School of Oriental and African Studies University of London

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The story is told that when the Fatimid Caliph al-Mu'izz came to Egypt, and was questioned by the representatives of the ashraf concerning his pedigree and his proofs, he half-drew his sword from his scabbard and said: "This is my pedigree," and then scattered gold among them and added: "And theses are my proofs." The story is dramatic and amusing, but is self-evidently false. Its purpose is to depict al-Mu'izz as an adventurer-an unscrupulous upstart who had gained power by force and maintained it by corruption. But this is precisely what al-Mu'izz was not, and nothing is less likely than that he would, in this brazen way, have declares himself an imposter. A much more accurate idea of the image of al-Mu'izz, as seen by his followers and projected to his new subjects, may be found in the poems of Ibn Hani', his Andalusian panegyrist. The poet, in medieval Islamic courts, often had an important public function. As panegyrist, he praised his patron; as satirist, he abused his enemies. In a society that was sophisticated and literate, but without mass media, poetry could to some extent take their place; the poet devised, for publication and dissemination, versions of events or sketches of personalities, which were vivid, memorable-and slanted. He was the propagandist, or as we might now say, the public relations officer and image-maker of the ruler, and his compositions can tell us a great deal about the politics and intentions of rulers and sometimes even about the responses of the ruled.

The image of the Fatimid Caliph, as portrayed by his aulic poets, is not just that of a successful soldier or politician, but of a great world leader, at once spiritual and imperial. As a victorious dynasty ruler, he represents the emergence of a new power, which is young, fresh and vigorous, in contrast with his effete and degenerate opponents. But that is not all. The Fatimid state is not just another principality, carved out of the 'Abbasid Empire by an ambitious governor or a mutinous soldier. Such adventures had become commonplace; the rise of the Fatimids was something new, and their advent marks an era in the history of Egypt and indeed of all Islam. During the first four centuries if Islam, Egypt went through three major phases, each of which has left its mark in the capital city. During the first phase, for more than two centuries after the Arab conquest, Egypt was a province of an Empire with its capital elsewhere. The administrative center was Fustat, a provincial garrison city set up by the conquerors, conveniently near the desert, which was their line of communication with home, and the bureaucratic cadres bequeathed by the previous empire. The rulers of Egypt were governors, appointed by and answerable to the Caliph in the East; her corn fed Arabia her revenues enriched the imperial treasury. The second phase began in 254/868, with the arrival in Egypt of Ahmad ibn Tulun. At first a subordinate with strictly limited powers, subject to the authority of his superiors in Baghdad, he succeeded within a few years in creating a virtually independent state -the first in Muslim Egypt. By reducing the drain of revenue to the East and encouraging agriculture and commerce, he accumulated great wealth; with it he built a new capital, the combined fortress, palace and city of al-Qata'i', hard by the site of Fustat.

The establishment of the Tulunid state, and its revival and continuance by subsequent rulers, mark a significant change in the history of medieval Egypt. Ibn Tulun, the Ikhshid and Kafur were all foreigners in Egypt; their aims were personal or at most dynastic, and were limited in both territorial extent and political content. As Sunni Muslims, they had no desire to withdraw from the Islamic oecumene headed by the Caliph, still less to challenge the Abbasids for the Caliphate itself. Their aim was to rule Egypt, together with such adjoining countries as could conveniently be added to it, and to do so, if at all possible, with the approval of the Caliph and under his suzerainty. Though they were patrons of the arts and of letters, their rule did not foster any national or cultural renaissance, such as accompanied the emergence of similar principalities in Iran. Yet, despite these and other limitations, the Tulunids and Ikhshidids inaugurated the separate history of Islamic Egypt, pursued recognizably Egyptian loyalty and support. Under their rule the Nile Valley again became, for the first time since the Ptolemies, the seat of an independent political, military and economic power, with growing influence and importance in the affairs of the whole region.

