A Short History of the Fatimid Khalifate

by De Lacy O'Leary

Hakim now increased his habit of riding out. He began to use asses in preference to horses, and went out clothed plainly in black, wearing on his head a little linen cap without a turban. Orders were given that when he went out the officials were to remain in their offices and not form an escort as had been the custom. As the year went on he went out more and more frequently until he was usually out six or seven times a day, sometimes riding on his ass, sometimes borne in a litter, and sometimes going in a boat on the Nile. He became more lavish than ever with his gifts, and presented estates to the owners of boats, to subordinate officials of various kinds, and to the Arab tribesmen of the B. Qorra. Amongst the gifts he made to these latter was the overlordship of the city of Alexandria and its suburbs.

In Syria Saktekin Shams ad-Dawla was made governor of Damascus, and this office he held until 408. He was a tyrannical and cruel man. Towards the end of his career he built the “New Bridge” below the citadel at Damascus, intending himself to be the first to cross it. One day when it was nearing completion he saw a horseman riding across the bridge. In great anger he sends down a messenger to arrest him. But the strange horseman turned out to be a messenger from Egypt with orders for his deposition from office.

At Aleppo Murtada ad-Dawla raised up many enemies. The Arabs of the B. Kalab tribe took up arms against him; he pretended to agree to their terms and invited them into the city to a feast: as soon as they entered he had the gates shut, arrested the chief men, and slew about one thousand. This took place in 402. Salih b. Mirdas, one of the chief men who had been imprisoned, filed through his irons and escaped in this year, 405. When he is at large he ravages the whole country, and when Murtada goes out to check him he is himself taken prisoner by the Arab. Salih, however, really desired peace, and agreed to liberate Murtada for a ransom of 15,000 pieces of gold, 120,000 pounds of silver, and 500 pieces of stuff, the freedom of the women and others of his tribe who were still in prison, the equal division of the towns and lands of Aleppo between himself and Murtada, and the gift of Murtada’s daughter in marriage. These extraordinary conditions were granted and Murtada was set free. But then he proved unwilling to divide the lands and towns of his principality or to give his daughter in marriage, so Salih makes war again and blockades Aleppo and starves it into unconditional surrender.

In 406 a quarrel sprung up between Murtada and Fatah Kalai who was the governor of the citadel. Murtada considered that he had been instrumental in fomenting Salih’s rebellion. Finally Fatah openly revolted against Murtada and sent him the message, “Go out of Aleppo, or I give the citadel to Salih.” Soon after this, as Murtada was in his palace near the gate Bab al-Jinan, he heard drums and trumpets and cried out: “Hakim, O Mansur: Salih, O Mansur,” believing that the citadel was in the hands of the Arab chieftain: so greatly was he frightened that, without enquiring what was the real cause of the drums and trumpets, he fled out of the city with his family and escaped to Antioch, where he was given an asylum by the Greek Emperor. As soon as Fatah heard of his flight he proclaimed Hakim as sovereign over Aleppo, made terms with Salih and gave him half the revenues of the city and its suburbs, and presented to him the ladies of Murtada’s harim whom he had not taken with him in his flight. Salih sent all Murtada’s wives and the other ladies to Antioch, retaining only Murtada’s daughter whom he married.

Fatah wrote an account of these events to Hakim, and the Khalif was very well pleased that he was now not merely suzerain over the ruler of Aleppo but the actual owner of the city. He conferred the title of Mubarak ad-Dawla wa-Saidha on Fatah. In the following year (407) Hakim wrote to the citizens of Aleppo abolishing the imposts and various taxes which had been paid. Fatah was given all the goods which had belonged to Murtada and was sent as governor to Tyre, after handing over the citadel of Aleppo to the Emir ʿAziz ad-Dawla, an Armenian slave who had belonged to Manjutakin. On this slave Hakim conferred the title Emir ul-Umara or “Supreme Prince,” and presented him with a pelisse of honour, several horses with harness adorned with gold, and a sword of state. Later on the Emir revolted against Hakim.

