A Short History of the Fatimid Khalifate

by De Lacy O'Leary

As soon as al-Mustansir was dead the wazir al-Afdal al-Juyush entered the palace and placed Abu l-Kasim Ahmad al-Mustali, a youth of eighteen years of age and the youngest son of the late Khalif on the throne. At the same time he sent for the other sons of Mustansir who were near at hand, Nizar the eldest son, and his brothers ʿAbdullah and Ismaʿil, bidding them come quickly. As soon as they entered the room where the wazir awaited them and saw their youngest brother enthroned they were filled with indignation, and when al-Afdal bade them do homage to Mustali as the new Khalif, Nizar burst out, “I would rather be cut in pieces than do homage to one younger than myself, and moreover I possess a document in the handwriting of my father by which he names me successor, and I shall go and bring it.” At this he went out, presumably to get the document, but as he did not return the wazir sent after him, and it was found that he had left the city. Very soon afterwards he appeared at Alexandria, supported by his brother ʿAbdullah and an emir named Ibn Massal, and there he assumed the title of Khalif with the surname of al-Mustafa li-dinillah (“the chosen for God’s religion”), and received the oath of allegiance from the Alexandrians. He promised Nasir ad-Dawla Iftikin, the Turkish governor of Alexandria, that he should be wazir. As we have already seen, there was a party ready to support Nizar even before Mustansir’s death, and his claims seemed to have fair prospects of success. No doubt we may say that the sectarian supporters of the Fatimid Imamate were with him, whilst al-Afdal headed the secularist party: but there would, no doubt, be many aggrieved with the existing administration, and even perhaps remnants of those whom al-Afdal’s father had suppressed with such severity, who were ready to throw in their lot with the opposition to the wazir’s nominee in Cairo.

In 488 al-Afdal found it necessary to take the field against Nizar and his followers, but suffered a sharp repulse in the first engagement. Encouraged by this the Nizarites laid waste the country north of Cairo. Again al-Afdal prepared his forces and marched this time to Alexandria and laid siege to it. During this siege Ibn Massal had a dream in which he seemed to be riding on horseback and al-Afdal was following him on foot. He consulted an astrologer as to the meaning of this dream, and was informed that it signified the ultimate success of al-Afdal, for those who walk the earth are those who will possess it. Ibn Massal took this very seriously and thought it prudent to leave Nizar’s party, so he departed and retired to Lukk near Barqa. This defection marked the turning point of Nizar’s career for, after losing Ibn Massal and his men, his fortunes gradually declined. Convinced that resistance could not endure for long he sent out and asked al-Afdal if he would spare his life if he submitted. Receiving a favourable answer the gates of Alexandria were opened to the wazir who took possession of the city and, after putting an end to all resistance, returned to Cairo with Nizar and ʿAbdullah. Nizar’s subsequent life is totally unknown. He was either imprisoned in absolute secrecy, or put to death: stories were told of both these ends, but nothing was ever known for certain. A certain Muhammad afterwards claimed to be Nizar’s son, and had a following in Yemen: he was brought to Cairo and crucified in 523. In all probability he was an imposter.

The suppression of Nizar and his partisans meant the triumph of al-Afdal, and during the rest of Mustali’s reign the Khalif was entirely without authority in the state, and came out only as required at public functions.

The suppression of Nizar involved a definite separation between the Fatimids of Cairo and their court on the one side and the Asiatic adherents of Nizar’s Imamate on the other, and so from 488 onwards the Assassins formed a distinct sect, as much opposed to the Fatimids and their followers as to the orthodox Muslims. The founder, Hasan-i-Sabbah, had now fully organised that sect on lines which were in general outline imitated from the traditional system of the Ismaʿilians, but differed in detail. There were grades and successive stages of initiation, and the real beliefs of the higher grades were of the same pantheistic-agnostic type as in the Ismaʿilian body, and similarly the members of those upper grades were keen students of the science and philosophy which had been derived from Hellenistic tradition. When the headquarters of the sect at Alamut were finally taken they were found to contain a vast library as well as an observatory and a collection of scientific instruments. In fact we may say with confidence that the Assassins represent the highest level of scholarship and research in contemporary Asiatic Islam, if we can indeed regard them as within the Islamic fold; an island of culture and learning in the midst of reactionary orthodoxy and actual ignorance, the result of the submerging of Asiatic Islam beneath the flood of Turkish invasion. Far away in the west a purer culture was beginning to dawn in Muslim Spain, but in Asia philosophy and science were being rapidly obscured by the reactionary flood.

