A History of the Muslim World to 1405

by Vernon O Egger

  Jawhar administered Egypt until the caliph-Imam al-Mu‘izz arrived in 973. One of Jawhar’s first official acts was to found a new capital city for his master. The existing capital, Fustat, had been created by the Arab conquerors of Egypt in 640 as a garrison city, and Jawhar’s task was to create an imperial city that reflected the glory of the new dynasty. He laid out the boundaries of the new capital some three miles to the northeast of Fustat, calling it al-Qahira al-Mu‘izziya, “Victorious (City) of al-Mu‘izz,” or Cairo. Surrounded by high walls, it was to be the center of government and of the Fatimid religion. For many years, it was almost exclusively composed of palaces, mosques, and barracks for the troops.

  The new government initially sought to challenge Baghdad for the allegiance of the world’s Muslims, but it ran into problems when its army began occupying territories in Palestine. The indigenous Carmathians of Syria called upon the aid of their compatriots in Bahrain, and the two groups joined together to thwart the eastward expansion of Fatimid rule. For eight years, they fiercely resisted their fellow Isma‘ilis. They seriously impeded the Fatimid consolidation of power in Palestine, and they invaded Egypt twice before being decisively defeated. The Fatimids did manage to have the prayers in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina said in the name of the Fatimid caliph, but otherwise the expansionist aspirations of the Fatimids were largely disappointed. At its height at the beginning of the eleventh century, the Fatimid caliphate directly controlled Libya, Egypt, Palestine, and the upper Red Sea coast. Al-Mu‘izz was content to rule Ifriqiya indirectly through the Zirid dynasty, a Berber family that had been rewarded for its loyalty with the governorship of the region when al-Mu‘izz departed for Egypt.

  Religious Policies

  In light of the resources that the Fatimids had devoted to missionary activity and to the expansion of territory under their control, it would have been reasonable to expect that the new regime would attempt to turn Egypt into an Isma‘ili society from which to convert the rest of the Muslim world. For over fifty years, the Fatimids had persecuted Ibadi Kharijism and Maliki jurists in Ifriqiya in a brutal campaign of terror and extortion. The campaign did scatter the Ibadis, but the martyrdom of Maliki ulama only increased the hostility of Sunnis toward the regime. By the 970s, the new leaders of the regime appear to have learned something from that experience. Although the Fatimid Imams did continue an active and wide-ranging missionary program all across the Muslim world and into Transoxiana and Sind, their religious policies in Egypt were benign. Isma‘ili missionary activity, based on the model of a master and his initiates, was intended to bring about the conversion of spiritual adepts, not the masses. Prayers in the mosque were given for the Fatimid caliph, but otherwise Sunni prayers, doctrines, and ritual were hardly affected. During the first few decades of Fatimid rule, Fatimid law was dominant and held sway in the event of conflicts with Sunni schools, but by the middle of the eleventh century the Sunni schools were given equal status. The Fatimid authorities quickly adopted the observance of Ghadir al-Khumm and of Ashura from the Buyids. By the early twelfth century, they had introduced a festival of their own: Mawlid al-Nabi, the birthday of the Prophet. Although Ghadir al-Khumm, for obvious reasons, remains a distinctly Shi‘ite festival, both Ashura and Mawlid al-Nabi are widely celebrated among both Sunni and Shi‘ite communities today.

  Sunni Muslims did experience occasional restrictions on their ability to worship, due to the fact that they were suspected of pro-Abbasid sympathies. Jews and Christians, on the other hand, who were tolerated in the rest of the Muslim world, found unique opportunities in Fatimid Egypt. Both of these non-Muslim religious groups were represented in large numbers in the government, particularly in the financial administration, which the Copts dominated. Twice—under al-‘Aziz (976–996) and al-Hafiz (1131–1150)—Christians served as wazir. Jews served in high offices in such numbers that Abbasid partisans claimed that the Fatimids were actually a Jewish dynasty. During the Fatimid period, Copts were the majority in many of the rural areas and in towns that specialized in the manufacture of textiles. Whereas Sunni rulers (and insecure Fatimid wazirs) occasionally felt compelled to respond to the sensitivities or fears of the masses regarding religious minorities, the Imams, as divinely appointed agents, felt no such compulsion. Imams were even known to visit churches and monasteries and to observe Christian festivals such as Epiphany and the Coptic New Year. With the exception of al-Hakim, Imams did not persecute Christians or Jews. The street crowd, however, could become dangerous. At the death of al-‘Aziz, who appointed a Christian wazir and otherwise showed toleration of Jews and Christians, a Sunni mob in Cairo plundered several churches and murdered several Christians.

