Abdallah al-Mahdi

Gold dinar of Abdallah al-Mahdi from Mahdia.

al-Mahdi billah ( Arabic المهدي بالله, DMG al-Mahdī billāh  'the one guided by God'; * July 31, 874 in ʿAskar Mukram; † March 4, 934 in Mahdia ) was the first caliph from the Fatimid dynasty and, according to their historiography, the eleventh imam of the Shiite Ismailis . Through the emergence of this imamate from concealment ( ġaiba ) connected with his person , a broad Shiite insurrection movement within the Islamic Empire against the ruling caliph dynasty of the Sunni Abbasids was initiated, which in 909 led to the establishment of the counter caliphate of the Fatimids, which competed with until 1171 which the Abbasids claimed sole rule.

Life

Name and origin

The Mahdi’s personal name (ism) was Said (Saʿīd) . This is what the oldest known Ismaili traditions call him, including that of his milk brother, Jafar . In his letter to the Yemeni community from 911, the Mahdi confirmed that he was called Said ibn Husain (Saʿīd b. Al-Ḥusain) , but claimed that this name was only an alias he used during his underground days be. But his real name is Ali ibn Husain (ʿAlī b. Al-Ḥusain) . But on the occasion of his 910 proclamation to the caliph, for programmatic reasons, he had the name Abdallah proclaimed in the prayer formula with the honorific ( kunya ) "father of Muhammad" (Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh) , which has since been his official name. In doing so, he had intended above all to manipulate the naming of his son and designated successor al-Qa'im , which was thus completely Abu l-Qasim Muhammad ibn Abdallah, just like that of the Prophet .

Even the earliest contemporary Ismaili historiography had a very clear genealogical conception of the ancestry of its rightly guided ruler (al-imām al-mahdī) . His immediate ancestors up to his great-grandfather Abdallah "the Elder" (al-Akbar) , who stood as guarantors (ḥuǧǧa) for the hidden imamate at the top of the mission leadership, were therefore themselves the imams of their community ( šīʿa ) , who as an expression of them Had to keep their true identity secret for reasons of caution (taqīya) from the persecution of the ruling Abbasids. Above all, however, their genealogy was linked to the person of the seventh Imam Muhammad ibn Ismail , who, according to their doctrine, which was propagated until 899, was recognized as their real salvation-bringing Mahdi figure, which is why his followers were also referred to as the " Seven Shia ". The idea that this seventh imam would return to earthly existence from secrecy had meanwhile been dropped by his followers. Instead, his god-given power of blessing (baraka) was passed on to his descendants, from whose ranks the expected Mahdi would ultimately emerge. The eighth Imam Abdallah al-Akbar is considered to be the birth son of the seventh Imam.

The long prevailing historiography of the Sunnah, on the other hand, had established its own opinion on the Fatimids, in which their genealogy was considered a deceptive fiction. From this point of view, the membership of the Mahdi and that of his descendants in the house of prophets was and is not proven and the legitimacy of the Fatimid caliphate is therefore not justified. The Mahdi's propaganda itself had fueled their arguments with food. In the letter he mentioned to his Yemeni supporters, he not only explained his name, but also tried to explain his family background. And his explanation stood in blatant contradiction to the general view of his Schia. According to him, he and his immediate ancestors were not descendants of the seventh imam, but were descended from Abdallah al-Aftah (d. 765), another son of the fifth imam Jafar al-Sadiq (d. 765). He had thus placed himself in an alternative line of descent to that of Ismail ibn Jafar (d. Around 760), to which his Shia referred since the days of his great-grandfather. Coupled with a difficult to understand description of aliases and pseudo identities of his ancestors, the Mahdi had increased the confusion among his followers even more. Apparently he had recognized this himself and therefore waived an official statement regarding his parentage. It was only under his great-great-grandson, Imam-Caliph al-Aziz (d. 996), that the Ismaili Shia had in the prehistory of his caliphate authorized by him, “The book of the veiling of the Imam and the sending of missionaries to all islands to search for him “ (Istitār al-imām watafarruq ad-duʿāt fī l-ǧazāʿir li-ṭalabihī) of al-Naisaburi dismissed the Mahdi's explanation of the genealogy of their imams, which also largely corresponded to the views of contemporary followers and has since been considered canonical (see Family table of the Shiite imams ).

The Mahdi family:

Abdallah al-Akbar 8th Imam

Ahmad 9th Imam

Hussein 10th Imam

Abu sch-Schalaghlagh d. Before 899

Brother d. 903

Said / Ali / Abdallah al-Mahdi 11th Imam; 1st caliph

umm walad died before 902

Abdarrahim / Muhammad al-Qa'im

Fatimids

Juggling with various explanatory models, however, had begun by the representatives of the Sunna in the collection of vitals "Garden of Souls" (Riyāḍ an-nufūs) of Abu Bakr al-Maliki (11th century) in their devastating judgment, which after the Fatimids not only confirmed Deceivers but also leaders of heretics. Against the background of the hardening dogmatic fronts between Sunna and Shia, they were declared "enemies of God" and "commanders of the heathen" (amīr al-mušrikīn) . Taking up the naming of the Mahdi, Sunni authors only called him in the disparaging diminutive "Little Allah" (ʿUbaid Allāh) and called his dynasty "Ubaidites" (banū ʿUbaid ) . The doubts about a genuine Fatimid descent of the Mahdi have not died down to this day, but are considered an irrefutable fact in Ismaili historiography.

