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Translated by John Mann, M.A., and Theodore Zachakiae, Ph.D. Fourth Edition. O'LEARY (De Lacy) : Arabic Thought and its Place in History. Other Volumes to follow. LONDON KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., Ltd. A SHORT HISTORY OF THE FATIMID KHALIFATE BY DE LACY O'LEARY, D.D. Lecturer in Aramaic and Syriac, Bristol University Author of "Arabic Thought and its Place in History" 6 5~ / I I H I&-S -25. LONDON : KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., LTD. NEW YORK : E. P. DUTTON & CO. 1923 Printed in Great Britain by John Roberts Press Limited, London. INTRODUCTORY NOTE The following pages present a brief outline of the history of the Fatimid Khalifs who were ruling in Egypt at the time of the First and Second Crusades. Too often the student of European history gleans his knowledge of the oriental powers with which the West was brought into contact by the Crusades from western Christian writers, who do not fairly or truly describe those powers, and do not set forth clearly the strong and weak points which are so important in interpreting the actual forces with which the Crusaders were brought into contact. These pages are drawn from the Arabic and Persian historians so as to present a picture which, though inaccurate in some points, nevertheless shows the other side not perceived by the historians who wrote the narrative of the Crusades from a western standpoint. Directly, therefore, they supplement the western history, but are still more important in their indirect bearing as an effort has been made to show the rise and development of the Fatimid Khalifate and sect as a rival to the orthodox Abbasid Khalifate of Baghdad, which is most essential to the right under- standing of the world into which the Crusaders penetrated, whilst at the same time it shows a curious and important phase of Muslim tendencies which are not without a bearing on the later history of Islam. The present essay does not claim to be an original study in a field hitherto unexplored, but simply aims at bringing together in an accessible form material which will be of service to the student of mediaeval western history and to those who are interested in the development of Islam, and to do so with such comments as will enable it to be co-ordinated with contemporary European history. CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I The Shi'ites or Schismatics of Islam i II The Isma'ilian Sect . 12 III The Qarmatians 39 IV The Establishment of the Fatimids in North Africa . 51 v V The Fatimid Khalifs of Kairawan . 74 VI The Second Fatimid Khalif, Al-Qa'im 88 VII The Third Fatimid Khalif, Al- Mansur 91 VIII The Fourth Fatimid Khalif, Al- Mo'izz 93 1 IX The Fifth Fatimid Khalif, Al-'Aziz 115 X The Sixth Fatimid Khalif, Al-Hakim 123 - XI The Seventh Fatimid Khalif, Az- Zahir 189 XII The Eighth Fatimid Khalif, Al- Mustansir 193 XIII The Ninth Fatimid Khalif, Al- Mustali 211 XIV The Tenth Fatimid Khalif. Al-Amir 218 XV The Eleventh Fatimid Khalif, Al- Hafiz ...... 222 XVI The Twelfth Fatimid Khalif, Az- Zafir . 227 viii. CONTENTS XVII The Thirteenth Fatimid Khalif, Al- Fa'iz 233 XVIII The Fatimid Khalifate in its Re- lation to General History . 246 XIX The Later History of the Isma'ilian Sect 257 Bibliography 262 Index 266 THE SHI'ITES OR SCHISMATICS OF ISLAM Islam appears first on the page of history as a purely Arab religion : indeed it is perfectly clear that the Prophet Mohammed, whilst intending it to be the one and only religion of the whole Arab race, did not contemplate its extension to foreign communities. " " Throughout the land there shall be no second creed was the Prophet's message from his death-bed, and this was the guiding principle in the policy of the early Khalifs. The Prophet died in a.h ii, and within the next ten years the Arabs, united under the leadership of his successors, extended their rule over Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Persia. To a large extent it was merely an accident that this rapid expansion of Arab rule was associated with the rise of Islam. The ex- panding movement had already commenced before the Prophet's ministry, and was due to purely secular causes to the age long tendency of the Arabs, —as of every race at a similar stage of economic and social development, —to over-spread and plunder the cultured territories in their vicinity. The Arabs were nomadic dwellers in a comparatively unproductive area, and had been gradually pressed back into that area by the development of settled communities of cultivators in the better irrigated land upon its borders. These settled communities evolved an intensive agriculture, and thus achieved great wealth and an advanced state of civiliz- ation which was a perpetual temptation to the ruder nomads who, able to move over great distances with considerable rapidity, were always inclined to make plundering incursions into the territories of the pros- perous agricultural and city states near at hand. The only restraint on these incursions was the military power of the settled communities which always had as i 2 THE FATIMID KHALIFATE its first task the raising of a barrier against the wild the men of the desert : whenever the dyke gave way, flood poured out. In the seventh century a.d. the restraining powers were the Roman Empire and the Kingdom of Persia, and both of these, almost simul- taneously, showed a sudden military collapse from which, in the natural course of events they would, no doubt, have recovered after a short interval; but the Arabs poured in at this moment of weakness, just as the Teutonic and other groups of central Europe had broken through the barriers of the western half of the and at that in the course of Roman Empire ; moment, their incursion, they received a new coherence by the rise of the religion of Islam and, by the racial unity thus artificially produced, became more formidable. In their outspread over Egypt and Western Asia the Arabs adopted the policy, partly deduced from the Qur'an and partly based on the tradition of the first Khalif 's conduct in of warfare " Arabia, uncompromising against all polytheists,"—the creed of Islam was a pure unitarianism, and could contemplate no toleration of polytheism, —but of accommodation with those pos- sessed of the divine revelation, even in the imperfect and form known to Christians and These " corrupt " Jews. People of the Book were not pressed to embrace Islam, but might remain as tribute-paying subjects of the Muslim rulers, with their own rights very fullv secured. In all the conquered lands the progress of the Muslim religion was very gradual, and in all of them Christian and Jewish communities have main- tained an independent continuous existence to the present day. Yet for all this there were very many conversions to the religion of the ruling race, and these were so numerous that within the first century of the Hijra the Arabs themselves were in a numerical minority in the Church of Islam. The alien converts, socially and intellectually developed in the culture of the Hellenistic world or of semi-Hellenistic Persia, were very far in advance of the ruling Arabs who were little better than half savages at the commencement of their career of conquest : and the unexpected inclusion of this more cultured element acted as a leaven in the Islamic community, and forced it to a rapid and some- what violent evolution. It is wonderful that Islam had SCHISMATICS OF ISLAM 3 sufficient vigour and elasticity to be able to absorb such fresh elements and phases of thought, but that elasticity had its limits, and at a very early date sects began to form whose members the orthodox felt them- selves unable to recognise as fellow Muslims.