With the coming of the Fatimids in 358/969, the role of Egypt in the Islamic world was vastly increased and totally transformed. The new masters of Egypt were moved by more than personal or dynastic ambition. They were the heads of a great religious movement, which aimed at nothing less than the transformation and renewal of all Islam. As Isma'ili Shi'ites, they refused to offer even token submission to the Abbasid Caliphs, whom they denounced as wrongdoers and usurpers; they and they alone were the true Imams, by descent and by God's choice the sole rightful heads of the whole Islamic community. The Caliphate was therefore theirs by right, and they would take it from the Abbasids as the Abbasids had taken it from the Umayyad. In preparing the accomplishment of this plan, the Fatimids followed very closely on the pattern set by the Abbasids. Like the Abbasids in their early days, they appealed to all those who felt that the community of Islam had taken a wrong path, and they argued that only an Imam of the house of the Prophet could restore it to the true one. Like the Abbasids again, they created a secret mission, to preach their cause and to organize those who adhered to it. The Abbasids had begun by establishing themselves in the remote province of Khurasan, on the eastern borders of the Empire; the Fatimids, using the same tactics, concentrated their missionary and political effort first in the Yemen, and then in North Africa. The Abbasids had harnessed the warlike Khurasanis to their purposes; the Fatimids mobilized the Berbers. The Abbasids, sweeping westwards from Khurasan, chose a new central province, Iraq, and built themselves a new capital in Baghdad. The Fatimids, advancing eastwards from Tunisia, moved the center to Egypt, and, near the camps and cantonments of Fustat and al-Qata'i', founded a great new imperial metropolis, the city of Cairo. The poet Ibn Hani', in celebrating the victories of al-Mu'izz in Egypt, looks forward in poetic vision to the next and final stages-the invasion of Iraq, the capture of Baghdad, the advance on the ancient highway to the East.

At this point, however, the resemblance ceases, for the vision was not fulfilled. The Abbasid triumph was complete, that of the Fatimids only partial. Except for the distant and isolated province of Spain, all Islam submitted to the 'Abbasids, and even in Spain the Umayyad survivors did not seriously challenge their Caliphate. The Fatimids won great victories, and at the time it must have seemed that they were about to engulf the whole world of Islam. But they did not. The Abbasids, defeated and weakened, themselves under the domination of a Shi'ite though not Ismaili dynasty of mayors of the palace, nevertheless managed to hold on in their old capital, and served as a rallying point for all forces of Sunni Islam. In the following century, those forces were immensely strengthened by the advent of the Seljuk Turks and the creation of a new and powerful military empire in the East, the great Sultanate. The reinforcement was religious as well as political. The Seljuk Sultans were devout Sunnis. True, they dominated the Caliphate, but unlike the Sh'ite Buyids whom they replaced, they treated the Caliphs with honor and respect as the supreme religious authority in Sunni Islam, and their advent greatly increased the prestige and influence of the Abbasid house. The containment of the Fatimid danger was not achieved by military and political means alone, though these were essential and in large measure successful. In the madrasa, Sunni Islam created a new and crucial weapon in the struggle for religious unity. In these great colleges, spreading all over the East, the scholars and theologians of the Sunna devised and taught the orthodox answer to the Isma'ili intellectual challenge.