Meanwhile very curious events were taking place in Egypt. In the course of 407 (though al-Maqin says 408), a Persian daʿi named Muhammad b. Ismaʿil Darazi arrived in Egypt, a Batinite who believed in the transmigration of souls, and hoped to find at the Fatimid court a congenial atmosphere for his mystic creed. He attached himself to the Khalif, over whom he soon began to have great influence, and from whom he received many gifts and favours. In due course he succeeded in persuading the prince that he was an incarnation of the deity, and wrote a book in which he taught that the Divine Spirit which God had breathed into Adam had passed on in due succession from prophet to prophet, through the Imam ʿAli, until at length it found its abode in the Imam Hakim. So great was his influence over the Khalif that much of the public business was given into his hands, and all who desired to approach the Khalif had to pay court to the daʿi. The heir elect seems to have fallen into disfavour about this time. He was sent away from Cairo but given the important post of governor of Damascus. After he had been in Syria for some time he was suddenly attacked by a band of men who, after slaying several of his companions, put him in a box and carried him to Egypt. There he was released and, a little later, was sent back to Damascus. No explanation of this strange event is suggested, but it was generally believed that he was thus treated by the Khalif’s orders.

Amongst some of the more advanced Shiʿites many were found to follow the new doctrines of Darazi, and the daʿi accompanied by a band of followers went down to the Old Mosque where he read from the book he had written. According to an account given by al-Masin a Turk, shocked at the blasphemies which occurred in this reading, fell upon Darazi and killed him, after which his house was pillaged, and a tumult followed which lasted for three days. The Turk was arrested and put in prison, and was then brought to trial on another charge for which he was executed. For a long time the Turk’s grave was visited by the orthodox who regarded him as a martyr. But this account is not strictly correct, for Darazi was not killed at that time. According to Abu l-Mahsin, the most weighty authority, Hakim did not openly endorse Darazi’s teaching; when the tumult arose in the mosque Darazi escaped and received money from Hakim, and with this retired to Syria where he preached in the mountainous parts where the people were very ignorant, and amongst them he obtained many disciples and founded a sect, the Druses, which still exists in the Lebanon. In religion these Druses hold a kind of pantheism, which in many respects verges upon agnosticism, but has a pure morality, in spite of the many charges which have been made against this as against every other religion which keeps its creed a secret from the outside world.

About the same time, or perhaps a little after, a Persian from Farghana named Hasan al-Akhram, also appears as using his influence to persuade Hakim of his deity, or to develop the ideas which Darazi had already instilled into him. This man formed a party on the conventional lines of the extremer Shiʿites, entirely discarding all the traditional observances of the Muslim religion. One day he went with a band of fifty followers to the Old Mosque, where he found the Qadi sitting and hearing cases. After treating the by-standers roughly, they present a question to the Qadi, beginning their words with the form “In the name of Hakim, the merciful, the compassionate,” applying to him the terms usually applied to God. The Qadi raised his voice and protested against this with great indignation. The people were so angry at the blasphemy that they fell upon Akhram and his followers: of the latter several were killed, but Akhram escaped.

