The Fatimid Empire

348 Pages·2017·13.49 MB·English

by  Michael Brett

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
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© Michael Brett, 2017
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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