As organised by Hasan-i-Sabbah the Assassins appear in six grades. The highest of these was filled by the “Chief Daʿi” who recognised the Imam alone as superior on earth. So long as Mustansir lived he was regarded as the true Imam; after his death Nizar was his successor, and later on we find the Chief Daʿi claiming descent from Nizar, but this was as yet in the future. It was the same development as that which we have already observed in the history of the Shiʿite sect founded by ʿAbdullah b. Maymun. Amongst outsiders the Chief Daʿi commonly went by the name of “Sheikh of the mountain,” i.e., of the mountain stronghold of Alamut which formed the headquarters of the sect, and this is reproduced as “the old man of the mountain” in the records of the Crusaders. Under the Chief Daʿi were the “Senior Missionaries” (daʿi-i-kabir), each supervising a diocese or bahr (“sea”), and under these were the ordinary missionaries. Thus far the organization merely reproduced that already prevalent in the Ismaʿilian propaganda. Beneath the missionaries were the ordinary members in two main grades known respectively as “companions” (rafiq) and “adherents” (lasiq), the former more fully initiated in the batimite or allegorical interpretations of doctrine than the latter. The sixth grade, theoretically the lowest, was peculiar to the Assassin sect, and consisted of “devoted ones” (fidaʿi) who do not seem to have been initiated, but were bound to a blind and unquestioning obedience which has its parallel in the discipline of the various darwish orders, but was here carried to exceptional extremes. These fidaʿis were carefully trained and were especially practised in the use of various forms of disguise, after all only a more perfect refinement of the methods originally evolved by the Hashimite missionaries; but these were not disguised for the purpose of acting more efficiently as missionaries and for penetrating different communities as teachers, but solely for the purpose of carrying out the specific orders of the Chief Daʿi, and thus formed a most formidable branch of what soon became an exceptionally powerful secret society. In many cases the acts entrusted to the fidaʿis were acts of murder, and it is from this that the name of “assassin” has received its peculiar meaning in most of the languages of Western Europe. The fidaʿi, trained to the use of disguise, sometimes as a servant, or as a merchant, or darwish, or as a Christian monk, was able to penetrate into almost any society and to strike down suddenly the victim marked out; and counted it a triumphant success if this act involved his own death as well. A deliberate effort was made to surround the sect with an atmosphere of terror; a Muslim prince would be struck down whilst he was acting as leader at prayer, or a Crusading knight as he was attending high mass at the head of his troops, or if there was not actual murder, a leader might wake up in his tent to find a message from the Assassins pinned by a dagger to the ground beside his couch, or a doctor of the law would find a similar message between the pages of the text book from which he was lecturing. All this was developed more elaborately as time went on, but already in the days of Mustali the sect had rendered itself prominent by getting rid of some leading men whom it regarded as its enemies, such as in 485 Nidhamu l-Mulk the great wazir of the Saljuq sultans, in 491 ʿAbdu r-Rahman as-Samayrami the wazir of Barkiyaruq’s mother, and in 494 Unru Bulka, the rival of Nidhamu l-Mulk and the emir of greater influence in Isfahan. The higher members of the sect were domiciled at Alamut, or in some one or other of the various mountain fortresses they secured in Northern Persia and afterwards in Syria, but adherents were found everywhere scattered through western Asia. In its development the sect of Assassins was almost entirely Asiatic, but as professed adherents of Nizar the eldest son of Mustansir, the Assassins were, at least nominally, of Egyptian origin.

So far the danger most threatening to the Fatimids had been the advance of the Saljuq Turks, pledged to the destruction of the Ismaʿilian heresy, from the east: but in the fourth year of Mustali’s reign a new danger appeared. This was the appearance of the Franks embarked on the First Crusade, who reached Syria in the year 490, when the Saljuq influence was already on the decline. The great Saljuq leader Tutush had died in the preceding year, and his two sons at once became rivals, the one, Duqaq, established at Damascus, the other, Rudwan, at Aleppo. Rudwan was anxious to obtain Fatimid assistance and inserted Mustali’s name in the khutba, but the Fatimid state regarded the Saljuqs with dread and suspicion, and was disposed to welcome the Franks as possible allies against the Turks. Jerusalem remained in Saljuq hands under the control of the sons of Ortuk b. Aksab who had governed in the name of Tutush, and they formed an outpost of the Saljuq empire which the Fatimid government regarded as its chief enemy in the east.

