A Short History of the Fatimid Khalifate

by De Lacy O'Leary

On Tuesday, the 17th Shaban, by Jawhar’s order, a deputation of leading officials, sharifs, the learned, and prominent citizens went out to Giza. By orders announced by a herald everyone except the wazir Ibn al-Furat and the Sharif Abu Jaʿfar, dismounted and saluted Jawhar in turn, the Fatimite general standing with the Sharif on his right hand, the Wazir on his left. After this ceremony was concluded the envoys returned to the city, and the troops commenced their entry with arms and baggage. After the ʿAsr or hour of mid-afternoon prayer Jawhar himself made his entry preceded by drums and flags; he wore a silk dress heavily embroidered with gold, and rode a cream coloured horse. He rode straight through the city with his men, and passing out on the north-east side pitched camp there.

Late in the evening in the camping ground he marked out a great square of 1,200 yards base, and men were stationed, spade in hand, ready to start the foundations of this new city, or rather royal suburb, when the signal was given. The projected lines, all sketched out by al-Moʿizz himself beforehand, were marked with pegs, and bells were hung from connected ropes so that a signal might be given for the simultaneous turning of the first sod. Meanwhile the astrologers were busy calculating the propitious moment for the birth of the city. Unexpectedly, however, a raven settling down on one of the ropes set all the bells jingling, and the men at once thrust their spades into the soil. It was too late to check them, though the astrologers found that it was a most inauspicious moment as the planet al-Kahir (Mars) was in the ascendant. There was nothing for it but to accept the omen, and the city thus commenced was named al-Kahira (Cairo), or more fully al-Kahira al-Mahrusa (the guarded city of Mars). It was designed as a royal suburb to be entirely devoted to palaces and official buildings, inaccessible to the general public, similar to the city of al-Muhammadiya outside Kairawan. In course of time, however, the main part of the population of Fustat migrated to Kahira, and it is now the most populous city in the whole of Africa.

Fustat, or Misr al-Atika, or simply Misr, was the old Arab city founded in A.H. 21 soon after the conquest. In 133 the suburb of al-ʿAskar to the north-east was added, but this was simply cantonments for the government officials, and was not accessible to the ordinary citizens. Al-Qataiʿ “the wards,” a kind of additional cantonments intended for the foreign mercenary troops, was added in 256, but was partially destroyed by the later ʿAbbasid governors and finally abandoned. Al-Kahira stood further to the north-east, and it was after the burning of Fustat in 564 that the population generally began to colonize this suburb.

When the people came out from the city next morning to Jawhar’s camp they found, to their unbounded surprise, that the foundations of the new city had been dug during the night. For six days after the troops continued entering the old city, passing through, and going out to the new suburb where was Jawhar’s camp. News of the successful occupation of Egypt was without delay sent to the Khalif, and with it were the heads of the Egyptians slain at the ford.

Jawhar now issued orders that all mention of the ʿAbbasid Khalif at Baghdad in the Friday prayer must cease, and in place of his name the coinage must bear the inscription bi-smi mulaʿi l-Moʿizz, “in the name of my master al-Moʿizz.” At the same time the preachers in the mosques were forbidden to wear the black garments usual under the ʿAbbasids, and were ordered to use white, a similar order being issued to public officials generally. It was ordered that every Sunday a court should be held for the “Inspection of complaints,” for the hearing of petitions against officials and against the administration, the Kaʾid or military governor, i.e., Jawhar himself, being present as well as the Wazir, Qadi, and a number of men learned in the law, so that those who had complaints against officials which lay outside the scope of the ordinary law courts might obtain redress. The court did not try cases, but on hearing a complaint referred it to the proper qadi with orders to see that it received attention. The decision was then sent to the court of “Inspection of complaints,” and written out in substance by a secretary, and then passed on to another secretary who put the summary in full legal form. This was taken to the Khalif who confirmed it, and this authoritative decision was then communicated to the petitioner, who had the whole protection of the state behind him in putting it into effect.

