Obeidallah, after many strange deeds and adventures, and finally an imprisonment from which Abu Abdallah released him, was put on a throne in 909 and made the first Fatimid[1] Kalif at Mahdiya, his new capital near Tunis. Abu Abdallah, the successful assistant and forerunner, was assassinated soon after at command of Obeidallah, who owed him dominion, but who now had no wish for his presence. The new Kalif, since this man knew, of course, many secrets, might well think him safer in paradise. Obeidallah now proclaimed himself the only true Kalif, a descendant of the Prophet through Fatima his daughter, and became a dangerous rival of the Abbasids. By 967 his descendants had won Egypt and Southern Syria. A fortified palace was built near the Nile, and called Kahira.[2] Around this palace rose the city known later as Cairo. [[206]]
In 991 Aleppo was added to the Fatimid Empire which, beginning at the river Orontes and the desert of Syria, extended to Morocco. In view of this great success and its danger to the Abbasids the world was informed now from Bagdad that the Fatimid dynasty was spurious; that the first Kalif installed at Mahdiya was no descendant of the Prophet, he was merely the son of that Ahmed who was a son of Abdallah, son of Maimun Kaddah, son of Daisan the Dualist, his mother being a Jewess. Hence he was son of that Ahmed whose emissary, Hussein of Ahwas, had raised up and trained the detestable Karmath, whose crimes, and the crimes of whose followers, had tortured all Islam for a century.
That society, or order, which met at the famed House of Science in Cairo, was dreaming of power night and day and struggling always to win it. Power it could reach by supplanting the Abbasids, but not in another way, hence this order aimed at the overthrow of the Abbasids. It also spread secret doctrines by its Dayis (political and religious missionaries) continually. Through this activity the Fatimids were rising. Meanwhile the Abbasids were failing till Emir Bessassiri, a partisan of the Fatimids, seized and held for one year the two highest marks of dominion in Islam, the mint and the pulpit at Bagdad in the name of Mostansir the Kalif at Cairo, and would have held them much longer had not his career been cut short in 1058 by Togrul the first Seljuk Sultan, who hastened to the rescue of the Abbasids. Meanwhile the Dayis from Cairo and their aids filled a great part of Asia with their labors.
One of these Dayis, Hassan Ben Sabah, founded a sect, the Eastern Ismailites, renowned later as the Assassins. This Hassan was son of Ali, a Shiite of the old city Rayi, who claimed that his father, Sabah Homairi, had gone from Kufa to Kum and later to Rayi. People from Tus in Khorassan, and others insisted that his ancestors had passed all their lives in Khorassan. Ali, suspected of heresy, made lying oaths and confessions to clear himself; since his success was but partial he strove to increase it by sending Hassan, his son, to the Nishapur school of Movaffik, a sage of eighty years at that period, and the first scholar among Sunnite believers.
This sage, it was said, brought happiness and good fortune to all whom he instructed. His school was frequented by multitudes, [[207]]and the success of his pupils was proverbial. Among his last students were three classmates, later on very famous: Omar Khayyam, the astronomer and poet; Nizam ul Mulk, the first statesman of the period, and Hassan Ben Sabah, who founded a sect upon sophisms, and a State upon murder.
Hassan’s ambition was active from the earliest; while in that Nishapur school he bound both his classmates by a promise. Nizam ul Mulk himself tells the story: “ ‘Men believe,’ remarked Hassan one day to us, ‘that the pupils of our master are sure to be fortunate; let us promise that should success visit one of us only, that favored one will share with the other two.’ We promised.” Years later when Nizam ul Mulk was grand vizir to Alp Arslan, Sultan of the Seljuks, he showed Omar Khayyam sincere honor and friendship, and offered him the dignity of second vizir, which the poet rejected, but at his request the vizir gave him one thousand gold pieces each year instead of the office. Thenceforward Omar Khayyam was enabled to follow his bent and do great work, as astronomer and poet.
Hassan Ben Sabah lived on in obscurity till the death of Alp Arslan in 1072.
Nizam ul Mulk retained his high office with Melik Shah the new Sultan. Hassan Sabah went now to his friend and quoting bitter words from the Koran reproached him with forgetting sacred promises, and mentioned their agreement of school days. The vizir, who was kind, took his classmate to the sovereign and gained for him favor.
Hassan Sabah, who had reproached his old friend out of perfidy, soon won great influence through cunning, feigned frankness and hypocrisy. In no long time Melik Shah called him frequently to his presence, advised with him, and followed his counsels. Soon Nizam ul Mulk was in danger of losing his office. Hassan had resolved to ruin his benefactor and classmate; in one word to supplant him. Each apparent omission of the great man was reported by tortuous ways to the sovereign, whose mind was brought to doubt the vizir, and to test him. The most painful blow of all, according to Nizam ul Mulk’s own statement, was given when Hassan promised to finish in forty days the whole budget of the Empire. Nizam ul Mulk needed ten times that period for the labor. [[208]]
Melik Shah gave all the men called for by Hassan, and with their aid the work was accomplished. But to defeat the vizir was not easy; Nizam ul Mulk had abstracted certain pages, hence Hassan’s budget was imperfect. He could not explain why the pages were lacking, and he could not restore them, so he went on a sudden to Rayi and to Ispahan somewhat later. In the latter city he lived in concealment at the house of Abu Fazl, the mayor, whom he converted, and who became his most intimate adherent.