The revelation of the Mahdi

The Mahdi was born with the name Said on July 31, 874 (12. Šawwāl 260 AH ) in Askar Mukram in the southern Persian Chusistan as the son of Hussein . Little reliable information is available about his mother, who was never named; she lived in the year 910. In addition to two sisters, he had a (half) brother who was also not named, but who grew up in the Persian Taleghan , played a role in the uprising of 902 and died of an illness in Salamiyya in 903. Although the father is considered the tenth recognized imam, he does not seem to have played a prominent role in the leadership of the Ismaili Shia, who were active underground at the time, probably also because he died early in 882. The actual leadership was held by the uncle Abu Ali Muhammad, who is best known by the unusual alias " Abu sch-Schalaghlagh ". After the death of his father, the Mahdi was brought to his uncle in Salamiyya , Syria , where the leadership of the Ismaili mission (daʿwa) had its base of operations since the days of its founder, Abdallah al-Akbar . At that time, the mission still represented the official teaching that the seventh Imam Muhammad ibn Ismail would soon return from concealment and the family of the mission leaders saw themselves as guarantors (ḥuǧǧa) for this promise of salvation. Because with the return of the seventh imam as the rightly guided one (al-Mahdī) , according to the accepted view, the overthrow of the hated usurpers of the Abbasids in favor of the descendants of Ali (d. 661), the restoration of faith in God before the fall of man and thus abrogation connected with divine revelation and the law (šarīʿa) derived from it . In the late 9th century, however, the mission leadership seems to have come to the conclusion that a physical return of the seventh imam will probably not take place. But the expectations of their followers, who in all provinces of the Islamic empire were determined to revolt after fifty years of underground preparation, saw the leadership in Salamiyya prompted a solution to this question. According to the earliest traditions from their immediate vicinity, which were summarized in a compendium with the title "The Revelation" (al-Kašf) , Abu al-Shalaghlagh himself is said to have considered the idea of ​​emerging as the expected Mahdi and thus the starting shot for the To rebel, but his son and grandson had already been arrested and deported to Baghdad , which is why the establishment of a line of imams originating from him was made impossible. So he brought his nephew to live with him, adopted him in place of his son and married his daughter. On the occasion of this adoption, the nephew probably also took the name Ali, as the honorary title of the uncle, adoptive father-in-law and father-in-law was "Father of Ali".

One day a courier from the Egyptian Ismaili community, a certain Abu l'Abbas Muhammad, while he was delivering a message to the mission leadership in Salamiyya, asked the chief missionary (dāʿī d-duʿāt) Fairuz for the honor of the grand master of the mission himself, the Guarantor (ḥuǧǧa) of the imamate to be able to take his vow of loyalty. The request was granted and the courier was led to a curtain. After he had made his vows to the hidden Grand Master, much to his surprise, the curtain was lifted and three people revealed themselves to him. The first person was the already aged “guarantor” Abu al-Shalaghlagh, who introduced the second person to Said as the “rightly guided imam” and the third person was his son Abdarrahman (born 893), who was still a toddler. The courier was told that the imam's guarantors had always been the imams themselves, but for reasons of the strictest caution (taqīya) they had to conceal this fact from their own followers in order to avoid possible betrayal of the Abbasids.

The exact date of this revelation is not recorded, but it must have been made shortly before the year 899. In that year, the missionary of the Iraqi Ismaili community, Hamdan Qarmat , heard about the Mahdi's revelation and drew his own conclusions from it. The replacement of the person of the seventh Imam Muhammad ibn Ismail in the role of Mahdi by another was blatantly disproportionate to the doctrine of the physical return of the seventh imam, which had been propagated up to that point. He found it unacceptable that the family of the missionary grandmasters could be identical to the imam lineage. This marked the beginning of the first major schism in Ismaili history. Under the leadership of Hamdan Qarmat, the Iraqi, Bahraini and also most of the Persian religious community renounced the mission leadership and stood in irreconcilable opposition to it. The grouping of the “ Qarmats ” formed in this way has since regarded itself as the keeper of the Altismailite mission, the original Seventh Shia , which adhered to the prophecy of the return of the seventh Imam. However, the revelation of Salamiyya was rejected by the Qarmatians as a deception of the traditional teaching. In contrast, the communities of Syria, Egypt, Yemen and also the Maghreb of the leadership in Salamiyya, recognizing this reform, remained loyal to their propagated doctrine, thus accepting the continuation of the imam line beyond the seventh imam.

The first Mahdi state

The revelation had set a chain of events in motion that escaped the control of the mission leadership around Abu sh-Schalaghlagh, who probably died before 899, and the Mahdi. The Qarmatians have combined their detachment from Salamiyya with a general uprising against the Abbasid Caliphate; As early as June / July 899, the first fighting had broken out in Bahrain . Not only did they want to bring about the overthrow of the Abbasids, but also help their belief system to dominate before the followers of the supposedly false Mahdi succeeded. One of the few missionaries in the Iraqi community who still professed the Mahdi was Zakaroye ibn Mihroye . He had tried to avert the secession of the Qarmatians by eliminating their leaders, but failed, but he succeeded in mobilizing the Bedouin tribes of the Syrian desert around Palmyra for the cause of the Mahdi. At the head of the Bedouins, who hung the party name “Fatimids” (al-Fāṭimīyūn) on their flags, Zakaroye and his sons dared to rebel against the Abbasids themselves in 902 in order to for their part establish the caliphate of the Mahdi to courteous the Qarmatians. At the beginning of the uprising, they defeated the local governor's army and plundered his residence, Resafa .

The Zakaroye revolt had apparently not been discussed with the Mahdi. Like his immediate predecessors in mission leadership, he had been able to live undisturbed in Salamiyya under the cover identity of merchants and lead the mission from underground. But the uprising had alerted the local Abbasid authorities, who were soon told of the Mahdi's whereabouts by apostates from the ranks of the Qarmatians. Through his own network of informants, the transmission of which was carried out by means of carrier pigeons, he had learned from Baghdad from the news that the authorities there had already been searching for him on a wanted poster. He had left his home in Salamiyya overnight and had to flee Syria. His small entourage consisted of him and his little son only six other men, the chief missionary Fairuz, the courier Abu l'Abbas Muhammad and four slaves, including his milk brother Jafar. The wives of his family ( ḥarīm ) , consisting of his mother, two daughters, the still child wife of his son, as well as two daughters of his brother, initially stayed behind in Salamiyya, but were later to be evacuated from here, as well as his subordinates assets buried in the swimming pool of his bathhouse. The mother of his son (umm walad) , the daughter of Abu sch-Schalaghlagh, is no longer mentioned on this occasion, probably because she had already passed away. The escape was quick. After the tour group first passed Homs , they spent a day in the Lebanese Tripoli on the Mediterranean coast. Turning from there back inland, it stopped for one day in the Syrian capital Damascus and from there reached Tiberias on the third day . The Mahdi stayed here no longer, as the bailiffs of the Syrian governor were already on his heels. On the same day he and his followers reached the provincial capital of Palestine ar-Ramla , closely followed by the caliph's police couriers, who arrived here that evening to display the Mahdi's profile. But the governor ar-Ramlas was a secret Ismailite who, unnoticed by the public, was able to assign the Mahdi a house as a safe refuge. It was October 28, 902. On the evening of that day the Mahdi and his entourage were able to stand on the roof of the governor's house and watch a meteor shower, which was also registered by North African astrologers.

