A Short History of the Fatimid Khalifate

by De Lacy O'Leary

On Thursday morning the whole court attended early at the palace. A golden throne covered with cushions of cloth of gold was placed in the great portico which al-ʿAziz had constructed in 369. Al-Hakim started out from the palace on horseback wearing the jewelled turban. At his approach all the courtiers kissed the earth, and then walked at his side or before and behind until he reached the portico, where he dismounted and took his seat on the throne, the courtiers taking their places according to rank, and each in turn did homage. Barjawan, the white eunuch whom al-ʿAziz had appointed to act as Ustad or “tutor,” administered the oath, and the young Khalif was proclaimed with the title al-Hakim bi-amri-llah.

There is no doubt that al-ʿAziz, in appointing Barjawan as tutor intended him to act as regent until the young prince was old enough to assume the power himself, although Ibn ʿAmmar and the Qadi Muhammad b. Nuʿman were associated with him as guardians. But at this point Ibn ʿAmmar, the acknowledged leader of the Katama party in Cairo, seized the office of Wasita or chief minister, to which was united the office of sifara or secretary of state, ejecting Isa b. Nestorius, and assumed the title of Amin ad-Dawla or “the one trusted in the empire.” This was the first time that the term “empire” was employed in the Fatimid state and, as De Sacy points out (Druses i. cclxxxv.), its use shows the appearance of a new tendency. So far the Fatimids had been the leaders of a sect of which the Imam was supreme pontiff: circumstances had enabled the sect to establish a state, first in Ifrikiya, then in Egypt, but it retained, at least in theory, a quasi-religious character, and its professed duty was to maintain the divine right of the Mahdi and his descendants. It seems, however, that by this time there were some who had out-grown this sectarian point of view and desired the Fatimid state to pose frankly as a secular power. The Berber tribe of Katama appears to have been the centre of this change of view; they considered no doubt that they had been the conquerors of Ifrikiya and of Egypt, and by their conquest had established a Berber monarchy: why should the fruits of this conquest be laid at the feet of an Arab dynasty whose supernatural claims they no longer believed?—the Fatimid Khalifs had given no evidence of miraculous powers, but were evidently ordinary human beings whose kingdom had been secured by the ready credulity of their forefathers. Ibn ʿAmmar comes forward as the leader of what we may term the secular party, and his programme seems to have been to dispense with the religious claims of the Fatimids, and to treat Egypt and its subject provinces simply as a dawla or temporal kingdom. No doubt these views had been gathering force for some time past, and certainly al-ʿAziz had been more prominent as the secular ruler and had allowed the sectarian propaganda to drop into the background, but his death and the accession of a child Khalif offered exceptional opportunities for modifying the policy of the state. De Sacy suggests that Ibn ʿAmmar’s party was disposed to get rid of the young sovereign and to establish a purely Berber government, a suggestion which has every appearance of probability. With the disappearance of the divinely appointed Mahdi and the end of the Fatimid line the country would be set free from the peculiar religious views of the Ismaʿiliya, which were an actual barrier to the progress of the state and alienated from it the bulk of the subject population. It seems a very probable picture of the tendencies prevailing at the moment and rests upon rather more than simple conjecture, though it must be admitted that none of the native historians attach this deep significance to the introduction of the term dawla.

It is not necessary to suppose that Barjawan was a devout supporter of Ismaʿilian views, but he certainly was the decided opponent of Ibn ʿAmmar who had curtailed his power and thrust him into the background, leaving him to be no more than the private tutor of the young prince. By force of circumstances he was compelled to become the champion of the young Khalif, so that this first period of al-Hakim’s reign centres in Barjawan’s intrigues to get rid of Ibn ʿAmmar.

