27

The Fāṭimids

297–567/909–1171

North Africa, then Egypt and southern Syria

Thedā‘ī or propagandist Abū ‘Abdallāh al-Shī‘ī, active in North Africa preparing the way for:

The Fāṭimids claimed ‘Alid descent, and their name derives from Fāṭima, daughter of the Prophet and wife of the fourth caliph ‘Alī (see above, no. 1). Sunnī and mainstream Shī‘ī opponents usually referred to them as the ‘Ubaydiyyūn, descendants of ‘Abdallāh (or ‘Ubaydallāh, as they termed him) al-Mahdī, explicitly rejecting any ‘Alid connection; it is unclear whether the Fāṭimid caliphs ever in fact referred to themselves as ‘the Fāṭimids’. Some of the Fāṭimids’ enemies even accused them of Jewish origins (this being, however, a standard form of calumny in mediaeval Islam). A connection with the main line of ‘Alid Imāms, through Ismā‘īl, son of the Sixth Imām Ja’far al-Sādiq, certainly seems dubious, and it is more likely that the forebears of ‘Abdallāh al-Mahdī stemmed either from ghulāt or extremist Shī’ī circles in Kūfa or else from ‘Alī’s half-brother ‘Aqīl b. Abī Ṭālib. At all events, the constituting of the Fāṭimid state represents the most successful and enduring political achievement of radical, Ismā‘īlī Shī‘ism at this time.

The first Fāṭimid caliph came from Salamiya in Syria to North Africa, where the dissemination of Shī‘ī propaganda had already made conditions propitious for his arrival. With the support of the sedentary Kutāma Berbers, his agent, the dā‘ī Abū ‘Abdallāh al-Shī‘ī, overthrew the Aghlabid goverors of Ifrīqiya (see above, no. 11) and the Khārijī Rustamids of Tahert (see above, no. 9); subsequently, the Idrīsids of Fez (see above, no. 8) became tributaries of the Fāṭimids. In 297/909 the Mahdī was proclaimed caliph, in rivalry to the ‘Abbāsids of Baghdad, at al-Raqqāda in Ifrīqiya. Subsequently, Sicily was occupied and naval operations were undertaken against the Byzantines. From their Ifrīqiyan base of al-Mahdiyya, the Fāṭimids amassed supplies and treasure in preparation for an advance eastwards, and in 358/969 their general Jawhar entered Old Cairo or Fusṭāṭ, removing the last Ikhshīdid (see above, no. 26). As they had done in the case of al-Mahdiyya in Ifrīqiya, the Fāṭimids began to build for themselves a new capital in Egypt, that of New Cairo (al-Qāhira ‘the Victorious’).

From Egypt, the Fāṭimids extended into Palestine and Syria. During the long reign of al-Mustanṣir, spanning much of the eleventh century, they reached the zenith of their power. After initially clashing with the Byzantines over Syria, the caliphs in general enjoyed peaceful relations with the Greeks; later in the century, the common threat of the Seljuqs and the Turkmen adventurers in Syria and Anatolia further drew them close together. The Ismā‘īlī dā‘īs of the Fāṭimids worked as far afield as the Yemen and Sind, and in 451/1059 Baghdad was temporarily held in the name of al-Mustanṣir. The appearance of the First Crusade at the end of the century brought about the wresting of Jerusalem from its Fāṭimid governor, but by then the Fāṭimid presence in Palestine and Syria had become essentially one in only the coastal towns there; yet on the whole, the Crusaders posed a greater threat to the various Turkish rulers of Syria than to the Fāṭimids. Certain SunnI Muslim historians allege that the Fāṭimids encouraged the Franks to land in the Levant, but this is improbable. The Fāṭimid viziers of the mid-twelfth century cooperated with the Zangid Nūr al-Dīn of Aleppo and Damascus (see below, no. 93, 2) against the Crusaders, but nevertheless lost Ascalon (‘Asqalān) to them in 548/1153. Soon afterwards, the Fāṭimid caliphate began to crumble internally; the caliphs had by now lost much of their power, and the viziers had assumed much of the executive and military leadership. Accordingly, it was not difficult for the Ayyūbid Ṣalāḥ al-Din (see below, no. 30) to end Fāṭimid rule altogether in 567/1171 as the last caliph lay dying.