While the Mahdi remained hidden in ar-Ramla, Zakaroye and his Bedouins had taken up the siege of Damascus and at the same time began their own search for their Imam in Salamiyya. A son of the missionary was finally able to find him in ar-Ramla, but the request to come to Damascus to take the lead in the military struggle was rejected by him. The Mahdi continued to act with caution, which was soon to prove him right when the Bedouin army in Damascus was defeated and dispersed by an Abbasid relief army in July 903; a son of the Zakaroye who headed it was killed in the process. But the fight was not over yet. Another son of the missionary was able to quickly regroup the “Fatimid” Bedouins under his command and with them gain control of the Orontes Valley . After the occupation of Homs, they moved as far as Salamiyya, but they did not find the Mahdi there as they had hoped. They only found his brother there, who was already stricken with an illness and was lying on his death bed. In quick succession the "Fatimids" succeeded in taking all northern Syrian cities as far as ar-Raqqa on the Euphrates . The triumphant advance of the Shiite uprising, the Qarmatians in Bahrain and the Ismailis in Syria, caused the Abbasid caliph al-Muktafi (d. 908) to act after long hesitation. As the first caliph in generations, he had placed himself at the head of an army, crossed the Euphrates into Syria in August 903 and regained control of ar-Raqqa. The "Fatimids" reacted with the mass execution of all members of the Hashimites (banū Hāschim) , whom they were able to get hold of in Salamiyya, because they support the caliphate of the Abbasids related to them and provide the authorities in Baghdad with information about the whereabouts of the Mahdi had. In the autumn of 903 the leaders of the "Fatimids" set about establishing a state in the name of the Mahdi in the Orontes region they had conquered, a first anticipation of the later Fatimid caliphate. In Homs, the first coins with the ruler's title of Mahdi were minted and these were read out in the Friday sermons.

The first Mahdi state was not granted long duration. On November 29, 903 the Bedouins were defeated by the Abbasid army at the Battle of Tamna near Maarat an-Numan . The Fatimid party collapsed instantly. Their leader bitterly blamed the Mahdi personally for the defeat, since he had refused to emerge from concealment and thus abandoned his followers. In Salamiyya, the last remaining members of the Mahdi were murdered by the disappointed supporters and his assets plundered. But shortly afterwards the Abbasid general was able to regain control of the cities on the Orontes for his caliph and capture several leaders of the uprising. Among them also the son of Zakaroye, who after he gave the authorities a precise description of the Mahdi, died a gruesome death on February 13, 904 in Baghdad in a public spectacle with over 300 followers.

Escape to the west

As early as February 904, the Mahdi had reached the Egyptian provincial capital al-Fustat , continuing his escape from the increasingly insecure ar-Ramla . But even here he couldn't feel safe. According to instructions from Baghdad, the local authorities observed all foreigners in the city with suspicion and the Mahdi's milk brother Jafar was even questioned under slight torture, but was able to dispel any suspicion for the time being. The Mahdi stayed in Egypt for about a year until, in April 905, the Tulunid governor dynasty was replaced by a governor appointed by the caliph, and the pressure of persecution increased again. Much to the surprise of his followers, the Mahdi decided to continue his flight to the Far West ( maġrib ) . Up until then his entourage had assumed that the final destination of their flight would be Yemen , where the Ismailis, led by the missionary Ibn Hauschab (d. 914), had strong support. At that time, however, the West was still considered to be overgrown in terms of civilization, inhabited by Berber tribes (from the Greek barbaros ) who were only superficially Islamized. But here too the Ismaili mission had been able to work successfully in previous years. The undisputed leader here was the missionary Abu Abdallah asch-Shi'i , who in the previous ten years had succeeded in proselytizing the Kutama tribes as particularly warlike "helpers of truth" (anṣār al-ḥaqq) , at whose head he was in 902 armed struggle against the Abbasid governors in the province of "Africa" ​​( Ifrīqiya , today Tunisia ) from the Aghlabid dynasty . He was also the brother of the courier Abu l'Abbas Muhammad to whom the Mahdi had revealed himself in Salamiyya.

On the way through Cyrenaica , the traveling caravan was attacked by the Berber tribe of the Mazata, who robbed the Mahdi of his precious library. Arrived in Libyan Tripoli , he made contact with the Kutama who were already fighting against the authorities. His original intention to move incognito directly into the provincial capital Kairouan in order to prepare an overthrow there he had to discard again, since his profile had meanwhile also been posted here. It was decided that the Mahdi should remain hidden for the time being until the military struggle led by Abu Abdallah asch-Shi'i in his favor was over. For this purpose, the Mahdi should seek a refuge as far away from the urban centers as possible and stay there. So he and his small group began their onward journey to the west along the old Roman Limes , deeper into the land of the Berbers, the most remote region of the Islamic world, where the Caliphate of Baghdad no longer had any influence. In Tripoli, only the Mahdi’s harem remained under the care of a local missionary because the women did not want to make the arduous journey. On August 6, 905, the Mahdi celebrated the festival of breaking the fast ( ifṭār ) in Tozeur and after a forced march through the desert along the southern edge of the Aurès massif , he reached Sidschilmasa in the same month , today located in Morocco , where he would spend the next four years lingered with the identity of a merchant.

Appearance of the imamate and establishment of the caliphate

After some setbacks at the beginning of their uprising in 902, which not by chance fell at the same time as that of the Syrian Bedouins, the struggle of the Kutama was favored by the death of the Emir Ibrahim II in October 902, as the Aghlabids then fell into one The succession dispute got bogged down. The conquests of the old Roman colonies Mila and Sétif , which were made possible up to 904 , probably had the decisive factor in the decision of the Mahdi, who was just in Egypt, to turn to the Maghreb instead of Yemen. When he reached Sidschilmasa in August 905, the battle was not yet over. In 906 the Kutama conquered the ancient Thubunae south of Barika , where Abu Abdallah asch-Shi'i laid the fiscal foundation of the future Fatimid state by introducing a tax collection. In May or June 907, the strong fortress Baghai (north of Khenchela ) in the Aurès was taken by surprise . By the summer of 908 the controlled area could be extended further east to Kasserine . With the capture of the oasis region Qastiliya between the Chott el Djerid and the Chott el Gharsa , including the places Nefta and Tozeur , what is now southern Tunisia was brought under control in the spring of 909. Emir Ziyadat Allah III. (d. 916) panicked and prepared to flee, threatening to lose the land connection to Egypt. The last contingent of the Aghlabids was decisively defeated on March 18, 909 in front of al-Aribus (the Roman colony Aelia Augusta Lares, also Laribus, east of El Kef ) and the next day the last Aghlabid took up flight to Egypt.