Both the Abbasids and the Fatimids, in their hour of victory, confronted the dilemma which sooner or later faces all successful rebels-the conflict between the responsibilities of power and the expectations of those who brought them to it. The Abbasids, after a brief attempt to persuade the Muslims that their accession had really brought the promised millennium, chose the path of stability and orthodoxy. The radical doctrines were forgotten, the radical leaders murdered. The messianic epithets became regnal titles, the black banners of revolt became a dynastic livery-even the very word dawla, which originally connoted revolution and change, came to mean the dynasty and then the state. The same problem arose for the victorious Fatimids, but in a more complex form, since their victory was slower and incomplete. Sixty years and three unsuccessful attempts intervened between the establishment of the Fatimids Caliphate in Tunisia and its extension to Egypt. The further conquest of the Islamic East was never accomplished. The Fatimid Caliphs, like the first Abbasids, found that the views and wishes if missionaries did not always accord with the needs of the state, and from time to time, both in the Tunisian and in the Egyptian phases, there are indications of disagreement and repression within the Isma'ili fold-even of secession. But the Fatimids, unlike the Abbasids, could not afford to break completely with the mission, since there was still important work for the mission to do. The aim of the Fatimids, at least until al-Mustansir, was to overthrow and supersede the Abbasids Caliphate-to establish their own Imamate and their Isma'ili faith in the whole world of Islam. For more than a century, the activities of the Fatimid government in Cairo and if its agents at home and abroad were directed towards this objective.

These activities were not always pursued with equal vigour. There were times when the Fatimids were distracted by other problems-unrest in the provinces, trouble on the Mediterranean or Byzantine frontiers-and found it expedient to reach a modus vivendi with their rivals in the East. But their ultimate objective, necessarily, was still the establishment of the universal Isma'ili Imamate. The Fatimid Caliphate thus represents a phenomenon, which was new though not unique in history-a regime at once imperial and revolutionary. Within his own domains, the Fatimid Caliph was a sovereign-the supreme ruler of a vast empire which he sought to extend by conventional military and political means. Its center was Egypt; its provinces at its peak included North Africa, Sicily, Palestine, Syria, the Red Sea coast of Africa, the Yemen, and, of which conferred great prestige on a Muslim ruler and enabled him to use the potent weapon of the pilgrimage to his advantage. His capital city, Cairo, was the thriving center of this vast realm. The tribute of empire now flowed into Egypt, not out of it. The material prosperity of the country was sustained by a flourishing agriculture and an extensive commerce; the opportunities of Cairo attracted men of talent and ambition from all over the Fatimid domains and beyond. Policy and circumstance combined to encourage a great flowering of intellectual and artistic life.

But the Caliph was not only an imperial sovereign. He was also the Isma'ili Imam, the spiritual head of the faithful wherever they were, the embodiment of God's purpose and guidance on earth. As such, he was the dedicated enemy of the existing order in the East, the hope and refuge of those who sought to overthrow it. All over the Abbasid realms, he commanded a great army of missionaries, agents and followers, elaborately and secretly organized under the supreme direction of the Chief Missionary (Da'I 'l-dua at) in Cairo. It is significant that the Chief Missionary himself was almost invariably and Easterner, with personal experience of service in the Mission. One of the greatest of them, al-Mu'ayyad fi'l-Din al-Shirazi, had left a fascinating autobiographical work describing his adventures as a Fatimid missionary in Persia, as a political emissary in Iraq, and as Chief Missionary in Cairo. In traditional Islamic states, the business of government was carried on by two main groups; know as the men of the sword (arbab al-suyuf) and the men of the pen (arbab al-aqlam). The former were the armed forces, the latter the civilian bureaucrats. Their relative importance and influence varied according to the type of regime, but the two together were commonly agreed to be the twin pillars of the state. The Fatimids, for the first time in Islamic history, added a third-the Mission. In the Sunni Caliphate, the professional men of religion had stood aside from the state, neither serving it nor accepting its direction. The Fatimids organized them into a third branch of government, with its own functions, structure, and hierarchy, under the direction of the Chief Missionary and the ultimate authority of the Caliph in his capacity as Imam. The Fatimids thus created something previously unknown to Islam-an institutional church. Their example was followed by some later rulers, who found in this new relationship between religion and the state a powerful reinforcement of their authority. The work of the Mission had many different facets. It was known as the da'wa, and in classical Arabic usage is perhaps sufficiently described by that richly associative word. In modern categories and terminology, some elaboration of the different functions of the da'wa might be useful.

