A Short History of the Fatimid Khalifate

by De Lacy O'Leary

(ii) The Golden Age of the Fatimids. (A.H. 356-469 = A.D. 966-1076.)

During the period of the decay of the Abbasid Khalifate the Fatimids were able to seize an important part of the Abbasid dominions and make themselves rulers of Palestine and Syria, with more or less intermittent control over Arabia. At this time the three leading powers in the Near East were the Khalifate of Baghdad, the Fatimid Khalifate of Egypt, and the Byzantine Empire, but of these three the Fatimid Khalifate of Egypt was the most vigorous and aggressive. Under Karl the Great the Western Empire had assumed a kind of protectorate over the Christians in Palestine, but in Fatimid times this had become obsolete. The two rival Khalifates were separated by a wide gulf of religious difference, how wide cannot be appreciated without following the history of the formation and development of the Fatimid Khalifate. Both made overtures to the Greeks, but the relations of Byzantium with the Muslim world generally turned on questions connected with Fatimid rule: Fatimids and Greeks faced one another in North West Syria, and it was only in Sicily that the Greeks had to deal with the Baghdad Khalifate. Before the beginning of this period Crete which had fallen into the hands of the Muslims in A.D. 825, was recovered (in A.D. 961): Sicily, conquered by the Muslims between A.D. 827 and 878, remained in their hands but, after the Fatimid conquest of North Africa it revolted and gave in its allegiance to the Khalifate of Baghdad. North Africa was divided amongst various Muslim groups, and Spain was fully occupied with its own problems. In A.D. 1038 Byzantium lost control over North Syria, so that on the whole the Greeks were receding before the Muslims. In A.D. 1029 (= A.H. 419) there was, however, a modus vivendi reached between the Fatimids and the Greeks by which, in return for help during famine, the Muslims were allowed to have a mosque in Constantinople provided prayer was offered there for the Fatimid Khalif, and, apparently, the Christians were allowed freedom to visit Jerusalem. The persecution of Christians under Hakim had culminated in the destruction of the church of the Holy Sepulchre in A.D. 1009, but this was re-built soon afterwards: the persecution was an isolated incident: in Muslim lands generally neither Christians nor Jews suffered any serious disabilities, the penal laws were long obsolete, and the only penalty enforced was against a Muslim who became a convert to another religion. An additional tax had to be paid by non-Muslims, but this was in lieu of military service from which they were exempt.

The real stirring of history lay in the extreme east and west, in the rise of the Turks and of the Normans, both gradually converging upon western Asia and at the close of this period are both approaching Syria, bringing even greater disasters to their co-religionists than to those whom they regarded as their foes. During the period under present consideration both were already in this arena in small numbers, employed as mercenaries by all the three Near Eastern powers, Turkish soldiers of fortune serving under the Khalifs of Baghdad and under the Fatimids of Egypt, Northmen serving in the employ of the Emperors of Byzantium, but neither Turks nor Northmen had as yet moved in in sufficiently large numbers to become independent factors in politics.

The first assertion of the Turks appears in the career of Mahmud of Ghazna. Turkish soldiers had been employed by the Samanide of Khurasan, and one of these, Alptekin, was made governor of Khurasan, but at a disputed succession in the house of Samani he unfortunately took the side of the candidate who proved unsuccessful and so had to flee the country. With a body of followers he established himself in the mountain fortress of Ghazna (in A.H. 350 = A.D. 961), and there he and his son Sebektakin held their own, nominally as vassals of the Samanids, really as an independent brigand state. The third ruler of Ghazna, Mahmud, declared himself independent in 390 (= 999), and received investiture directly from the Khalif of Baghdad, assuming the title of Sultan, a title which he was the first to introduce into the community of Islam. Mahmud of Ghazna is one of the brilliant figures of history, but one whose importance can easily be over-estimated. In a series of twelve expeditions to India he won both fame and booty, but was not in any real sense a conqueror of India. In A.H. 407 (= A.D. 1016) he extended his power northwards to the shores of the Caspian Sea, and here before long he was brought into contact with other kinsmen of his own, Turks living across the Oxus, and it was the advance of these Turks led by the Saljuq tribe which, in his son’s days, cut off the Sultanate of Ghazna from Persia and the West and compelled the Ghazni dynasty to turn its attention eastwards. This led to the foundation of a Muslim state in India which, under the successive rule of Turks, Afghans, and Mongols, had a continuous existence to the time of the Indian Mutiny in the 19th cent. Although Mahmud and his followers were Turks he gave the civil administration mainly into the hands of Persian officials, and thus Persian became the court language of Muslim India, though Arabic was sometimes employed in important charters,—both foreign languages to rulers and subjects; and thus, when the native Hindi began to be used as a literary medium it appeared as a language which, though thoroughly Hindi in structure and grammar, had a vocabulary full of Persian and Arabic words, and in this form is known as Urdu or Hindustani. Thus Indian history, through the pushing eastwards of the Ghazni Turks by the advance of the Saljuqs, connects with the history of the West.