At the head of the victorious Kutama, al-Shi'i moved into the palace city of Raqqada and the capital Kairouan on March 25 without a fight . He immediately set about establishing the second Mahdi state after the failed attempt in Syria in 903. New governors from the ranks of the Kutama were appointed in all cities of Africa, and the management of the ministries was delegated to trustworthy persons. On the other hand, the Aghlabid officials were almost completely taken over. On the day of the invasion, the crier ( muʾaḏḏin ) were instructed to give the usual request ( aḏān ) “On to prayer!” The traditional Shiite formula “To do the best!” (حي على خير العمل / ḥayya ʿalā ḫair al-ʿamal ), which was remarkable because it was the first time in history that the establishment of an Islamic state with Shiite characteristics was indicated. The change in rule over the faithful was made clear in the first Friday sermon on March 31, 909 by the omission of the name of the Sunni Abbasid caliph al-Muqtadir (d. 932). The name of the Mahdi was not announced on this occasion, but prayers were made for the Prophet , his son-in-law Ali , his grandsons Hassan and Hussain , and for his daughter Fatima, thus unequivocally confirming the Shiite orientation of the new caliphate. This also included its future jurisdiction, when in May 909 the office of chief judge (qāḍī l-quḍāt) was occupied by an Ismaili. The Sunni-Maliki school of law that had prevailed in Africa up to that point was suppressed in favor of an Ismaili school of law that had not yet been written down in writing at the time , which was to be the main reason for the opposition to the new regime (daula) that was soon to set in among the Sunni majority of the population . Ash-Shi'i sought to put the acceptance of the new order on a broader basis by immediately taking up the Ismaili mission. The teaching sessions of the religious community previously held underground, the "sessions of wisdom" (maǧālis al-ḥikma) , could now be held free from any persecution, but as usual remained accessible only to sworn believers. For this purpose, interdenominational disputations between the scholars of the Ismailis and Malikites were recorded, in which above all the relationship between Ali and the Prophet, the interpretation of the saying ( ḥadīṯ ) from the pond of Chumm and thus the legitimacy of the Fatimid claim to power were discussed. The Ismaili Shia was able to steadily increase its following, especially since a conversion to it could now be combined with a social and professional advancement, but at all times of the Fatimid Caliphate it was to remain in the minority compared to the Sunnah. One of the reasons for this is likely to have been the fact that ash-Shi'i already waived the introduction of forced conversions.

Since his arrival in Libyan Tripoli in 905, the Mahdi had been in constant correspondence with Ash-Shi'i and was thus informed of the course of the war at all times, even in the remote Sidschilmasa . The city was ruled by Prince Yasa ibn Midrar from the Midrarids clan , whose favor the Mahdi bought in his disguise as a rich merchant. When his incognito had been lifted by agents of the Aghlabids, who had been able to find his whereabouts, the prince ignored this in return for appropriate financial support. But when he learned of the Kutama army marching on his city in August 909, he had the Mahdi and his followers thrown into prison. When the Kutama, led by asch-Shi'i, marched in front of the city on August 26, 909, the prince gave in to their demand for the Mahdi to be surrendered the following day, so that it finally passed in front of the city walls on August 27, 909 stepping out of its secrecy could be received by its followers and placed on a throne. At his first ruler's instructions, the city that Prince Yasa had meanwhile fled was occupied the next day. The Mahdi stayed for several days in the city where he received envoys from the surrounding Berber tribes. Prince Yasa, who had meanwhile been captured, was also extradited to him, whom he punished with forty lashes due to the disgraceful treatment he had previously inflicted, from whose wounds the prince died a little later. In a letter written here by Abu Abdallah asch-Shi'i to his deputy in Kairouan, the Mahdi was first dubbed the “Commander of the Believers” (amīr al-muʾminīn) . On October 12, 909, the Mahdi withdrew to Africa at the head of the Kutama. Stations of the march were Tahert (today Tiaret ), in the vicinity of which rebellious Zenta-Berbers had to be fought, and Ikdschan , where the al-Shi'i had once started his missionary work under the Kutama and thus made the place the starting point of the Fatimid caliphate. On January 4, 910, the column reached the plain in front of Kairouan, where the Mahdi accepted the notables' homage and confirmed the security guarantee (amān) previously granted by Ash-Shi'i . After four years among the overgrown Berbers, dealing with townspeople of Arab origin is said to have inspired him to compare it to the civilization of the Orient, since everything he has seen of the Maghrebians so far has only been rural.

The Mahdi had not set foot in Kairouan, but had moved directly to the nearby palace city of Raqqada. On the following day, January 5, 910, he was proclaimed for the Friday sermon for the first time under his rulership as the new commander of the faithful in proxy ( ḫalīfa ) of God and officially proclaimed in this dignity in the palace, thus completing the establishment of the new caliphate. On the occasion of the celebrations, even after almost five years of separation, his harem had arrived in Raqqada from Tripoli. The reunion with his mother, the daughters and the other women of his family had tempted the attending poets in reminiscence of the prophet's daughter Fatima to praise his person as her descendant, as the “son of Fatima” and as a “Fatimid imam”, which is why the historiography did not In the end, therefore, the new Caliph dynasty used to refer to as “Fatimids”, also referring to the party names used by its Syrian supporters. As imams of the Ismaili Shia, whose doctrine was understood by its followers as the “religion of truth” (dīn al-ḥaqq) , the new dynasty called itself the “dynasty of truth” (daulat al-ḥaqq) . On the same occasion, the women of the harem of the expelled Aghlabids, whom they had left behind during their flight in Raqqada, were brought to the Mahdi. He took six of them as concubines , gave a few more to his sixteen-year-old son, but gave most of them as gifts to the Kutama clan leaders.

Disappointed expectations

Meanwhile, the first year of the Fatimid Caliphate threatened to be the last, which was due to the disappointed expectations of parts of its supporters. Even when he emerged in Sidschilmasa, the Mahdi is said to have caused astonishment among the rough Kutama with his appearance and demeanor. In his habitus as a wealthy merchant, dressed in expensive garments, with a penchant for the casual enjoyment of wine, he did not at all correspond to the image of a pious ascetic that the missionary Abu Abdallah asch-Shi'i had sketched out for them for almost twenty years and also exemplified. The Mahdi had also broken with many expectations when it came to the way he was in office after his enthronement. Scarcely had he been promoted to caliph, he had arranged for the most important offices in state and court to be filled with closest confidants, but then withdrew behind the walls of his palace and henceforth led a life in strict isolation from the people. The personal management of the most important Islamic festivals, such as the breaking of the fast at the end of Ramadan, or the festival of sacrifices, including sermons and prayers on the public festival square ( muṣallā ) with the people, as is generally expected of a caliph, he had instead delegated to his son .