The Crusaders professed to be the champions of the Christian religion and declared their aim as being the deliverance of the sacred sites from the occupation of the Muslims. Before reaching Syria, however, they had made it plain that this was not to be understood in a literal sense, for they had shown marked hostility towards the Greek Church, and throughout the whole of their career they were the uncompromising enemies of all the eastern churches. No doubt this can be partly explained by a total lack of understanding or sympathy towards religious bodies whose general customs and external organisation, and more particularly whose liturgy, differed so markedly from the forms developed in the west; but the fact remains that their fellow Christians in the east soon came to regard the Crusaders with as much dislike as the Muslims. This antagonism towards the Greek and eastern churches generally was fully defined before their arrival in Syria. But in fact they were not even the champions of Latin Christianity. Some, no doubt, were sincere in their desire to rescue the Holy Land from non-Christian occupation, but for the most part they were adventurers desirous of carving out principalities in lands which they were well aware were much richer and more prosperous than their own countries in the west. From their own point of view the time at which this Crusade arrived was exceptionally promising: the Saljuq power was broken and there was a temporary lull in the migration of the virile and warlike Turkish races westwards, whilst the Muslim community was divided between ʿAbbasids and Fatimids beyond the possibility of united resistance. Twenty years earlier, or fifty years later they would certainly not have been able to establish themselves in Palestine, but just at the moment circumstances were favourable.

Arriving in Syria in A.H. 490 the Crusaders under Baldwin (or Bardawil as he appears in the Arabic writers) took the city of Edessa and then proceeded to lay siege to Antioch which fell into their hands on the 16th of Rajab 491 (20th June, 1098). News of their arrival and first successes had early reached Egypt, and al-Afdal prepared to welcome them as likely auxiliaries against the Turks: it seemed fully possible that the Franks and Fatimids might divide Western Asia between them, and such indeed would have been feasible. Under this impression al-Afdal sent an army into Palestine and wrested Jerusalem from Sokman the son of Ortuk, who held it as a part of the Saljuq empire, at the same time sending forward an embassy to the Franks welcoming them and asking to make an alliance with them. The Franks absolutely rejected these proposals and declined to accept any friendly overtures from Muslims. Very soon they proceeded to attack Jerusalem, and in the month of Shaban, 492, took it, plundering the mosques, slaughtering the Muslim population, and showing themselves hostile to orthodox and Shiʿite alike. This disillusioned al-Afdal and made it clear to him that it was impossible to expect any sort of alliance with the new-comers. After taking Jerusalem and expelling the Fatimid government the Franks elected Godfrey king of Jerusalem, a rank which he held until the following year, and during this time he did his best to introduce western customs and jurisprudence in the city as well as the Latin rite in the churches.

In the following year (493) the Franks attacked the Egyptian army before Ascalon, which now remained the only important possession of the Fatimids in Palestine. Before the battle the wazir sent an envoy with a flag of truce, but this the Franks disregarded and made an assault upon those who, according to the customary usages of war, should have been sacred. In the ordinary way such attacks made in disregard of a flag of truce, reported in practically every war, ought not to be treated too seriously by the historian: it is almost impossible, even in the best disciplined army, to make sure that no abuse of this kind shall ever occur, but in the case of the Crusaders there seems to have been a deliberate intention to treat the Muslims as outside the ordinary conventions which were more or less observed amongst Christian nations: although it must be remembered that we are dealing with times before the rise of chivalry and the humaner attitude which characterised mediaeval warfare, all more fully developed after contact with the Muslims who did much to refine Frankish manners and usages; and, moreover, the very mixed multitude loosely held together in the Crusading ranks was undisciplined even beyond the wont of those days. In the succeeding engagement the Franks defeated al-Afdal and his forces, and he was compelled to embark for Egypt. Ascalon, however, was not taken as the citizens, alarmed by the recent savagery of the Franks in Jerusalem and perceiving that they were, for the most part, simply out for booty, bribed them to leave the city alone.