Very early in al-Hakim’s reign there came to Egypt as a refugee the eunuch Shakar, who had been a servant of the Buwayhid prince Adhad ad-Dawla, but who had been taken prisoner by the rival prince Sharif ad-Dawla, from whom he had escaped. He was a friend of Manjutakin, the governor of Syria, and Barjawan, having enlisted his support, used him as the medium of sending an appeal to Manjutakin to deliver him and the Khalif from the bondage in which they were kept by Ibn ʿAmmar. Manjutakin, who was naturally inclined to be a partisan of the Turks and the Turkish mercenaries whom al-ʿAziz had introduced into Egypt as a counterpoise against the influence of the Katama and other Berber tribes, readily espoused Barjawan’s faction and assembled troops preparatory to an advance upon Egypt. As soon as Ibn ʿAmmar heard of this he treated it as a revolt, and sent out an army under the command of Sulayman b. Jaʿfar b. Fallah, a Berber of the Katama tribe and one of his supporters to check the revolted Manjutakin. Thus the palace intrigue between Ibn ʿAmmar and Barjawan was fought out by their respective supporters in Syria.

Sulayman met Manjutakin either at Ascalon or Ramla, and there he inflicted a defeat upon the Turks in which Manjutakin himself was taken prisoner and sent captive to Egypt. He was well received by Ibn ʿAmmar, who wanted to see Berbers and Turks united in resistance to the established Khalifate, and perceived very clearly that his plans could not be successful unless he enlisted the sympathy of the Turkish faction which was very strong in Cairo.

After his victory over Manjutakin Sulayman was made governor of Syria and proceeded to Tiberias, sending his brother ʿAli to act as his deputy in Damascus. But the citizens of Damascus, always turbulent and independent, refused to accept ʿAli as governor or to allow him to enter the city until they received a threatening letter from Sulayman which thoroughly frightened them and put an end to their opposition. ʿAli entered Damascus in no pleasant mood, and made his irritation felt by turning his soldiers loose, so that many of the citizens were slain and some parts of the city burned, after which he withdrew and pitched camp outside. Not long afterwards Sulayman himself arrived and received the apologies and protestations of loyalty of the citizens and was pleased to express his pardon. It was his aim at this time to continue the policy of al-ʿAziz and to hold the sea coast as a check upon the Greeks, and thus had no desire to be embroiled with a city in his rear which he left to be dealt with at a more convenient time. The Syrian Tripoli was the most important coast town held by the Muslims, and this he now handed over to his brother ʿAli, dismissing the governor Jaysh, although he was a fellow Berber and a tribesman of the Katama, with the result that Jaysh went back to Egypt with a grievance and joined himself to Barjawan’s faction.

Barjawan’s intrigues had now so far succeeded that he had a strong following, and as most of Ibn ʿAmmar’s troops were absent in Syria it seemed a favourable moment to strike his rival. For some time there were street riots between Berbers and Turks, indeed, this seems to have been more or less the normal state of Cairo at the time, for in spite of the good treatment accorded to Manjutakin, the Turkish mercenaries were deeply jealous of the favour shown by Ibn ʿAmmar to his fellow Berbers. When Barjawan felt that the time was ripe he secretly distributed largess amongst the Turks, and they made an open attack upon Ibn ʿAmmar which compelled him to conceal himself and to retire from public life.

At Ibn ʿAmmar’s downfall, for this it actually was, Barjawan assumed the offices of Wasita and Sifara, thus becoming practically regent of the state, on 28 Ramadan 387, after Ibn ʿAmmar had held office for a little less than eleven months. He treated the fallen minister as a kind of usurper who had tried to make the Khalif a prisoner and celebrated his own accession, or rather restoration to office—for he had certainly acted as chief minister for the first few days of al-Hakim’s reign—as a vindication of the Khalif’s rights. He brought forth al-Hakim in public, had him again proclaimed Khalif, and displayed him as sovereign.

But it was in Syria that the two factions were really fighting out their quarrel, and Barjawan’s first act of policy was to write to the citizens of Damascus urging them to resist Sulayman, and assuring them of the support of the home government as the Katama faction had now fallen from power. Thus encouraged the people of Damascus pillaged Sulayman’s goods, slew many of his men at arms, and expelled him from the city.