Above all, however, soon after his enthronement, doubts arose as to the fulfillment of the prophecies associated with his person, which the Ismaili mission had propagated for decades. His emergence from obscurity was not only associated with the restoration of the caliphate of the descendants of Ali, but also with the dawn of the resurrection (qiyāma) , in which, after the abrogation of the divine revelation transmitted by the Prophet, the repeal of the law (rafʿ aš- šarīʿa) and thus faith in God return to its original state before the fall of sin, which knows nothing other than pure worship of God. However, to the alarm of his followers, a declaration to this effect by the Mahdi, to whom he alone as Imam was responsible for recognizing the dawn of the resurrection and its preaching, even after his enthronement was delayed. Instead, they had to recognize signs of a failure to make the long-awaited promise of salvation, such as the naming of the Mahdi. For, according to all prophecies, the imam who was responsible for the abolition of the mission of the prophet should also bear the name of the prophet. But instead of the Mahdi, his son, the future Imam Caliph al-Qa'im , bore the name of the Prophet. A postponement of the resurrection became apparent and with it the further validity of the law, which meant nothing more than a second reform of the Ismaili constitution, a renewed deviation from a dogma that had been propagated for decades after the continuation of the imam line beyond the seventh imam.

And just as the first reform of the year 899 raised doubts about the veracity of the supposedly rightly guided imam in the missionary Hamdan Qarmat, this was repeated in 910 with Abu Abdallah asch-Shi'i. As early as the spring of 910, he and the Kutama had again moved to the Maghreb after resistance to the new order had flared up there. Sidschilmasa was retaken by the Midrarids after less than two months and the storming of Tahert by the Zenta-Berbers could only be repulsed after a heavy fight. On August 6, 910, the Zenta were defeated in a battle near Thubunae and with the conquest of the port city of Tanas (Ténès) on September 7, 910, the campaign was completed. Here the conspiracy of the Kutama and their missionary Abu Abdallah al-Shi'i began. Back in Raqqada, the conspirators confronted the Mahdi and asked him to perform a miracle, which a true imam should be able to perform thanks to the god-given power of blessing (baraka) . The Mahdi referred to his ability to decode ( taʾwīl ) the divine revelation recorded in the Koran as an expression of that blessing power, just like the miracle of revelation (tanzīl) performed by his ancestor, the prophet, an expression of God's blessing over him Person ( sura 29:51 ). But for the conspirators, the reference to the Koran was not enough and so they decided in conspiratorial meetings to eliminate the supposedly false Mahdi. But he was well informed about their steps by informers and was able to strike 911 on February 18, when the conspirators were surprised by men who had remained loyal to him during the final preparations for their assassination and were killed in a short battle. Although Abu Abdallah al-Shi'i had ultimately opposed him, the Mahdi and the Fatimids kept his memory honoring him and prayers were made for his salvation in the hereafter, as he was the real pioneer of their caliphate. But his brother Abu l'Abbas Muhammad, to whom the Mahdi had once revealed himself for the first time in Salamiyya, fell victim to damnation and the Damnatio memoriae , according to the prevailing opinion he was the driving force behind the conspiracy.

The suppression of the conspiracy was followed by a wave of purges in the bureaucratic apparatus, which mainly fell victim to old, unreliable Aghlabid cadres. However, this also provoked bloody uprisings among the Arab population in Kairouan, Tahert and Tripoli, which were directed against the Kutama Berber regime. While the uprising in Tahert was suppressed with a massacre on October 1, 911, the government was more lenient towards the rebels in Kairouan. The Berber governor was replaced by a man of Arab origin, which soothed the general uproar. Some of the kutama offended by this, old companions of the al-Shi'i, reacted with an uprising against the Mahdi and went so far as to proclaim an anti-Mahdi from their ranks, who proclaimed the dawn of the resurrection and the repeal of the law. This act was a reaction to the public designation (naṣṣ) of the eldest son of the Mahdi as heir to the throne (walī al-ʿahd) in April / May 912 , which sealed the second reform of the Ismaili constitution. The Mahdi was therefore not considered to be the last expected seventh prophet after Adam , Noah , Abraham , Moses , Jesus and Mohammed . The resurrection originally associated with his person was moved to the future at an as yet undetermined point in time, which according to the will of God should fall to a future Imam of the Shia, all of whom are considered "rightly guided". Under the military command of nineteen-year-old al-Qa'im , the anti-Mahdi movement was defeated near Mila on June 21, 912 , and its captive leaders were subjected to a public criminal trial in Raqqada.

The episode about the anti-Mahdi marked the first emergence of an antinomic heresy based on the Ismaili doctrine , with which the Imam-Caliphs of the Fatimids were confronted throughout their history with all regularity. The appearance of exaggerated enthusiasts, of extremists ( ġulāt ) who did not want to accept the postponement of the resurrection and who, in violation of the Ismaili constitution, propagated their proclamation and thus the repeal of the law on their own initiative, regardless of the imam's clearly different prophecy of its further validity of Islamic commandments and rites. Above all, this represented an attack on the person of the imam as the only authorized authority, who was able to recognize and proclaim the resurrection due to his divine blessing power (baraka) . The presumption of such a qualification by others called into question not only the first pillar of Islam, the submission of the believer to the rightful imam, but also the inner unity of the religious community. In 921, the Mahdi’s government arrested around two hundred such extremists for propagating the Resurrection in Africa and publicly disobeying Islamic rites. They had gone so far as to recognize a material incarnation of God ( Allaah ) on earth in the person of the Mahdi , as the first forerunners of the " Druze " sect that emerged a century later . By suppressing this activity, the Mahdi had temporarily defended the constitution of faith and the inner unity of his followers, but the pressure for the repeal of the law always remained subliminal and was to break out again in the time of his descendant al-Hakim (996-1021).

After the end of the anti-Mahdi, the Kutama, under the leadership of a younger generation of clan chiefs, had again submitted to the Mahdi's commands. In the winter of 913, under the leadership of the heir to the throne, the rebellious Tripoli was also taken after a combined land and sea operation. Only the ringleaders were executed and a fine was imposed on the city for their rebellion. As a concession, however, an Arab was installed as governor here. The uprisings against the still young Fatimid regime in Africa came to an end, whereupon they could now begin the expansion of their caliphate.

expansion

Tsar Simeon I sends a messenger to the African ruler "Phatloum" (Φατλούμ), alias Fatimid caliph al-Mahdi. Representation in an edition of the Synopsis Historion by Johannes Skylitzes , 12th century. Biblioteca Nacional de España, MSS Graecus Vitr. 26-2, fol. 148r.