  The caliph-Imam who violated the policy of toleration was al-Hakim (996– 1021). For this reason he is, unfortunately, the most famous of the Fatimid rulers. Eleven years old when he succeeded his exceedingly able father, he killed his regent four years later and ruled on his own authority. During the remainder of his reign, he ordered the execution of several thousand people, many of whom were important officials in the government and who never knew why they were targeted. He issued edicts that required the markets to be open all night, and he forbade the consumption of watercress or of fish without scales. Once he ordered that representations of the Christian cross not be shown in public, only to issue an order shortly thereafter requiring Christians to wear the cross. He ordered the destruction of thousands of churches and synagogues, including the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.

  The al-Hakim mosque (1013) and Cairo city walls (1087) from the Fatimid era.

  A little over halfway through his reign as Imam, al-Hakim became the center of a new religious movement. By that time, the Fatimids had been in power in Egypt for nearly half a century, and the apocalyptic expectations of many Isma‘ilis that the regime would enact a radically new order had been disappointed by what appeared to be nothing more than yet another mundane regime. About the year 1010, certain religious leaders in Cairo began teaching to their initiates that al-Hakim was an incarnation or manifestation of the deity. The most visible spokesman for the cause was Muhammad al-Darazi, but soon devotees of the movement were to be found in considerable numbers all the way to Aleppo. They were being called al-Duruz (the Druze), a plural noun meaning “the followers of al-Darazi,” apparently because of the active role of al-Darazi in the teaching of the new doctrines. Al-Darazi paid for his notoriety: He was assassinated in 1019, but it is not clear whether soldiers or jealous rivals within his own movement were responsible for his death.

  In 1021, al-Hakim failed to return from one of his customary nighttime wanderings into the desert. Some suspected foul play, while those who worshiped him insisted that he had been placed in concealment by God. His successor as caliph persecuted the movement mercilessly, and soon the remaining members were to be found only in the mountains of Syria–Lebanon. The Druze, who call themselves al-Muwahhidun, or Unitarians, number about 300,000 today. They are not regarded as Muslims because of their unique doctrines and rituals.

  In light of the apparent goal of the Fatimids while in Ifriqiya to dominate the known world, their subsequent actions in Egypt seem strangely unambitious. Aside from a persistent determination to maintain control of Palestine in the face of threats from various local and outside threats, the Fatimid government did not attempt any major conquests. In fact, after the reign of al-‘Aziz (976–996), peaceful relations were maintained with the Byzantines throughout most of Fatimid history. In 1038, one of the many treaties concluded between the two governments allowed the Byzantines to rebuild the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. As previously noted, the Fatimid government did not forcibly try to convert its own citizens, even though the mosque of al-Azhar, which was constructed in 970, became the setting for public lectures on the Isma‘ili school of law. Within the palace itself, the famous dar al-hikma, or House of Wisdom, trained missionaries for the purpose of spreading Isma‘ili doctrines throughout the Muslim world, but this nonviolent approa
ch was the substitute for any campaigns such as the one that succeeded in taking Egypt. The Fatimid missionary activities reached their peak during the reign of al-Mustansir (1036–1094), with agents active in Iraq, Fars, Khorasan, and even Transoxiana. Al-Basasiri’s short-lived coup in Baghdad in 1058 appeared to be a major triumph for these efforts at first, before the fatal breakdown in relations between al-Basasiri and the Fatimids.

  The New Egyptian Economy

  Despite the eccentricities and distractions of the reign of al-Hakim, the Fatimid state continued to thrive for several decades. From the late tenth century until the middle of the eleventh, it was the preeminent empire in the Mediterranean basin and in the Muslim world. Its wealth was based on the agricultural productivity of the rich Nile valley, but commercial contacts with areas as far apart as Morocco and India supplemented the economic base. The empire’s own conquests in the Maghrib had established links there, and its missionary work had resulted in the presence of numerous Isma‘ili merchants in Sind and Gujarat, who worked to funnel as much as possible of the trade from those important commercial centers to Egypt.

