Abdallah ibn al-Muizz

Abdallah ibn al-Muizz ( Arabic عبد الله بن المعز, DMG ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Muʿizz ; † February 8, 975 in Cairo ) was a prince (amīr) of the Arab dynasty of the Fatimids , the second of four sons of the caliph al-Muizz and his designated successor as caliph and imam of the Shia of the Ismailis .

Prince Abdallah was designated as heir to the throne by his father around the year 971, during the preparatory work for the relocation of the caliph's court from al-Mansuriya in Africa to al-Qahira (Cairo) in Egypt . The designation was first unofficially to some confidants of the caliph were pronounced, but she was a faux pas of the palace administrator Dschaudhar al-Ustadh made public, as this caliph Imam ahead in haste during a welcoming the prince against Abdallah as the future proskynesis occurred. Before the first Friday prayer after entering Cairo on June 13, 973, the designation was officially read out. In this succession regulation, the eldest son Prince Tamim was passed over, but any form of primogeniture did not exist anyway.

In the spring of 974 Abdallah was able to prove himself as a general when he defeated the army of the sister sect of the Qarmatians north of Cairo, which had invaded Egypt , and captured their encampment, for which he was honored with a triumphal procession in Cairo on May 26, 974. No less than a year later he died after an illness on February 8th, 975. Abdallah left behind a son, but when the caliph died in December of the same year, homage was not paid to this, but to the third Prince Nizar as the new heir to the throne, who could then also take over the dignity of al-Aziz . It remains unknown whether the latter had previously received the father's designation.

Abdallah was the last Fatimid prince to be entrusted with a military command or with any function in the state. After him, all other princes were kept away from the government and the military in order to prevent possible succession disputes. Until the end of the dynasty in 1171, the princes eked out a life as prisoners in a golden cage in a separate quarter of the palace city of Cairo, who were not even allowed to leave the city without the express permission of the ruling caliph or his vizier.

The son of Prince Abdallah, whose own name remains unknown, is said to have planned a conspiracy with his cousin Sitt al-Mulk to usurp the throne against the young al-Hakim after the death of al-Aziz in 996 , but that was planned by the eunuch Bardjawan was revealed in time. The son then disappeared in a dungeon. Furthermore, Abdallah had a daughter named Amina, whose nickname was Ruqya ("magic"). She became a concubine or concubine of her cousin Caliph al-Hakim and the mother of Caliph al -Zahir .

literature

• Farhad Daftary , The Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines. 2nd edition, London 2007.
• Heinz Halm , The Empire of the Mahdi. The rise of the Fatimids 875–973. CH Beck, Munich 1991.
• Heinz Halm, The Caliphs of Cairo. The Fatimids in Egypt 973-1074. CH Beck, Munich 2003.
• Heinz Halm, princes, princesses, concubines and eunuchs at the Fatimid court. In: Maurice A. Pomerantz, Aram A. Shahin (eds.), The Heritage of Arabo-Islamic Learning (2015), pp. 91–110.
• Paul E. Walker and Paul Walker, Succession to Rule in the Shiite Caliphate. In: Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, Vol. 32 (1995), pp. 239-264.

Remarks

1. ↑ See Halm (1991), p. 369 f; Walker, p. 216.
2. ↑ See Halm (2003), p. 82.
3. ↑ See Halm (2003), p. 98.
4. ↑ See Halm (2003), p. 116 f.
5. ↑ See Halm (2015), p. 93.
6. ↑ See Halm (2003), p. 168; Daftary, p. 191.
7. ↑ See Halm (2015), p. 100.