As early as 910, the Mahdi had sent his own governor to Sicily to incorporate the island, which had been the pariah of Africa since the Islamic expansion, under his rule. However, the Berber governor was soon driven out by the Arabs who were predominant on the island, also because they had taken offense at the introduction of the Ismaili tax of the fifth (ḫum) . Instead of him, a descendant of the Aghlabids was raised to the rank of emir, who demonstratively submitted to the suzerainty of the Abbasid caliphs. Only after the Sicilian Berbers, who were notoriously disadvantaged by the Arabs, had changed sides, the Fatimids were able to gain the upper hand on the island from 916 onwards. After the Aghlabid emir had fallen into their hands, the Arabs entrenched in Palermo had to capitulate to the Kutama in March 917 . After Africa, Sicily was the second province to be won for the Fatimid Caliphate. Her rule here, however, was not unchallenged. A large part of the island was still controlled by the Christian Byzantine Empire , which is why the Fatimids now had the task of expanding Islam ( jihād ) against "infidels". Even under her rule, Sicily served as a base of operations for regular robbery trips by Muslim corsairs along the Calabrian and Apulian coast. In 918 Reggio was invaded and in 928 Taranto sacked. More than 10,000 prisoners were taken in a 925 pirate expedition, including the doctor Shabbtai Donnolo , who later became famous . Possibly the latter venture was the result of an initial cooperation between the Fatimids and a Christian power. A later Byzantine reporter, Johannes Skylitzes (11th century), described a diplomatic contact between the Bulgarian ruler Simeon I (d. 927) and the "ruler of the Africans" called "Phatloum" (Φατλούμ), alias al-Mahdi, to form one Offensive alliance against Emperor Romanos I. Lakapenos (d. 948). The African was to support the Bulgarian with his naval forces in a combined attack on Constantinople and after the successful conquest he would rule over the imperial city. But the alliance did not come about after the African negotiators sent to Bulgaria were captured and captured by the Byzantines at sea, but were treated with the utmost courtesy by the emperor and released again, whereupon the ruler of Africa sought his friendship. Negotiations between the Fatimids and the Bulgarians, of which the Fatimid traditions say nothing, may have played a role in Simeon's preparations for his campaign against Constantinople in November 924.

The main thrust of the Fatimids, however, was to the east, with the conquest of Baghdad and the annihilation of the Abbasids as the ultimate goal. Because the caliphate was connected with the claim to sole rule over the Islamic world ( umma ) , which forbade coexistence with a second caliphate, which was declared usurper. The Shiite uprisings that broke out in 902 were still going on and even after the end of his sons in 904, the missionary Zakaroye was able to encourage the Syrian Bedouins to further uprisings in favor of the Fatimids. It was only his own death in the battle of the ruins of Iram in Wadi Dhi Qar on January 10, 907 that put an end to their cause in Iraq and Syria and enabled the Abbasids to survive.

The Fatimid cause, on the other hand, was more successful in Yemen, where Ismailis had already gained a strong presence in the decades before and, above all, exercised control over the mountains that was independent of Baghdad. This was the merit of the two missionaries Ibn Hauschab (d. 914), the "victor of Yemen" (al-Manṣūr al-Yaman) , and Ibn al-Fadl (d. 915), who each looked after their own Ismaili congregation, but for the common cause cooperated. For the Mahdi, his Yemeni supporters had played a special role in further strategic planning, as they were able to favor the further expansion of his caliphate into Egypt by allowing access to the Nile land in a pincer movement from two directions. However, this possibility was gambled away, for which the Mahdi was partly responsible. He wrote the letter he mentioned to the Yemeni community after the elimination of the Ash Shi'i in February 911 and sent it to Yemen shortly afterwards. In addition to his rather confused and later rejected account of his genealogy, the letter also contained an announcement about the second reform of the doctrine of the faith, the continuation of the imam line with the simultaneous validity of the law. As in Africa, this announcement led to a break within the community in Yemen. While the supporters led by Ibn Hauschab in northern Yemen remained loyal to the Mahdi, the community led by Ibn al-Fadl in southern Yemen renounced the Fatimids and, like the Qarmatians, turned against them. Already in the late 911 the fratricidal struggle between the two factions escalated, which neutralized the Yemeni community. Only the almost simultaneous death of both missionaries was able to strengthen the position of the Fatimids in Yemen again, since the loyal community of Ibn Hauschab was able to hold out after his death, while that of Ibn al-Fadl was soon destroyed by the Abbasid governors. The fratricidal struggle had favored the establishment of another Shiite party in Yemen, that of the Zaidis , whose imam had just settled in this province at that time and was henceforth in competition with the Ismailis. Over the centuries, the Zaidis were to become the predominant Shiite party in Yemen, while the Ismailis ( Tayyibis ) only exist here as a minority.

The Maghreb was of secondary importance to the Fatimids. The expansion of their power in this area was left to the Berber governor of their westernmost outpost in Tahert. In the summer of 917 he made a first foray and captured the city of Nakur (today Al Hoceïma ) on the Mediterranean coast. Their Salihid prince had fled across the sea to Málaga and placed himself there under the protection of the Emirs of Córdoba , with whose help he was able to recapture his city just a few months later. This was the first time the Fatimids came into confrontation with the Umayyad dynasty , the first Sunni caliph dynasty, who fled to the distant Spanish peninsula after their overthrow in Damascus and have since exercised the governorship of the Islamic empire, which was virtually independent from Baghdad . Taking the Fatimids as a model, the Umayyads revived their own claim to the caliphate here in 929 while the Mahdi was still alive and thus competed against the Abbasids and Fatimids as the third caliph dynasty. In 921 the governor of Tahert undertook a second campaign in the west, conquering Fez, the outermost Arab city in the west, and on the march back, also subjugating the Midrarid prince of Sidschilmasa . Fez had already been recaptured by the local Idrisid princes , also these descendants of the Prophet, in 922 , and Sidschilmasa also got rid of Fatimid sovereignty a little later. The extreme west (al-maġrib al-aqṣā) , today's Morocco , remained ruled by local city princes and thus free from any imperial suzerainty. Another source of unrest were the Zenta-Berbers, who, nomadic in what is now central Algeria, evaded all authority and represented a constant threat to Tahert. The heir to the throne undertook a year and a half campaign against them in 927, but it was only able to throw the Zenta back into the Sahara for a short time .