  The Fatimids had become established in Egypt at a fortuitous time in economic history. First, western Europe, which had been a poverty-stricken hinterland for the previous five centuries, was slowly developing a stable economy on the foundations of the medieval agricultural revolution. This in turn spawned the growth of towns where the agricultural surplus could be traded. The nobility and the new merchant class, their pockets brimming with newfound wealth, were developing a taste for luxury goods from the East. It turned out that both Christians and Muslims overcame their religious scruples when it came to trade—the emerging Italian maritime city– states and the Fatimids eagerly sought each other’s trade.

  Second, as we saw in Chapter 4, the Fatimids were the beneficiaries of changes in major trade routes. Much of the trans-Saharan trade shifted from Ifriqiya to Egypt when the Fatimids’ traditional sub-Saharan suppliers saw that the new imperial market in Egypt was much more lucrative than the provincial markets of North Africa. The Fatimids also benefitted from the turmoil that began in Iraq during the late ninth century. South Asian merchants who had been accustomed to shipping goods through the Persian Gulf and across Iraq and Syria now looked for a trade route that could guarantee them safety and a demand for their goods. They found it in the Red Sea route, where the Fatimid navy controlled both the Red Sea and the eastern Mediterranean. A portage of one hundred miles from the Red Sea to Cairo linked the sea trade on both sides of the country. Spices, perfumes, and fine cloths from South Asia and Southeast Asia were in heavy demand all around the Mediterranean, and in return the Indian Ocean suppliers received the products of the Mediterranean hinterland: fine glassware, cloths, furs, and gold. Egypt itself was famous for producing remarkably high-quality fabrics, jewelry, pottery and crystal ware.

  Ominous Developments

  At the middle of the eleventh century the Fatimids began to experience a series of jolts that shook the very basis of their regime. The first was a factional conflict within the military. The Fatimid army had begun as a mixed force based on a Kutama Berber lance-bearing cavalry supplemented by Slavic and Greek infantry. The conflict with the Carmathians in Syria during the 970s, however, had demonstrated to the Fatimid commanders that the Berber lancers were vulnerable to mounted archers. As a result, the regime soon began importing both slave and free Turkish cavalry as mounted archers. Moreover, the change in the regime’s base from Ifriqiya to Egypt meant that it was now more economical to employ Daylamis and black Sudanese in the infantry than the Slavs and Greeks, who were more difficult to obtain.

  Within a few years two major rifts within the military were beginning to show themselves. One was that the privileged position of the Kutama had become threatened by the Turks, and the tensions were expressed by violent encounters between the two groups. The second was that the infantry, which achieved parity in numbers with the cavalry, began to demand more equitable treatment. Both conflicts had ethnic overtones. Within the ranks of the cavalry itself, Turks and Berbers were clashing as early as 1044 over scarce resources, and a civil war between units of Turkish cavalry and black infantry erupted in 1066. Cairo suffered extensive damage, and the violence in the countryside caused fields to be unattended, a factor contributing to a seven-year-long famine. The failure of al-Basasiri’s revolt against Tughril Bey in Baghdad in 1058 was a blow to the morale of the regime, which had thought that its long-standing goal of capturing Baghdad was finally in its grasp. As if these miseries were not enough, a plague struck Egypt in 1063, and in 1069 the ruler of Mecca and Medina transferred his allegiance to the Saljuqs and had prayers said in the name of the Abbasid caliph.

  The turmoil within the Fatimid military at mid-century led to such destruction and economic distress that in 1073 the caliph-Imam al-Mustansir was forced to seek the assistance of his governor in Palestine, Badr al-Jamali. Badr went to Cairo, where he combined the role of wazir with full military powers. Badr, a converted Armenian, was a forceful personality who realized that drastic steps had to be taken to save the regime. He brought with him thousands of his own Christian Armenian troops to be the core of his military force, and he began replacing the troublesome Turkish mamluks with Sudanese infantry, a trend that continued over the next century until the Sudanese units became the largest contingent in the army.

