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The Fatimid Empire PDF

348 Pages·2017·13.49 MB·English
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The Edinburgh History of the Islamic Empires The Fatimid Empire Michael Brett The Fatimid Empire THE EDINBURGH HISTORY OF THE ISLAMIC EMPIRES Series Editor: Ian Richard Netton Editorial Advisory Board Professor John L. Esposito Professor Carole Hillenbrand Professor David Morgan Professor Andrew Rippin Available or forthcoming titles The Umayyad Empire Andrew Marsham The Abbasid Empire Matthew Gordon The Almoravid and Almohad Empires Amira K. Bennison The Seljuk Empire of Anatolia Sara Yur Yildiz The Great Seljuk Empire A. C. S. Peacock The Fatimid Empire Michael Brett The Mamluk Empire Jo van Steenbergen and Patrick Wing The Ayyubid Empire Gerald Hawting The Mongol Empire Timothy May The Ottoman Empire Gokhan Çetinsaya www.edinburghuniversitypress.com/series/ehie The Fatimid Empire Michael Brett In memory of John Wansbrough, scholar and friend Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com © Michael Brett, 2017 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun – Holyrood Road 12 (2f) Jackson’s Entry Edinburgh EH8 8PJ Typeset in 11/13pt Adobe Garamond Pro by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire and printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 4077 5 (hardback) ISBN 978 0 7486 4076 8 (paperback) ISBN 978 1 4744 2151 5 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 4744 2152 2 (epub) The right of Michael Brett to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498). Contents List of Boxes vi List of Illustrations vii Introduction: The Question of Empire 1 1 The Coming of the Mahdī 13 2 The City of the Mahdī 38 3 The Conquest of Egypt 60 4 The Constitution of the State 84 5 The Formation of the Empire 106 6 A Failure of Direction: The Reign of al-Ó ākim bi Amr Allāh 125 7 The Regime of the Pen 157 8 The Crisis of the Empire 180 9 The Fatimid Renascence 207 10 The Reorientation of the Dynasty 233 11 The Final Failure 262 Conclusion: The Fatimids in Retrospect 296 Genealogy of Shiʿite Imāms 304 Genealogy of Fatimids 305 Bibliography 307 Index of Persons 318 Index of Dynasties, Peoples and Sects 330 Index of Places 333 Index of Subjects 336 Boxes Chapter 1 Sevener Eschatology 23 Chapter 2 Khārijism, Mahdism and the Umayyads 51 Chapter 3 The Doctrine of the Law 65 Chapter 4 The City of the Caliph 99 Chapter 5 Life and Art 109 Chapter 6 Fatimid Cosmology 149 Chapter 7 The Army in the Mid- Eleventh Century 171 Chapter 8 Imperial Propaganda 187 Chapter 9 Alexandria 210 Chapter 10 Ascalon 241 Chapter 11 Palace and Army in the Twelfth Century 269 Illustrations Figures 2.1 The Great Mosque of al- Mahdiyya 43 3.1 Painted drawing of the marble relief of the Imām- Caliph with flute player from al- Man‚ūriyya in Bardo Museum, Tunis 62 4.1 The prayer hall of the Mosque of al-A zhār 88 4.2 Ivory plaques 100 5.1 Rock crystal ewer with carved decoration, Egypt (probably Cairo), 1000–1050 116 6.1 Porch of the Mosque of al- Óākim in al- Qāhira 131 6.2 Overview of the Mosque of al- Óākim in al- Qāhira 136 6.3 Fragment of a linen scarf with tapestry woven bands of silk 141 7.1 Mounted Cavalier. Ceramic plate 161 8.1 Palermo, Palazzo dei Normanni, Cappella Palatina: the three painted wooden ceilings of the side aisles and the central nave from below 185 9.1 Bāb al- Na‚r, al- Qāhira, or Gate of Victory 215 9.2 Foundation inscription in Bāb al-F utūª, or Gate of Victories 216 9.3 Lustre bowl with a priest, Egypt (probably Cairo), 1050–1100 221 10.1 Bāb al- Futūª, or Gate of Victories: archway 246 10.2 The Mihrab of the Mosque of al-A zhār 260 11.1 Image of Roger II of Sicily, ceiling of the Cappella Palatina at Palermo 273 11.2 Drawing of a battle between Arabs and Franks – siege of Ascalon 284 Maps 1.1 The Mediterranean World 16 1.2 Ifrīqiya 28 2.1 Al- Mahdiyya 42 3.1 Cairo 81 4.1 Fatimid Egypt 91 viii | the fatimid empire 4.2 al- Qāhira 98 5.1 The Middle Eastern World 119 5.2 Fatimid Syria 123 Introduction The Question of Empire ‘Neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.’ Voltaire’s disparaging descrip- tion of the great mediaeval empire founded by Charlemagne and his Saxon successors on the eve of its extinction by Napoleon not only reveals the gap between the ideal and the reality, but identifies the elements of the ideal that had originally inspired its creation – religion, race and overrule. Race, in this empire of the Germanic barbarians who had overrun the western European portion of the Roman world, was sublimated into the succession to the Caesars who had conquered and ruled that world before reinventing their dominion in the name of Christ. Christianity, however, the first of the three religions in the Biblical tradition to emerge out of the post-e xilic Judaism of the Second Temple, was closely followed after the destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem by Talmudic Judaism, and 600 years later by the third. A hundred and fifty years before Charlemagne, the Arabs, the last of the barbarians, overran Roman Syria and Egypt as well as Persian Iraq and Iran, and went on to conquer North Africa and Spain in the name of God. Like that of Charlemagne, the empire they created was founded on the basis of religion, race and overrule; the difference was that the race in ques- tion was that of the Arabs themselves, who took up their position as rivals rather than heirs of Rome. Their Emperors were the Caliphs or Lieutenants of God and His Prophet Muªammad, first at Medina, then Damascus and finally Baghdad. Meanwhile, in the course of the seventh, eighth and ninth centuries, the faith preached by Muªammad took shape as the religion of Islam, modelled not on the pattern of Christianity as a religion of sacra- ments administered by priests, but on that of Talmudic Judaism as a religion of divine law interpreted by scholars. But at the same time, the element of Messianism, common to all three religions, had not only thrown up a series of challenges for the right to rule the empire, most notably the revolution in 750 that had transferred the Caliphate from the Umayyads at Damascus to the ʿAbbasids at Baghdad. It had begun to generate a rival version of the faith in which authority for the divine law rested not with the scholars but with a successor to the Prophet in his capacity as the source of revelation as well 1

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The Fatimid empire in North Africa, Egypt and Syria was at the centre of the political and religious history of the Islamic world in the Middle Ages, from the breakdown of the 'Abbasid empire in the tenth century, to the invasions of the Seljuqs in the eleventh and the Crusaders in the twelfth, lead
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