On Friday, the 8th of Dhu l-Kaada, in the khutba, the words were added, “O my God, bless Muhammad the chosen, ʿAli the accepted, Fatima the pure, and al-Hasan and al-Husayn, the grandsons of the Apostle, whom thou hast freed from stain and thoroughly purified. O my God, bless the pure Imams, ancestors of the Commanders of the faithful” (Ibn Khall. i. 344). This was at once a profession of Shiʿite faith, and an assertion of the claim of al-Moʿizz to be descended from the house of ʿAli. There is no sign that any appreciable number of the Egyptians became converts to Shiʿite views: for the most part these claims were regarded with complete apathy until the celebration of the great Shiʿite festival of the Muharram, when there was some rioting. The people at large acquiesced in the new rule without paying any attention to its religious claims.

On Friday, the 18th of Rabiʿ II. 359, the Kaʾid Jawhar himself presided at the public prayers and sermon in the Old Mosque, that is the Mosque of ʿAmr. The building then existing had been erected by ʿAbdullah b. Tahir in 212, and is still standing. It escaped destruction when the city was burned, but suffered a disastrous restoration in A.D. 1798. At this service many soldiers were present. The preacher was ʿAbdu s-Sami b. Umar al-ʿAbbasi, who in the khutba made especial mention of the “people of the house,” i.e., the family of ʿAli, and prayed for the Kaʾid, although Jawhar did not approve of his own name being thus mentioned, saying that no authority for it had been given in the instructions he had received from al-Moʿizz. In the call to prayer the Shiʿite custom of adding the words “come to the excellent work” was adopted. In the month of Jumada I. this addition was made in the call to prayer at the Old Mosque, at which Jawhar was greatly pleased, and made a report of the circumstance to the Khalif (Ibn Khall. i. 344-5).

Meanwhile progress was being made with the building of al-Kahira. The new city was surrounded with a wall of large bricks, of which the last fragments were observed by Maqrizi in A.D. 1400. In the middle of the great enclosure was an open space, the Bayn al-Kasrayn, “between the two palaces,” as it was afterwards called, large enough for 10,000 troops to be paraded: a small portion of this open space remains as the Suq an-Nahhasin. On the east was the Khalif’s palace; one corner of its site is now marked by the Khan al-Khalili, another by the Husayn Mosque. The name of the square was of later date, and due to the fact that al-Moʿizz’s successor built a lesser palace on its west side, at the beginning of the beautiful garden which Kafur had laid out, and which the Fatimid Khalifs maintained. A great thoroughfare led through the midst of Kahira from the Bab al-Zuwayla on the south side, communicating with the old city of Fustat, and passing through the Bayn al-Kasrayn to the Bab al-Futah, which led out to the open country on the north. To the north of the Khalif’s palace lay the Wazir’s official residence, and to the south the mosque of al-ʾAzhar, which Jawhar commenced soon after the foundation of Kahira and finished on the 7th of Ramadan, 361. Although the existing building has been much modernised it retains enough of the older structure to show the typical character of Fatimid architecture. The horse shoe arch, commonly regarded as of Persian origin, seems to have been developed in Egypt, and appears first in the Nilometer and then in the mosque of Ibn Tulun: it had an Indian parentage, and was not introduced into Persia until it had already been employed in Egypt (Rivoira: Moslem Architecture, E.T. 154, etc.), at least no dated example is found until later than the mosque of al-ʾAzhar. The Fatimid style shows this horse-shoe arch combined with high imposts which occur in the mosque of Ziadat Allah in Kairawan (A.H. 816-837); “nor does it seem an unnatural conjecture that it was Jauhar, not only a distinguished general, but also a man of letters, and therefore of culture, who suggested the form to some Christian architect of Egypt: and that, under these circumstances, the designer of the building, wishing to endow it with some distinctive feature marking the accession of the new dynasty, modified the pointed arch of Tulun’s time under the influence of the Indian ‘cyma reversa’ or ogee arch” (Rivoira: op. cit. 157).

In general plan, style, the use of brick piers, etc., the mosque of al-ʾAzhar followed the model of the mosque of Ibn Tulun, and so was a development of Egyptian native taste. The minaret was of heavy square type with outside stairs which has always remained popular in western Islam.

The most novel feature introduced by the Fatimid architects was the pendentive, the pensile cusped framing arch over a recessed angle. This appears clearly in the interior of the dome of the mihrab in the mosque of al-Hakim, commenced in 380 but not completed until 404. But this reproduces the pendentive as it appears in the mosque of Cordova (A.H. 350-366) in the bay in the front of the mihrab, and had its precursor more than four centuries before in the church of St. Vitale at Ravenna.