdered him. As soon as the guards learned what had happened they
broke out in disorder and began to search for the assassins, but Nasir
and his men had made good their escape, and the household guards seem to
have lacked any one to direct their plans, now the master was dead. This
murder took place on the 6th of Muharram, 548.

As soon as the news was brought to ʿAbbas he returned with his forces
to Cairo where he soon restored order, and was without delay invested
with the office of wazir. The change does not seem to have aroused any
other feelings than relief amongst the people at large, for Ibn as-Sallar
had been a harsh and cruel ruler, and many had suffered for suspected
partisanship with the defeated Ibn Masal. Early in his period of office
he had suppressed the Khalif’s bodyguard of young men, and put most of
them to death, and this had been the inauguration of an almost constant
series of executions.

Thus ʿAbbas was made wazir, but this appointment resulted in the Khalif’s
own assassination within the next few months. In the circumstances which
led to this it is clear that the chief factor was a close friendship
between the Khalif and the wazir’s son Nasir, and with this was the evil
influence of Osama. It is said that the Khalif made overtures to Nasir
to slay his father ʿAbbas, presumably intending to make the son wazir
in his place; but the details of this are obscure and seem to be very
much open to question. It is, however, clear that Osama took a leading
part in stirring up the feelings of ʿAbbas and his son and inducing them
to proceed to this murder, and it is he who definitely states that the
Khalif had made overtures to Nasir to assassinate his father, and it
seems likely that he says this to excuse his own bad advice.

Both the Khalif and Nasir were of exceptional beauty, of about the same
age, and living in close intimacy,—so close as to provoke the scandalous
comments of censorious tongues. It seems that Osama was the first to
draw attention to these evil rumours. The Khalif had presented Nasir
with the fief of Qaliub immediately north of Cairo, and in the presence
of his father and Osama Nasir announced this in the words, “Our master
has given me the province of Qaliub”: at which Osama remarked, “That is
not splendid as a wedding gift.” This remark sounded offensive to ʿAbbas
and his son, and in consequence they decided to slay the Khalif. Osama
gives the further account that Ibn Munqidh said to ʿAbbas: “How can you
endure the evil reports I hear about your son?” “What are they?” asked
ʿAbbas. Osama then interposed: “People say that az-Zafir has commerce
with thy son and suspect the Khalif of doing with him what one does with
women.” ʿAbbas was aroused and asked indignantly, “But what can I do?”
Ibn Munqidh replied, “Assassinate the Khalif, then the dishonour will
be purged from thee.” Ibn Khallikan (i. 222), in his life of az-Zafir,
states that ʿAbbas said to his son, “You are ruining your reputation by
keeping company with az-Zafir; your familiarity with him is the subject
of public talk; kill him then, for it is thus that thou wilt vindicate
thy honour from these foul suspicions.”

When Nasir had made up his mind to the murder he invited the Khalif to
visit him in his house in the Armourers’ Market, and there he concealed
a band of confederates. On Thursday, the last day of Muharram, 549 (15th
April, 1154), the Khalif went privately with a single black slave to
Nasir’s house and there the conspirators fell upon him, slew him, and
buried his body beneath the floor of the room; according to Osama they
slew the black slave at the same time, but this does not seem to have
been the case as we find the slave afterwards showing the place where the
body was buried. The same night Nasir went to his father and informed him
of what he had done.

Next morning ʿAbbas went to the palace and asked for the Khalif with
whom, he said, he had important business. The household slaves went
in search of him but could not find him either in his own rooms or in
the harim, and brought the wazir word that they were unable to find
where he was. At this ʿAbbas, who had remained at the palace gate,
dismounted and went into the palace with a band of trusty followers
and asked for the Khalif’s two brothers, Jibrila and Yusuf, who were
soon brought. According to one account he bade one or the other then
assume the Khalifate as the state could not go on without a head, but
they declined. “For,” they said, “we have no share in the government,
az-Zafir’s father disinherited us when he passed it to az-Zafir: after
him it is to his son that the authority belongs” (Osama, _op. cit._).
According to the much more likely account given by Ibn Khallikan ʿAbbas
asked the two brothers where az-Zafir was, and they replied that he
ought rather to ask his son, thus making it clear that they knew whither
he had gone the night before. At once he declared, “These two are his
murderers,” and at his command they were beheaded. ʿAbbas then sent for
the late Khalif’s son al-Faʿiz, then aged five (or two) years, set him
on his shoulder and sent for the emirs. As soon as they had assembled
he said, “Here is the son of your master: his uncles have murdered his
father, and I put them to death as you may perceive. What is essential
now is, that the authority of this infant should be fully recognised.”
The emirs reply, “We hear and obey.” They then gave a great shout
which so troubled the infant on the wazir’s shoulder that he was ever
afterwards subject to fits of trembling (Ibn Khall. ii. 425-6). ʿAbbas
then took charge of the government, but subsequent events rather belong
to the reign of al-Faʿiz.

Az-Zafir was only twenty-two years of age at his death. His tastes
had been frivolous, and it would not seem that there was much reason
to regret him, but the circumstances of his murder and the general
detestation of ʿAbbas threw round his memory a halo of loyalty. He was
the founder of a mosque known as the az-Zafiri mosque, near the Bab
Zawila.

XVII

THE THIRTEENTH FATIMID KHALIF, AL-FAʿIZ

(A.H. 549-555 = A.D. 1154-1160.)

In spite of ʿAbbas’ attempt to throw the guilt of the Khalif’s murder
upon his two brothers, it was well known both in the palace and in the
city that the wazir was the culprit, and both were aroused to the deepest
indignation. The emirs in the palace almost at once began to conspire
against the wazir, and decided to appeal to as-Salih b. Ruzzik the
Armenian, who was then governor of Munya Bani Kharib in Upper Egypt. The
letter they sent was coloured black as a sign of their deep mourning, and
with it they sent their hair cut off, the ancient Arab symbol of dire
distress. As soon as as-Salih received this message he assembled the
soldiers who were with him, and read the letter to them asking whether
they were ready to support him. They all declared their readiness to
follow his lead in avenging the Khalif’s murder and in liberating the
young successor from the baleful influence which at present overshadowed
the throne. With his men as-Salih then marched to Cairo. As he approached