Egypt campaigns

After Tripoli was subject to Fatimid rule in 913, the further eastward expansion of their caliphate took place from here. With the capture of Barqa on February 6, 914, Cyrenaica was also subdued and defended in the following April by repulsing an Egyptian counter-offensive. On this occasion, the Mahdi ordered the execution of the local Mazata Berber chiefs in retaliation for their attack on his caravan eight years earlier. In this way he was able to regain his valuable books that were stolen from him at the time. On August 27, 914, the advance guard of the Fatimid army entered Alexandria , followed on November 6 by the main army commanded by the heir to the throne. The change of rule in the city was immediately indicated by the introduction of the Shiite call to prayer and the appointment of new officials. At this point in time, the first raiding troops had advanced as far as Giza , but the Abbasid governor of Egypt had turned down an offered change of sides. The advance into Egypt first made the Abbasids aware of the threat posed by the Fatimids, whose claim to the caliphate they had raised in far-off Africa had not yet been commented on by them. They sent reinforcement troops to their governor in Egypt. In December 914 the Fatimids had to give up the fight for the provincial capital al-Fustat after they failed to cross the Nile due to the fierce resistance at the ship bridge of ar-Rauda. There were also disputes over competence between the heir to the throne and his Kutama general, which resulted in a defeat in a battle at the pyramids on January 8, 915 . After the main army of the Abbasids had arrived in Egypt a little later, the numerically inferior heir to the throne had to retreat from Egypt, which not only resulted in the loss of Alexandria but also of Cyrenaica after the Berbers there were encouraged to revolt . The first attempt to conquer Egypt had failed, which again led to unrest in Africa. In the ranks of the Kutama in particular, there was a renewed rebellion, sparked by the treatment of the Kutama officers by the heir to the throne, who had blamed them for the defeat. The rebellion could be put down quickly and the ringleaders punished.

After an eighteen-month siege, Barqa and with it Cyrenaica were recaptured for the Fatimids in April 917. The second Egyptian campaign of the heir to the throne was only started two years later with the renewed capture of Alexandria on July 9, 919. The company was accompanied by a sea operation, but the Fatimid squadron was sunk on March 12, 920 in the Nile arm of Rosette not far from Abukir by the ships of the Abbasid fleet equipped with Greek fire . In return, the heir to the throne from Alexandria was able to occupy the Fayyum and Upper Egypt and rule here as ruler until 921. He had established diplomatic contacts with representatives of the Abbasids and emphasized his dynasty's claim to sole rule over the Muslim world. But the Abbas , the ancestor of the Abbasids, had once been given no share in the rule by the prophet, which is why the caliphate of his descendants was devoid of any legitimation. Alexandria was recaptured by the Abbasids in May 921 and the heir to the throne was enclosed in the Fayyum, from where he could only retreat to Barqa through a loss-making march through the Libyan desert and then return to Africa defeated in November 921. However, this time Cyrenaica could be mistaken for the dynasty from which regular raids into Egypt were carried out in the following years. The conquest of the Nile land remained the priority of Fatimid politics even among the successors of the Mahdi.

The new capital

→ Main article : Mahdia

The riots in Kairouan in 912 caused the Mahdi to build a new residential city. The old Raqqada residence, taken over by the Aghlabids, was insufficiently fortified and could be threatened at any time from the nearby Kairouan with its Sunni and notoriously hostile majority of the population. At first he had considered Carthage or Tunis as a new residence, which he had personally inspected, but finally decided to found a new city on a peninsula off the mainland south of the port city of Sousse , near which the city of Jumma ( Ǧumma , the Roman Rubber). Construction work began on May 11, 916 with the construction of the western city wall, which has since separated the peninsula from the mainland at its narrowest point. In September of the same year, the massive, eight-meter-wide bulwark with four towers and a large round tower on each lake flank was completed. The wall had only one entrance gate consisting of two iron door wings to the peninsula and thus to the palace area. A small artificial harbor that was built by the Phoenicians was restored so that the island could be evacuated across the sea in an emergency. After the palaces for the caliph and the heir to the throne had been completed, the court was able to move to the new residence al-Mahdīya, named after the city founder, on February 20, 921 . In the following years, the residential city was expanded with further palace complexes, as well as housing for the servants and ministries. In front of the western wall on the mainland, a suburb quickly emerged, in which purveyors to the court, craftsmen and the families of the palace guard settled.

The first of several important city foundations by the Fatimids, was deliberately designed as a refuge by its namesake. For this purpose, granaries and cisterns were built to collect rainwater, as the peninsula had no natural water source. The Mahdi had acted with wise foresight. Even under the rule of his son, the city was supposed to allow the caliphate to survive during the uprising of Abu Yazid as a last resort.

Succession

The Mahdi died after a brief illness on the night of March 4th, 934 (10th Rabīʿ al-awwal 322 AH) in al-Mahdiya at the age of fifty-nine. His death was not officially announced until June 10, 934, until then his name was still read out in the Friday sermons. He was buried in a mausoleum built next to his palace, but his body, as well as that of his son and grandson, was transferred there under the great-grandson al-Muʿizz when the court moved to Cairo in 973 and buried in a new mausoleum.

The successor as caliph and imam was the eldest son, who was designated as early as 912, the forty-year-old Abdarrahim / Muhammad under the ruler's name “who represents the cause of God” (al-Qāʾim bi-Amr Allāh) . In addition to these, the Mahdi had eight daughters and five other sons, all of whom are known by name, but otherwise played no role. The exclusion of later-born princes from all state affairs and the military in the ruling practice of the Fatimids began here; they were condemned to a life in the “golden cage” behind the walls of the palace, princesses were only rarely married and then only to cousins ​​from their own dynasty.

swell

The main sources for the biography of the first Fatimid caliph are the reports of three contemporary companions. The vita of the chamberlain Jafar (Sīrat al-ḥāǧib Ǧaʿfar) is also a quasi-biography of the Mahdi himself, since both shared the same stages of life as milk brothers from childhood. He survived the Mahdi by several years and dictated his memories to a chronicler, who in turn complimented the notes into a vita during the reign of al-Aziz . In addition, a biography (Sīrat al-imām al-mahdī) was written about the Mahdi himself , but only a fragmentary copy of a later Ismaili author of the 15th century has survived . The authorship of this Vita is attributed to the chronicler Ibn al-Haitham , who belonged to the inner leadership circle of the missionary Abu Abdallah asch-Shi'i and in his "Book of Disputations" (Kitāb al-munāẓarāt) the first months of the Fatimid caliphate from the Capturing Raqqada in March 909 and the proclamation of the Mahdi as caliph in January 910. This group is completed by the vita of the master Jaudar (Sīrat al-ustāḏ Ǧauḏar) , who as a young slave in January 910 in Raqqada was personally patterned by the Mahdi for use at court and who served the first four Fatimid caliphs. After his death in 973, his secretary summarized the memories he had written down to form a vita.

