Posted by Imam Abu Tamim Ma’add succeeded his father to the Imamat and Fatimid caliphate on March 7, 953 1 at age of twenty-one, adopting the regal title of al-Mu’izz li-Din Allah, ‘the one who strengthens the religion of God.’
Named after the Prophet’s daughter, the Fatimids, Mawlana Hazar Imam’s ancestors, established their empire in 909 in North Africa when Imam al-Mahdi was proclaimed Caliph. The Fatimid Caliphate remained in North Africa during the reign of Imams al-Mahdi (r. 909-934), al-Qa‘im (r. 934-946), and al-Mansur (r. 946-953). Imam al-Mu’izz (r. 953-975) founded the city of Cairo which subsequently became the capital of the empire.
The city of Cairo, which remains the Egyptian capital today, was planned by Imam al-Mu’izz while he was still in al-Mansuriyya. Modelled after the cities of al-Mahdiyya and al-Mansuriyya founded by Imams al-Mahdi and al-Mansur respectively, the Egyptian city was originally named al-Mansuriyya, but later renamed to al-Qahira al-Mu’izziyya (‘The Victorious City of al-Mu’izz’), al-Qahira for short, today known as Cairo. Imam Mu’izz’s general, Jawhar, also carried out the construction of the mosque of al-Azhar as the city’s main congregational place of worship as per Imam’s plans.
Jawhar issued, on behalf of Imam al-Mu’izz, a guarantee of safety (aman), which assured peace and security in the country, and ensured the pilgrimage routes to Mecca would be safeguarded. The aman agreement also proposed to renovate mosques, pay regular salaries to caretakers, and affirmed that the sunna (tradition) of the Prophet would be observed. It also stated that the Ahl al-Kitab (People of the Book), that is the Christian and Jewish communities of Egypt, would be protected and could build their worship centres.
In 973, Imam al-Mu’izz transferred the seat of Imamat to Cairo, taking with him the coffins of his predecessors. “These were buried within the palace precincts in an area that came to be known as Turbat al-Za’faran. [The Sunni historian] Al-Maqrizi reports that every time al-Mu’izz went out of the palace, on his return he would always go past this burial place and pay respect to his ancestors. He also did this every Friday and on Id al-Fitr and Id al-Adha, and generously distributed alms” (Jiwa, Towards a Shi’i Mediterranean Empire p, 104, n. 297).
“As well as being a patron of scholarship, al-Mu’izz was an accomplished scholar and linguist with mastery of several languages including Arabic, Berber, Greek, and Sudanese, who composed a number of treatises and is also acknowledged to have inspired the invention of the fountain pen. Imam established a palace library which was, in the words of Heinz Halm, ‘unmatched anywhere in the contemporary world.’ A decade before his death, al-Mu’izz commissioned a map of the world that was subsequently displayed in his mausoleum” (Jiwa, Towards a Shi’i Mediterranean Empire).
During their 200-year reign in Egypt, “the Fatimids introduced the Ismaili madhab in law and changed certain external aspects of the ritual – such as the call to prayer – in accordance with Ismaili tradition, they never tried forcibly to convert the mass of the Egyptian population, who were and remained Sunni, to the Ismaili creed. The da’wa was limited to the sessions of wisdom (majalis al-hikma), which no one was compelled to attend” (Halm, The Fatimids and their Traditions of Learning, p 31).
Under the Fatimids, Cairo “grew rapidly into a thriving metropolis and one of the major centres of arts and sciences in the Muslim world. Al-Azhar evolved into a leading institution of Islamic scholarship, attracting students from across the Muslim world. The priority given to the development of Al-Azhar, which ranks among the oldest institutions of higher education in the world, is reflective of the Fatimid commitment to the promotion of knowledge, consistent with the teachings of the Qur’an and the Prophet Muhammad” (Jiwa, Towards a Shi’i Mediterranean Empire, p 21).
“The Fatimid capital was not only a strategic centre but also an inland port with a robust ship traffic along the Nile, as well as being the terminus of trans-Saharan trade in gold, ivory, and other products as far as West Africa. All these factors, together with the Fatimids’ substantial investment in construction, contributed to the city’s rapid development. According to the Persian poet-philosopher Nasir-i Khusraw who visited Cairo in [1047], the city had over 20,000 shops, numerous bazaars, caravanserais, and bath houses, as well as fine houses and gardens … He also reported with astonishment that the drapers, jewellers, and money changers of Cairo did not lock their shops due to the high degree of peace and security that prevailed the city” (Jiwa, Towards a Shi’i Mediterranean Empire, p 25-26).
Bloom notes that Imam al-Mu’izz’s greatest contribution “was the nurturing of the mature Fatimid state. It was characterized by a rigorous administrative and financial organization, solid political and religious institutions, and a brilliant intellectual and artistic life […] (Arts of the City Victorious, p 42). “The period from the Fatimid conquest of Egypt in 969 to the middle of the eleventh century was not only a glorious one for Fatimid architecture but also the first truly brilliant period in Egyptian art and culture since the fall of the Ptolemies one thousand years earlier …. Once the Fatimids were firmly in power, however, and ruling over an empire spanning most of North Africa, Arabia and occasionally the Levant, as well as exerting their influence over a much larger area, their capital city of Cairo seems to have set the artistic taste of its time” (Ibid. p 51).
Sources:
1 Shainool Jiwa, Towards a Shi’i Mediterranean Empire, I.B. Tauris in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2009, p 53
Heinz Halm, The Fatimids and their Traditions of Learning. I.B. Tauris in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, 1997
Jonathan Bloom, Arts of the City Victorious, Yale University Press in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2007
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