Thee do we worship, and to Thee do we cry for help!
Guide Thou us on the right path!
The path of those to whom Thou art gracious!
Not of those with whom Thou art angered, nor of those who go astray.”
FĀT̤IMAH (فاطمة). A daughter of Muḥammad, by his first wife K͟hadījah. She married ʿAlī the cousin of Muḥammad, by whom she had three sons, al-Ḥasan, al-Ḥusain, and al-Muḥsin; the latter died in infancy. From the two former are descended the posterity of the Prophet, known as Saiyids. Fāt̤imah died six months after her father. She is spoken of by the Prophet as one of the four perfect women, and is called al-Batūl, or “the Virgin,” by which is meant one who had renounced the World, also Fāt̤imatu ʾz-zuhrāʾ, or “the beautiful Fāt̤imah.”
There are three women of the name of Fāt̤imah mentioned in the Traditions: (1) Fāt̤imah, the daughter of Muḥammad; (2) The mother of ʿAlī; (3) The daughter of Ḥamzah, the uncle of Muḥammad.
AL-FĀT̤IMĪYAH (الفاطمية). “The Fatimides.” A dynasty of K͟halīfahs who reigned over Egypt and North Africa from A.D. 908 to A.D. 1171. They obtained the name from the pretensions of the founder of their dynasty Abū Muḥammad ʿUbaidu ʾllāh, who asserted that he was a Saiyid, and descended from Fāt̤imah, the daughter of the Prophet and ʿAlī. His opponents declared he was the grandson of a Jew of the Magian religion.
There were in all fourteen K͟halīfahs of this dynasty:—
(1) ʿUbaidu ʾllāh, the first Fatimide K͟halīfah, was born A.D. 882. Having incurred the displeasure of al-Muktafī, the reigning Abasside K͟halīfah, he was obliged to wander through various parts of Africa, till through fortunate circumstances he was raised in A.D. 910 from a dungeon in Segelmessa to sovereign power. He assumed the title of al-Mahdī, or “the Director of the Faithful.” [[MAHDI].] He subdued the Amīrs in the north of Africa, who had become independent of the Abbasides, and established his authority from the Atlantic to the borders of Egypt. He founded Mahadi on the site of the ancient Aphrodisium, a town on the coast of Africa, about a hundred miles south of Tunis, and made it his capital. He became the author of a great schism among the Muḥammadans by disowning the authority of the Abassides, and assuming the titles of K͟halīfah and Amīru ʾl-Muʾminīn, “Prince of the Faithful.” His fleets ravaged the coasts of Italy and Sicily, and his armies frequently invaded Egypt, but without any permanent success.
(2) Al-Qāʾim succeeded his father in A.D. 933. During his reign, an impostor, Abū Yazīd, originally an Ethiopian slave, advanced certain peculiar doctrines in religion, which he was enabled to propagate over the whole of the north of Africa, and was so successful in his military expeditions as to deprive al-Qāʾim of all his dominions, and confine him to his capital, Mahadi, which he was besieging when al-Qāʾim died.