The most famous of these duʿat, who at this time advocated the deification of Hakim, was Hamza b. ʿAli b. Ahmad Hadi, a native of Zawzan in Persia. The Druses regard him as their founder, and date their years from the “Era of Hamza,” which is placed in A.H. 408. It seems that his teaching was earlier than that of Ahmad the Qadi (405), and so probably he was in private conference with Hakim from somewhere about 405 until he made public declaration of his doctrine in 408. He dwelt in the Mosque of Bir at Mantarea, originally the tomb of an ʿAlid who had been put to death in 145, afterwards known as the Mosque of Tibr after a minister who served under Kafur, and was one of those who had tried to resist the entry of Jawhar. He preached and invited the people to accept the teaching already expounded by Darazi, and sent out missionaries of his doctrines to various parts of Egypt and Syria. Hakim was greatly influenced by Hamza, and was induced by him to discard all the outward observances of Islam, ceasing to visit the mosques, or to take part in prayer. Under the pretext that the Arabs were a danger to travellers he suppressed the pilgrimage to Mecca and ceased to send the veil to the “House of God,” all of which caused great disgust to the orthodox. Hamza and twelve of his disciples, the traditional number of the Shiʿite nakibs, were in constant attendance on Hakim. It seems that Hamza was the real founder and teacher of Hakim’s deity, and that Darazi was one of his converts. But the details of the formation of this sectarian development during the years 405-408 are full of obscurities: it does not seem safe to follow the sacred books of the Druses who idealised the whole matter. We do not find ourselves on solid ground until 408, when the claims of Hakim to deity were publicly proclaimed and admitted by the Khalif himself. It is said (by Severus) that Hakim claimed to have a knowledge of secret things, and tried to support this claim by evidence which he gleaned from his spies. But Severus’ evidence must be regarded with some suspicion: a Syrian Christian he heard of the events in Egypt only at second hand, and is very obviously influenced by strong prejudices. He refers to this claimed omniscience of Hakim the incident of the letter which read: “We have endured injustice and tyranny, but we are not willing to endure impiety and folly. If thou knowest hidden things, say the name of him who wrote this letter,” an incident which seems to belong to the early days of the Khalif al-Mahdi in Kairawan. Severus further tells us that when Hakim’s name was mentioned in the khutba all present rose out of respect; but in Fustat the people made a prostration at this name. He is referring, no doubt, to reported conduct of Hamza’s followers. He says further that there were some people who, when Hakim appeared in the streets, used to prostrate themselves on the ground and cry out: “O thou only one, thou alone, thou who givest life and death”: this is exactly what might be expected of the extremer Shiʿites, and is in no way incredible. At this time all persecution of Christians and Jews entirely ceased; obviously the Khalif no longer regarded Islam as in any way superior to those other religions. Persons who had turned Muslims were permitted to return to their former beliefs; contrary to Muslim law they were protected from all punishment, but it is obvious that at this juncture Muslim law was not in any sense observed in the Fatimid state. Severus tells us that some Christians and Jews came to the Khalif and said: “My God, I desire to return to my former religion”: and Hakim replied: “Do as seems good to you.” According to the books of the Druses: “Although it is a precept to make war with the unbelievers, our lord has abolished this precept so far as concerns Jews and Christians.” The Druses refer this to the era of Hamza, i.e., 408 A.H., but Severus puts it in the year 736 of the “era of the Martyrs,” that is A.H. 411, the closing year of Hakim’s reign, and dates the beginning of the persecution of Christians from 402, taking the destruction of the great Church in Jerusalem as the beginning of the persecution, that is to say, the beginning of the time when active steps were taken which reached to Syria as well as Egypt, and in this agrees with Abu l-Mahsin, but Maqrizi puts the destruction of the Church of the Resurrection in 400 so that the end of the persecution, which lasted nine years, would come in 408-409, when Hakim had assented to the public declaration of his deity which seems to be the more probable date.

Towards the end of the nine years of persecution it was reported to Hakim that some converts from Christianity had been celebrating the rites of their former religion privately in houses, but he took no steps to punish them, and this emboldened others to do likewise. If this was so it would seem that there was no formal decree of toleration but simply that the penal regulations were permitted to sink into oblivion. Then some attended on the Khalif and asked permission to revert to their former religion. Hakim asked where were their girdles, crosses, and other badges?—they produced them from under their clothes. The Khalif made no rebuke but told them that they could do as they pleased, and sent them with an attendant to the office where they obtained letters of protection. After this many unwilling converts did the same, until most of those who had changed their religion from fear had returned to their former faith.