al-ʿĀdid

Depiction of al-ʿĀdid on his horse (1966)

Abu Muhammad Abdallah ibn Yusuf ( Arabic أبو محمد عبد الله بن يوسف, DMG Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh ibn Yūsuf ; * May 9, 1151 ; † September 13, 1171 in Cairo ) was under the ruler's name al-Adid li-din Allah ( Arabic العاضد لدين الله, DMG al-ʿĀḍid li-dīn Allāh ) the fourteenth and last caliph of the Fatimids (1160–1171) as well as the twenty-fourth imam of the Shia of the Hafizi-Ismailis .

Life

Power struggles

After the death of the underage caliph al-Fa'iz on July 22, 1160, the ruling vizier Tala'i ibn Ruzzik chose the youngest of the surviving Fatimids to install him as the new caliph. His choice fell on the nine-year-old Prince Abdallah, whom he had immediately after the burial of his predecessor under the name of al-ʿĀḍid li-dīn Allāh ("the strengthening of God's religion") proclaimed the new caliph. As the son of Prince Yusuf, al-Adid was a grandson of Caliph al-Hafiz ; the father was also cruelly killed by the then vizier on April 16, 1154 after the assassination of the caliph az-Zafir . The perpetrators responsible were ultimately severely punished by Tala'i ibn Ruzzik. Under him, al-Adid was not given a special role in the government of Egypt, but he was married to a daughter of the vizier, who sought to consolidate his power through dynastic ties to the caliph dynasty.

But after Tala'i had also become unpopular due to his strict regime, an aunt of al-Adid organized a successful assassination attempt on him on September 12, 1161. However, the removal of the vizier had not been able to stem the power struggles that had been going on in Egypt for years . The dead man's son, Ruzzik, was able to immediately take power in Cairo , who killed the princess and her co-conspirators. Ruzzik's regiment was terminated by Shawar on December 23, 1162 , who in turn was driven out of Cairo by Dirgham on August 30, 1163 after heavy street fighting. The ongoing anarchy was first used by the Franks under King Amalrich I of Jerusalem in September 1163 to attack Egypt. In the spring of 1164 the fugitive shawar reappeared in Egypt, accompanied by an army of the Syrian ruler Nur ad-Din Mahmud under the command of the Kurdish general Asad ad-Din Schirkuh . On April 28, 1164, Dirgam's troops were defeated near Bilbeis by the Syrians, who then began the siege of Cairo. After the remaining supporters of Dirgam gradually fell away from his side, it was al-Adid who made contact with Shawar and initiated his entry into Cairo on May 22, 1164 without a fight. Dirgam was caught on the run in the streets of the city and beheaded.

Only four days later Al-Adid made Shawar his vizier a second time. The vizier now made a political change of course by calling on his Syrian allies camped outside Cairo to withdraw to their homeland and at the same time establishing diplomatic contacts with the Franks. But Shirkuh was not ordered and put Cairo under siege a second time; His young nephew Salah ad-Din (Saladin) Yusuf was already fighting in his ranks . While Shawar was now in charge of the defense of Cairo, his new Christian allies under King Amalrich I advanced into the Nile Delta in July 1164 . Schirkuh felt compelled to break off the siege of Cairo and now entrenched himself with his Syrians in Bilbeis, which was now besieged by the united Christian-Muslim army under Amalrich and Shawar. The decisive final battle did not take place, however, because the news of an offensive by the Syrian ruler against the Christian territories had arrived, whereupon Amalrich and his knights retreated into his kingdom richly rewarded. And Schirkuh also decided to withdraw to Syria to stand by his master there, which is why Shawar emerged as the actual victor of the varied power struggle of 1164.