One of these was what we nowadays call ideology-the organized and exclusive system of ideas adopted and propagated by a movement or a regime. Generally speaking, Islamic regimes had no ideology other than Islam itself-and that in the broadest and most tolerant definition. Muslim governments took care not to impose, or even espouse, any intellectual orthodoxy, but to allow, within reasonable limits, the co-existence of diverse opinions. The oft-cited hadith Ikhtilafu ummati rahma', difference of opinion within my community is part of God's mercy, accurately reflects traditional Islamic attitudes and practice. The Abbasids used a radical religious ideology to gain power, but swiftly abandoned it when they had done so. Their one attempt to impose an official creed on the Islamic community was a total failure, and it is significant that the Mu'tazili doctrine which they sponsored is one of the few major religious trends in Islam to have completed disappeared. The Fatimids did not abandon their distinctive doctrines, but on the contrary gave them a central importance in their whole political system. Isma'ili theology provided the basis on which the Fatimids rested their claim to the Caliphate and denied that of the Abbasids. As long as the Abbasids survived, the Fatimids were engaged in a religious-i.e. an ideological conflict, in which doctrine was one of their most powerful weapons. In a sense, they were caught in a vicious circle. Because of their initial failure to win over all Islam, they were obliged to maintain their ideological challenge; yet, by so doing, they isolated themselves from the central consensus of Islam, and thus ensured their own ultimate defeat and disappearance.

It was, however, some time before that defeat became apparent. While the struggle continued, the Fatimids accorded prime importance to the formulation and elaboration of their creed. First in North Africa and then in Egypt, a series of distinguished theologians wrote what became the classical works of Isma'ili literature. Most of the authors had served in the Mission; some like Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani and al-Mu'ayyad fi'l-Din al-Shirazi, had been its chiefs. The process was not without difficulty. Already at the beginning of the Fatimid Caliphate, in North Africa, the Imam as ruler proved different from the Imam as claiment. The needs of government required some changes of approach, and the adoption, in the words of a modern Isma'ili scholar, of 'a graver and more conservative attitude towards the then existing institutions of Islam. Within the Mission itself, there were disputes between radicals and conservatives, esoteric mysteries. Sometimes their disputes were no more than arguments between colleagues; sometimes they led to defections, schism, and even conflict. Until the death of al-Mustansir, these defections were of minor importance, and the main body of Isma'ilis remained faithful to the reigning Fatimid Caliph and to the officially sponsored Isma'ili creed.

It was not enough merely to formulate ideology; there was also the more practical business of disseminating it. In this respect, the Mission performed many tasks, which a modern observer, depending on his point of observation, might classify as education or propaganda. In Cairo, the Fatimids founded great libraries and colleges among whose purposes was the training of missionaries to go out into the field, and the further instruction of those converts whom they sent home for this purpose. Many eager aspirants came to Cairo from Sunni lands in the East, to imbibe wisdom at the fountainhead, and then return to their own countries as exponents of the Isma'ili message and workers for the Fatimid cause. One such was the Persian poet and philosopher Nasir-I Kusraw. A convert to Ismailism, he went to Egypt in 439/1047, and returned to preach the faith in Iran and Central Asia, where he won a considerable following. Another was the redoubtable Hasan-I Sabbah, the founder of the other Assassins. Converted by a Fatimid agent in Iran, he went to Egypt in 471/1078, and stayed there for about three years. The Isma'ili message had considerable appeal; to many different elements on the population. It was time of great upheavals in the Islamic world-of economic change, political disruption and intellectual malaise. As in late Umayyad times, there were many who felt that the Islamic community had gone astray and that a new leader, with a new message, was needed to restore it to the true path. There was a withdrawal of consent from the existing order, a loss of confidence in hitherto accepted answers. The Abbasid Caliphate, and with it the Sunni order, seemed to be breaking up; some new principle of unity and authority was required to same Islam and the Muslims from destruction.