In rivalry with the ‘Abbāsids, the Fāṭimids had proclaimed themselves the true caliphs and had assumed regnal titles which expressed the messianic nature of their original movement and the theocratic nature of their established rule, for example al-Mahdī, al-Qā’im and al-Zāfir. Yet the majority of their subjects remained Sunnīs and, under the Fāṭimids’ generally tolerant rule, retained most of their religious liberty. Many of the dā‘īs who were trained at the newly-founded college of al-Azhar in Cairo went to work outside the Fāṭimid dominions. Except during the first part of the unbalanced caliph al-Ḥākim’s reign, the Christians and Jews were comparatively well treated, and some of them occupied high offices in the state up to the level of the vizierate. It was during al-Ḥākim’s reign that the extremist Shī‘ī religious movement of the Druzes became implanted in southern Lebanon and Syria; because of al-Ḥākim’s encouragement of the dā‘ī al-Duruzī, the Druzes came to revere that caliph as an incarnation of God. On the death of al-Mustansir, there was a serious split in the Ismā‘īlī movement, with two opposing parties ranged behind his sons Nizār and al-Musta’lī. The partisans of the former, the more activist and extreme of the two groups, became the Assassins or Ismā‘īlīs of Syria and Persia (see below, nos 29, 101), while al-Musta’lī’s more moderate followers are the spiritual ancestors of the modern Bohrā Ismā‘īlīs of Bombay and Gujarāt. Al-Musta’lī retained the caliphate, but the spiritual basis of the Fāṭimid movement was to some extent impaired, above all after a further religio-political crisis on the death of al-Āmir in 525/1130 (the split of the Ṭayyibi Ismā‘īlīs, who were subsequently influential in Yemen and India).

Egypt and Cairo enjoyed under the Fāṭimids an economic prosperity and cultural vitality which eclipsed those of contemporary Iraq and Baghdad. Trade links were maintained with the non-Islamic world, including India and the Christian Mediterranean countries; in this commercial activity, Jewish merchants seem to have played an important role, as also perhaps the forerunners of the Muslim Kārimī merchants known from subsequent Ayyūbid and Mamlūk times. It is from the workshops of Egypt at this time, too, that some of the finest products of Islamic art – metalwork, ceramics, textiles and glassware – were produced, while the architectural heritage of the Fāṭimids is still visible in both North Africa and Egypt.

Lane-Poole, 70–3; Zambaur, 94–5; Album, 20–1.

EI¹ ‘Fātimids’ (M. Canard).

G. C. Miles, Fatimid Coins in the Collections of the University Museum, Philadelphia, and the American Numismatic Society, ANS Numismatic Notes and Monographs, no. 121, New York 1951.

H. W. Hazard, The Numismatic History of Late Medieval North Africa, 52–3.

Ḥusayn b. Fadl Allāh al-Hamdānī and Hasan Sulaymān Mahmūd al-Juhanī, al-Sulayhiyyūn wa ’l-haraka al-Fdtimiyya fi ‘l-Yaman (min sanat 628 h. ilā sanat 626 h.), Cairo 1955, with detailed table at p. 343.

F. Dachraoui, Le califat fatimide au Maghreb 296–362/909–973. Histoire politique et institutions, Tunis 1981.

H. Halm, ‘Die Fatimiden’, in Haarmann (ed.), Geschichte der arabischen Welt, 166–99. idem, Das Reich der Mahdi. Der Aufstieg der Fatimiden (875–973), Munich 1991.