Fatimids

In Islamic thought, the Caliph was the commander of all Muslims, the successor of Muhammad. Almost immediately after Muhammad's death, however, there were problems. The Caliphate ended up vested in the Umayyad family - the most powerful family in pre-Muslim Mecca and also, problematically, very late converts to Muhammad's movement. This provided a rallying call for people opposed to the Umayyad Caliphate's rule for whatever reason - why should the Muslim world be ruled be the descendants of the Prophet's invetirate enemies, rather than his own descendents?

The Abbasids rose to power in 750 on this basis, claiming to be members of the House of the Prophet. It wasen't until after they took power that it became clear that they were in fact descendants not of the Prophet but of one of his cousins. This was close enough of a relationship for them, but not for others. Islam thus split into two groups, which still exist to this day: the Sunni who supported the rule of the Abbasids, for whom the caliph's genealogical relationship to the Prophet was not essential and his power was limited to secular matters - commanding armies, collecting taxes, appointing officials. 

The second group were the Shi'a, who clung to the descendants of the Prophet, looking to the heads of that family to be not just the secular successors of the Prophet, but his religious successors as well. Generation after generation they strove to overthrow the Abbasid Caliphs in favour of their candidate, while the Abbasid Caliphate worked to eliminate them. 

The Fatimids arose from a splinter group of the Shia based in Syria. These Ismailis were organised as a religious cell, dispatching missionary/revolutionaries across the Middle East. In 893, one of these missionaries, Abu `Abdallāh established a base in North Africa at a town of Īkjān. By 910 he had brought the Maghreb under his control - at which point his leader, Al-Mahdi arrived and declared himself Caliph. Abu `Abdallāh was soon dead, but the force he had forged, the Kutama, who viewed al-Mahdi as God's infallible representative on Earth became the backbone of the Fatimid state. 

The new state expanded rapidly throughout North Africa. By 914 Fatimid armies were attempting to rip Egypt from the Abbasids. From there the goal was to carry on to Baghdad itself, overthrow the Abbasid Caliphate and rule the whole Muslim world. However, Egypt (and the Nile) proved a tough nut to crack - it did not fall until 969. When it did, however, the Fatimids shifted their base of operations to a new capital, Cairo, which became one of the great centres of the Muslim world - as it still is today.

The Fatimids' great strength was that their leader was simultaneously the Caliph, ruler of a mighty empire extending from the Atlantic to Syria, and the Imam, representative of God on Earth to many of the Muslim world's Shi'ites. Throughout Iraq and Iran (all the way to India), cells of Shi'ites disaffected with the Abbasid Caliphs looked to the Fatimids for support - and received it. The Abbasids were constantly convulsed by Fatimid revolts. In Cairo, there were prayer meetings in which the crowds of the Caliph's loyal followers was so great that people were crushed in the press.

But ultimately, this combination of secular and religious power proved to be the Caliphate's undoing. With the death of al-Mustansir in 1094, several of his sons claimed the rule simultaneously. What followed was at once a messy succession dispute and a theological schism. The Fatimid foreign network splintered and it was no longer able to co-ordinate disorder among its enemies. Combined with the northern invaders that they had brought upon theirempire, a powerful new bloc was able to form in Syria, the Ayyubid dynasty, whose most famous leader, Saladin put an end to the dregs of the Fatimid dynasty in 1171.  

Sources

Walker, Paul E. "The Ismā‘īlī Da‘wa and the Fātimid Caliphate" in The Cambridge History of Egypt, edited by Carl F Petry. Cambridge University Press, 1998: 120-150.

Sanders, Paula A. "The Fātimid State, 969–1171" in The Cambridge History of Egypt, edited by Carl F Petry. Cambridge University Press, 1998: 151-174.

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