To many it seemed that the Isma'ili could offer such a principle-a design for a new and just world order, under the Imam. To the devout, the doubtful and the discontented alike, the Isma'ili missionairies brought a message of comfort and hope, appropriate to the needs of each; for the pious, a deep, spiritual faith, sustained by the example of the suffering of the Imams and the self-sacrifice of their followers; for the intellectual, a comprehensive explanation of the universe, synthetizing the data of revelation and philosophy, science and mysticism; for the rebellious, a well-organized and widespread movement, supported by a rich and powerful ruler far away, and offering a seductive prospective of radical change. One of the important functions of the missionaries, where conditions were favorable, was what one might now call subversion. In the nature of things, secret activities such as subversion, especially when successful, leave few traces for the historian to examine. There are, however, some scraps of information, from here and there, which throw light on the work of the Fatimid emissaries. Pieced together, and compared with other evidence, they suggest that the operations of the Mission were centrally directed and were part of a grand strategy, the ultimate aim of which was to destroy the Sunni Caliphate and establish the Fatimid Imamate in its place. This grand strategy can be discerned over a vast area, in which the imperial purposes of the Fatimid state and the universal aims of the Isma'ili faith met and merged. Fatimid statesmen and soldiers harried the rulers and realms of the Sunni world; Isma'ili authors and missionaries attacked the loyalty of their subjects. And at the same time, Cairo waged a form of what modern strategies call economic warfare, in which the Egyptian or Tunisian merchant, the Isma'ili missionary, and the Fatimid diplomat all had their different but associated parts.

The pattern of rivalry between the powers that dominated the eastern and the western or Mediterranean halves of the Middle East is an ancient one, which long antedated and survived the Fatimid-'Abbasid confrontation. The western power might be called Egyptian, Hittite, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Fatimid, Mamluk or Ottoman; the Eastern, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, 'Abbasid, Seljuq, Mongol or Safavid. The names, forms, characters, even locations of these rival powers varied greatly; so too did the circumstances and results of their rivalries. Yet through the variety, certain geographical constants may be discerned. One of these is the competition between the two trade routes leading to the further east-the one from Egypt through the Red Sea, the other from Iraq and Iran through the Persian Gulf. To same extent these have been complementary, each serving a different area. But in times of great power conflict, they have often represented alternative opportunities, and inspired opposing ambitions. Rival powers in the Middle East have an obvious interest in controlling at least one and preferably both of these routes, and in blocking what they cannot control. The Fatimid ruler of Cairo appear to have been well aware of the importance of these matters, and to have devised policies for dealing with them. As far as is known, there is no direct or explicit evidence on Fatimid eastern strategy. The evidence we have is indirect and inferential, but persuasive. One aspect is Fatimid activity in the Red Sea, the domination of which was vital to their larger plans. Their aim, clearly, was to control both the African and the Arabian shores and the southern exit; in this they were for a while, largely successful. On the African side, they developed the great scaport of Aydhab, as a centre for the eastern trade and rival to Basra and Ubulla. On the Arabian side, the Yemen was the country where the Fatimid cause had gained its major success, and the area remained one of prime concern to them-the scene of considerable religious and political effort. Even today, the Yemen contains one of the only two surviving Isma'ili communities in the Arab world; the other is in Syria. The Fatimid interest in the Yemen, without ideological complications, was maintained by their Sunni successors in Egypt, the Ayyubids and the Mamlukd, no doubt for some of the same reasons.