The Persian dynasties of the Saffarids, Samanids, and Daylamites were Shiʿite in religion, but the Turks were Sunni, that is to say “orthodox” in the sense of adhering to the traditional school which was in communion with the official Khalifate of Baghdad, so that when they came westwards they came as its champions, in contrast to the Normans who were unfriendly towards the Greek Church.

The Saljuq Turks migrated from Turkistan to Balkh about 345 (= A.D. 956), and there accepted Islam. They settled on the farther side of the Oxus about 20 parasangs from the town of Balkh, and there they were found by Mahmud of Ghazna. He removed then to the near side of the Oxus and distributed them through the province of Khurasan where, as they were broken up into small groups, they were harshly treated, and plundered until a body of 2,000 fugitives fled to Ispahan for protection. The governor there wished to employ them in the army, but Mahmud sent orders that they were to be imprisoned and their property confiscated, and followed up these orders by sending a force to scatter them. After this they took to brigandage under a leader named Tughril, and finally were pardoned by Mahmud on condition that they reduced the whole province of Khurasan to obedience to him. This work they took in hand but, in the days of Masud, the successor of Mahmud, they were able to establish their own independence and compelled the Sultan of Ghazna to abandon all control over Persia and turn his attention eastwards (Ibn Khall. iii. 224-226x).

The Saljuqs were now so prominent that al-Qaʾim the Khalif of Baghdad sent to Tughril as a loyal Sunni to deliver him from the tyranny of the Buwayhids. In response Tughril marched to Baghdad and formally restored the temporal power of the Khalif in 447 (= A.D. 1055), though this soon meant simply that the Khalif was under the guardianship of a Saljuq Turk instead of a Daylamite Buwayhid; though there was this much gain, that the Saljuqs were theoretically orthodox supporters of the Abbasid Khalifate.

The Saljuqs were now established as the champions and defenders of the Baghdad Khalifate. Under Tughril’s successor, Alp Arslan, they came into direct conflict with both the Fatimids and the Greeks. By 457 (= A.D. 1068) they were in possession of Georgia and Armenia, and had become a very serious and pressing menace to the Byzantine Empire. A few years later the Emperor Romanus IV. was totally defeated by them in 460 (= A.D. 1071), and all Asia Minor lay open to the Turks, though the Saljuq position there was insecure until they took Antioch from the Greeks. Alp Arslan was succeeded by Malah Shah who, in the course of 467-477 (= A.D. 1074-1084) established the Saljuq power in Asia Minor, and in 469 conquered Jerusalem from the Fatimids, so that practically the Saljuq Sultan, theoretically the Commander-in-Chief serving under the Khalif of Baghdad, was the master of all Western Asia. This brings us to the close of the second period and to the end of the golden age of the Fatimids.

Meanwhile in the West the Normans, destined to be the protagonists of the Saljuq Turks, were becoming a leading power in another way. In 1038 we find them serving in Sicily, in 1040 they were conquering Apulia, and soon afterwards they began minor encroachments on the Byzantine Empire. Their chief settlement, Normandy, dates from 911, and it is significant that this was one year after the foundation of the Abbey of Cluny, from which proceeded a religious reformation which found its warmest supporters in the Normans. When Pope Leo IX. made an expedition against the Normans in Apulia and was defeated by them, his greatest surprise came in finding his victorious enemies ready to pay him a reverent loyalty far beyond anything he had previously experienced. The recently converted Normans were no less definite in their orthodoxy as Christians than the recently converted Saljuqs in their orthodoxy as Muslims.

It is, no doubt, impossible to regard the Crusades as entirely religious in their spirit and character, but it is equally impossible to ignore the fact that religious motives played a very large part in their history. We may venture to say that they commenced under the influence of the Cluniac reformation, and that most of those who took part in the First Crusade, if they had any regard for religion at all, accepted the Cluniac standards: whilst the Second Crusade was still more definitely associated with the Cistercian order, itself an after-math of the Cluniac reformation. The attitude of the Latin clergy towards the Greek Church was exactly the same as that of the Cistercian missionaries towards the native Keltic clergy of Ireland a few years later: wherever religion enters into the programme of the Crusaders it is always treated according to Cluniac standards, and everything is disapproved which does not conform to those standards. The Normans and Burgundians formed the most loyal contingent of those who contended for Cluniac ideals, and they, the Normans especially, formed the real nucleus of the First Crusade. The Crusading movement cannot be separated from the Cluniac reformation.