  Badr al-Jamali’s promotion achieved al-Mustansir’s immediate goal, but it had two major drawbacks. First, the withdrawal of the Armenian troops from Palestine allowed Malik-Shah to seize most of Palestine with ease. Second, Badr never yielded the reins of power in Egypt until his death in 1094, leaving al-Mustansir as subservient to his military leadership as the Abbasid caliphs had been to military officers since the early tenth century. The position of the caliph-Imam in Egypt never regained its prominence.

  The Nizaris (“Assassins”)

  The Saljuq court had been hostile to the Fatimids ever since the latter had supported al-Basasiri in his attempt to overthrow Tughril. Nizam al-Mulk, in particular, became increasingly concerned about the Fatimid threat because of a new militance among the Isma‘ilis of Iran. In 1090, the former quietism of that group gave way to a policy of assassinating public officials. The architect of the new policy was Hasan-i Sabbah, an Iranian from the city of Qum. He had been trained in Cairo at the Dar al-Hikma and then returned to Iran, probably in the late 1070s. The Isma‘ili message seems to have gained new strength in the aftermath of the Saljuq invasion, combining the traditional demand for social justice with a heightened sense of Iranian ethnicity formed in reaction to the Turkmen invaders. Isma‘ilis were to be found all across Iran by the closing decades of the century, and Hasan found particularly strong support in the traditionally Shi‘ite region of Daylam.

  MAP 6.2 The Muslim World, Late Eleventh Century

  In 1090, Hasan acquired Alamut, a fortress in the Elburz range that proved to be impregnable for over a century and a half. Hasan began a campaign against the Saljuqs, who were doubly despised as defenders of Sunnism and as outsiders. Recognizing that winning pitched battles was not a realistic option, he began a policy of assassinating Saljuq officials. The legend arose that the agents who were sent out from Alamut for the purpose of murdering officials were administered hashish during a ritual. No evidence supports the idea that the drug was used in this way, but the agents nevertheless gained the nickname of hashishin, or hashish users. The English word assassin derives etymologically from this word, and Hasan’s followers have been known as the Assassins for centuries. After killing several minor officials, the Assassins made a spectacular “hit” in 1092 by killing their old nemesis, Nizam al-Mulk, possibly in collusion with none other than Malik-Shah, who was clearly chafing after twenty years of the old Iranian’s imperious tutelage.

  Hasan’s career took a turn in 1094, when a schism developed within the Fa-timid movement. Al-Mustansir died a few months after Badr al-Jamali’s death in 1094. Confusion over the succession pr
ocess followed. The new wazir, Badr’s son al-Afdal, favored the youngest son, al-Musta‘li, but the eldest son, Nizar, claimed that his father had designated him to be his successor. In the subsequent conflict, Nizar fled Cairo, but was captured and murdered by being entombed within a wall. Al-Musta‘li became the new Imam, but the supporters of the two sons formed factions that became bitter enemies.

  The schism within the Fatimid ruling family in Cairo reverberated throughout the Isma‘ili world. Al-Musta‘li came to be recognized by most Isma‘ilis in Egypt, many in Palestine, and by almost all Isma‘ilis in Yemen. The Sulayhid regime in Yemen, ruled by the remarkable queen al-Sayyida al-Hurra al-Sulayhi (1084–1138), played a vital role in preserving the Musta‘li line. She sponsored an extensive missionary activity in the Gujarat region of India on behalf of the cause, and the Musta‘lis became permanently well-established there.

  Hasan-i Sabbah, on the other hand, sided with Nizar’s claim to be the Imam, and his considerable personal authority influenced many Isma‘ilis in Syria and the vast majority of Isma‘ilis in Iran to become “Nizaris.” The upshot was that the “Musta‘lis” had a visible caliph–Imam to follow, but one who was under the actual authority of al-Afdal, the Armenian wazir. The Fatimid state had become a hollow shell by this time and remained intact for another century only because of a peculiar set of international affairs that we shall examine in the next chapter. The Nizaris, on the other hand, claimed that a son of Nizar had been safely sequestered at Alamut. The masses of Nizaris never saw him, but Hasan served until his death in 1124 as the hujja or agent of the Imam who, he claimed, was in safekeeping. The Assassins were about to embark upon a period of history that would immortalize their name.