In the letters sent by the Caliph al-Mustansir to the Isma'ili ruler of the Yemen, the Caliph expresses his satisfaction with the work of the Mission in southern Arabia, and suggests its extension eastwards. 'Uman was a suitable area for attention-and in al-Ahsa representatives of the cause were already at work. The interest in this area was not new. It was here that the Carmathians had set up their famous republic, described by the pro-Fatimid travelers Ibn Hawqal and Nasir-I Khusraw. In another passage, Ibn Hawqal tells how the Baluchi brigands of southern Iran, who terrorized the roads of all Kerman, the steppes of Sijistan, and the borders of Fars, had belonged to the Fatimid mission, as part of the mission-district (djazira) if Khurasan. The Carmathians in Eastern Arabia harassed the land communications of Iraq with Arabia and Syria; the brigands and pirates of Kerman and the Baluchi coasts harassed both the land and sea routes from Iraq to India. It is difficult to resist the conclusion that, while protecting their own communications through the Red Sea, the Fatimids were trying to disrupt those of their rivals in the East. Fatimid interest was not limited to the routes to India itself. Isma'ili missionaries, from an early date, were active at the two main points of entry into India, by land and sea, from the Middle East- by the North West frontier, and in the ports of the western seaboard. On the coast of Sind, and in the inland city of Multan, the Isma'ilis made great efforts and were even able to gain power at certain times. The traveler al-Muqaddasi, who visited Multan in 375/985-6, records that the bidding prayer was recited in the name of the Fatimid Caliph, that they followed his orders in matters of faith and law, and that messengers and gifts went regularly to Egypt. Small communities of Isma'ilis are still to be found in North Western Pakistan, in Afghanistan, in the Pamir, in eastern Iran-strung out along the trans-Asian highways. On the Gujerati coast, Fatimid commercial activities were accompanied by a vigorous religion propaganda, and the planting of what in time became the great Isma'ili community of India. It is perhaps significant that these Isma'ilis are still known as Bohra, a Gujerati word meaning merchant. Again, the inference is strong that the Fatimids were concerned both to strengthen their own position and to weaken and dominate that of their rivals.

This does not of course mean that the Fatimid state engaged directly in commerce, or that the da'wa itself was trading organization-the connection between mission and trade, between ideological and economic penetration, is rarely quite so obvious. It is not unlikely, however, that the Fatimids were aware of that connection, and tried in various ways to make use of it. Two facts may be mentioned here- the prominence of North Africans among the eastern traders, and the role of qadis as officially recognized representatives of the merchants. The high water mark of Fatimid expansion came in the years 448-451/1057-9, when a Turkish general in Iraq called Arslan al-Basasiri went over to the Fatimid side and proclaimed the Fatimid Caliph first in Mosul and then, for a year, in Baghdad itself. Despite the efforts of the Chief Missionary, however, the Fatimid government was unable to provide effective support, and the strongly Sunni Seijuqs drove al-Basasiri out of Baghdad. The Ghanznavid ruler in the East had already opted for Sunnism, to which he brought powerful reinforcement. The Isma'ilis of Multan were crushed-those of Persia and Iraq subjected to both repression and counter-propaganda. The Fatimids failed to complete the Abbasid pattern of advance-from the periphery to the centre, from revolt to empire. They followed, however, at an accelerated pace, on the Abbasids road to ruin. The Abbasid Caliphate, with all its troubles, lasted for half a millennium; the Fatimid Caliphate was terminated by Saladin after barely half that time.

What went wrong? In the present state of knowledge, it is not possible to offer more than the most tentative of answers. The fall of empires, the failure of ideologies, are subjects of the greatest complexity, and the historian at his peril attempts to unravel the tangled web of interacting causes, symptoms and effects. Some phenomena-they should not be more closely defined than that-can however be enumerated, as having some bearing on the failure of the Fatimid bid for leadership and power. On such phenomenon was the espousal and retention, by the Fatimid regime, of a religious system that was basically alien and ultimately unacceptable to Sunni Muslims. The Isma'ili creed, as elaborated by the Fatimid theologians, represents a very high level of intellectual and spiritual achievement; it was however remote from what had become the main stream of Islamic belief and thought, and, with the Sunni revival of the 11th and 12th centuries, its final rejection became certain. That rejection also involved the regime that was inextricably associated with it. In their foreign adventures, the Fatimids scored many successes. In one crucial area, however, they suffered repeated and disastrous setbacks-in Syria. Here, on their doorstep, they encountered their greatest difficulties-difficulties which contributed in no small measure to their final failure. Despite the pro-Shi'ite and even pro-Isma'ili sympathies of sections of the population, the Fatimids were never able to establish themselves really firmly in Syria.