The book of "Beginning of Mission and the Establishment of the State" (Iftitāḥ ad-daʿwa wa-ibtidāʾ al-dawla) by the famous judge an-Nu'man (d. 974), one of the most prolific authors of the Ismaili Shia and compilers of its legal guidance. His description of the establishment of the Fatimid Caliphate is apparently based on the biography of Abu Abdallah al-Shi'i, which was no longer allowed to be published as such after this 911 fell out of favor. But two letters from the missionary from 909, written in Sidschilmasa and Ikdschan, have been preserved in their text in this work. Among the most important Ismaili authors of the 10th century, Jafar ibn Mansur al-Yaman (died around 957) should also be considered, the son of the missionary of Yemen Ibn Hauschab , who in his works primarily focused on the secret knowledge of his Shia and allegorical exegesis of the Koran. In his “Book of the Commandments and Prohibitions of Religion” (Kitāb al-farāʾiḍ wa-ḥudūd ad-dīn) , the Mahdi’s letter addressed to the Yemeni community from the year 911 is preserved, which the author, however, reproduced from memory. The compendium of the six oldest known tracts of the Ismailis with the title “The Revelation” (al-Kašf) , all of which were written before the revelation of the Mahdi in 899, probably comes from the same author .

The most important contemporary reporter on the part of the Sunnah is undoubtedly at-Tabari (d. 923), who in his universal chronicle , which dates back to 914, “Small copy of the history of the prophets, kings and caliphs” (Muḫtaṣar tā trīḫ ar-rusul wa-l -mulūk wa-l-ḫulafāʾ) describes the Shiite uprisings of the "Qarmatians" in Bahrain and the "Fatimids" in Syria from the point of view of his ruling caliph in Baghdad. He was unable to distinguish the two groups from one another and also gave the latter the party name “Qarmatians”, as they had started their uprising three years before the “Fatimids”. The proclamation of the Fatimid Caliphate in far-off Africa has completely ignored him. However, he had also transcribed a letter from the Mahdi from the year 903 into his work, which was probably written in ar-Ramla and addressed to one of his Syrian missionaries, the sender mistakenly being one of the sons of the insurgent leader Zakaroye ibn Mihroye.

literature

Overview works:

• Delia Cortese and Simonetta Calderini, Women and the Fatimids in the World of Islam. Edinburgh University Press 2006.
• Farhad Daftary , The Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines. Cambridge University Press 1990.
• Farhad Daftary, Ismaili Literature: A Bibliography of Sources and Studies. London 2004.
• 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.
• Stephan Ronart, Nandy Ronart, Lexicon of the Arab World. A historical-political reference work. Artemis Verlag, Zurich 1972, ISBN 3-406-35497-1 .

Special literature:

• Alain Ducellier, Byzance face au monde musulman à l'époque des conversions slaves: l'exemple du khalifat fatimide. In: Harvard Ukrainian Studies, Vol. 12/13 (1988/89), pp. 373-386.
• Heinz Halm, The Sons of Zikrawaih and the First Fatimid Caliphate (290/903). In: Die Welt des Orients , Vol. 10 (1979), pp. 30-53.
• Heinz Halm, The Sīrat Ibn Ḥaušab: The Ismaili da'wa in Yemen and the Fatimids. In: Die Welt des Orients, Vol. 12 (1981), pp. 107-135.
• Heinz Halm, Les Fatimides à Salamya. In: Revue des Etudes Islamiques, Vol. 54 (1986), pp. 133-149.
• Abbas Hamdani and François de Blois, A Re-examination of al-Mahdi's Letter to the Yemenites on the Genealogy of the Fatimid Caliphs In: The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. (1983), p. 173 -207.
• Shainool Jiwa, The Initial Destination of the Fatimid Caliphate: The Yemen or the Maghrib? In: Bulletin of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, 13 (1986), 15-26.
• Wilferd Madelung, Fatimids and Baḥrainqarmaṭen. In: Der Islam, Vol. 34 (1959), pp. 34-88.
• Wilferd Madelung, The Imamate in Early Ismaili Doctrine. In: Der Islam, Vol. 37 (1961), pp. 43-135.

Remarks

1. ↑ See Halm (1991), p. 144.
2. ↑ See Halm (1991), p. 216.
3. ↑ See Halm (1991), p. 148. When attempting to reliably provide evidence of the Mahdi's Fatimid descent, taking into account all known traditions, Heinz Halm, according to his own admission, had failed. See Halm (1991), p. 398, note 60.
4. ↑ See Halm (1991), p. 63.
5. ↑ It was not until an Ismaili anonymous who wrote in the 11th century that he knew in his work “The Way of the Astrologers” (Dustūr al-munaǧǧimīn) that the mother of the Mahdi was a “Maghrebian midwife”. See Michael Jan de Goeje, Mémoire sur les Carmathes du Bahraïn et les Fatimides (1886), p. 205.
6. ↑ See Daftary (1990), p. 123; Halm (1991), p. 71.
7. ↑ See Halm (1991), p. 76.
8. ↑ See Daftary (1990), p. 128; Halm (1991), p. 138.
9. ↑ See Daftary (1990), p. 128; Halm (1991), p. 139.
10. ↑ See Halm (1991), p. 153.
11. ↑ See Halm (1991), p. 223.
12. ↑ See Bernard Flusin, Jean Skylitzès, Empereurs de Constantinople. Paris 2003, p. 222 f. To identify the Φατλούμ with al-Mahdi cf. Ducellier, p. 378, note 20.
13. ↑ See Halm (1991), p. 214; Ducellier, p. 379 f.
14. ↑ See Halm (1991), p. 246.
15. ↑ See Halm (2003), p. 118.
16. ↑ See Cortese / Calderini, p. 49 f.
17. ↑ See Daftary (2004), p. 159.
18. ↑ See Daftary (2004), p. 120 f.
19. ↑ See Daftary (2004), p. 117.
20. ↑ See Daftary (2004), p. 122 f.
21. ↑ See Daftary (2004), pp. 142–146.
22. ↑ See Daftary (2004), p. 121 f.
23. ↑ The narrator apparently mistakenly dated the Mahdi's letter to the year 921. See Halm (1991), p. 398, note 55.

Web link

Commons : Abdallah al-Mahdi Billah  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

predecessor	Office	successor
Caliphate newly established	Caliph of the Fatimids 910-934	al-Qa'im
Ziyadat Allah III. ( Aghlabid dynasty )	Ruler of Africa 910-934	al-Qa'im
Hussein	11. Imam of the Ismailis 882-934	al-Qa'im