Their troubles began with their arrival, when their forces advancing from Egypt to Syria had to cope with Bedouin assailants in Palestine, dissident Carmatian raiders from Arabia, the adventurer Alpthkin in Damascus and the volatile Hamdanids in the North. In the pacification of Syria, their successes were temporary, their troubles recurring. Already fully stretched in dealing with local opponents, they had to face major threats from outside-the Byzantines, the Turks, and finally the Crusaders. It was in Syria that the great Fatimid drive to the East was delayed and halted; in Syria, too, that a new force emerged which finally destroyed them. The Fatimids were unfortunate in that their rule in Egypt coincided with great changes in other parts of the world-on the one side the revival of Christian power, which manifested itself in the Byzantine offensives, the reconquest of much of Spain and Sicily, and the coming of the Crusaders to the East; on the other the migration of the steppe peoples; which brought the Turks to Iraq and then to Syria, and created a new power and a new order in South West Asia. In the looming contest between Islam and Christendom, there was no room for a schismatic division on the Muslim side. The Fatimids were in decline, their faith was on the wane. The Turks and their associates were the new great power in Islam, the Sunni revival the new moral force. Between them, they gave to the Muslim peoples the strength to hold and repel the Crusaders from the West, and the endurance to survive the far more terrible invasion, still to come, of the Mongols from the East.

These misadventures abroad no doubt contributed to the growing troubles at home in Egypt. While fractional strife led the government of the country into a vicious circle of disorder and tyranny, economic upheavals culminated in a series of disastrous famines, which, according to the chroniclers, reduced the people to eating cats and dogs. Finally, in 466/1073, an able soldier, Badr al-Djamali, established an authoritarian regime which restored order and some measure of prosperity. He assumed the title of Amir al-Djuyush, the Commander of armies. The regime of Badr al-Djamali and his successors in the same office saved the Fatimid state from collapse, and postponed the end of the dynasty for nearly a century. At first, the new order retained and indeed revived the universal claims and aims of the Fatimid Caliphate. In the inscription of Badr al-Djamali, in addition to his military and political titles, he is styled guardian of the qadis of the Muslims (Kafil quadat al-Muslimin) and guide of the da'is of the Believers (Hadi du'at al-Mu'minin), symbolizing his controle of the religious as well as the military and bureaucratic establishments. He is even credited with the authorship of an Isma'ili book. Responding to the challenge of the Seljuq power in the East, he pursued and active policy in Syria, Arabia and elsewhere, using both religious and worldly weapons. The published Sidjills of al-Mustansir, most of which belong to this period, show how this policy was applied in the Yemen, which became a centre for Fatimid activities in Arabia and even in India.

But the cause was lost. In Syria the Fatimid armies suffered repeated defeats; in Arabia, Fatimid influence was finally brought to an end. Badr's son and successor, al-Afdal, in effect renounced the claims of the Fatimid Caliphate to the universal leadership of Islam. On the death of al-Mustansir in 487/1094, the Amir al-Djuyush made a choice of successor which was rejected by the Isma'ilis of the East, now influenced with a new revolutionary fervour under the leadership of Hasan-I Sabbah. After the death of al-Amir in 525/1130, even those Isma'ilis, chiefly in the Yemen, who had remained faithful to the Cairo Caliphate refused to recognize his successor. The divergence between the state and revolution, which had begun to appear from early Fatimid times, was now complete. The ruler of Egypt, perhaps intentionally had alienated the militant Isma'ilis in the lands under Sunni rule, and dissociated the interests and policies of the Egyptian state from their radical doctrines and terrorist actions. The Fatimids still had some time to reign and much to accomplish; but the great adventure, with its opportunities, its excitements and its heavy price, was over.

Symposium, Millénaire du Caire.