Between Franks and Syrians

For a little more than two years Egypt experienced a comparatively peaceful time, until in the spring of 1167 Shirkuh was able to advance again with an army from Syria to Upper Egypt without a fight. The completely surprised court in Cairo only became aware of this train through a warning from the Franks. Shawar immediately called for help again from his ally King Amalrich, who moved with his army as far as Cairo. In the camp, Shawar was able to oblige him to stay in Egypt as long as the Syrian enemy was in the country by paying 400,000 gold dinars. However, the king insisted that this pact be confirmed by Caliph al-Adid, fully aware that he was the real ruler of Egypt. For the first time, an embassy of the “unbelieving” Franks, led by Hugo von Caesarea and the Knight Templar Gottfried Fulcherius, was granted an audience before a Fatimid caliph. The two ambassadors later reported in detail to the chronicler William of Tire about this meeting. They described the caliph as a young man whose first beard sprouted, his body was slim and dark in complexion, and his character was characterized by generosity. His name is "Elhadeth", son of the "Elfeis". After the caliph had sealed the alliance, the Christian knights were able to occupy the walls and towers of Cairo, which was not commented on by William of Tire without a touch of triumph. In the weeks that followed, Shawar and Amalrich fought eventful battles against Shirkuh all over Egypt. The Syrians could be expelled from Upper Egypt, but instead moved into Alexandria without a fight . After neither side could force a decision in their favor, Shirkuh accepted a withdrawal from Egypt, provided that Amalrich also left the country and undertook to never return. After Shawar had richly compensated both the Syrians and the Franks, they withdrew from Egypt in August 1167.

Nevertheless, Shawar continued to maintain an alliance with the Franks, who continued to be entrusted with the defense of Cairo after paying an agreed tribute. However, this policy aroused displeasure in the population and in the immediate followers of the vizier. After King Amalrich learned of the dwindling support of Shawar in Cairo, he invaded Egypt again in October 1168, this time with the intention of taking permanent land. In spite of all this, Shawar made further efforts in Cairo to achieve a compromise with the Franks, while al-Adid again tried to draw closer to the Syrian ruler Nur ad-Din Mahmud . He was severely reprimanded by his vizier because the Sunni Syrians represented a far greater danger than the Franks for the continued existence of the Shiite caliphate. In November 1168 the Franks, reinforced by crusaders from Europe, took up the siege of Cairo with the intention of conquering it in accordance with their vows. Only when the approach of the Syrian army under Shirkuh became known in the spring of 1169 did they withdraw from Egypt in January 1169 after paying a high tribute. But the Syrians were solemnly received as saviors by the people of Cairo.

End of the Fatimid Caliphate

The Fatimid Caliphate at various stages in its history. In the 12th century at the time of the last caliphs, it was territorially restricted to Egypt (blue here).

Caliph al-Adid himself courted Shirkuh and his nephew Saladin in his palace, while Vizier Shawar planned to get rid of them as quickly as possible through an assassination attempt during a banquet. But the Syrians got ahead of him and Saladin put the vizier in chains in the camp. Now Shawar was finally dropped by al-Adid, who had a sword with a death sentence carried into the camp, which was carried out on January 18, 1169. Two days later, Shirkuh was able to move into Cairo and accept al-Adid's appointment as the new vizier. Only two months later, the decrepit shirkuh died on March 23, 1169 and al-Adid appointed his nephew Saladin as the new vizier two days later.

Shirkuh and Saladin were not the first Sunnis to be entrusted with the vizier of the Shiite Fatimid caliphate. But they were the first that have stood in a foreign employment, as commanders of the Syrian ruler Nur ad-Din Mahmud from the Turk-born dynasty Zengids . The Zengids were the arch enemies of the Christian crusader states ; They justified their war against the "Franks" as a religious struggle ( jihād ) in favor of Islam . This struggle was also based on propaganda through a commitment to the Sunni caliphate of the Abbasids of Baghdad , as the only legitimate caliphate that had control over the entire Islamic religious community ( umma ) . From this point of view, the Fatimids were usurpers and, because of the Shiite doctrine of Ismaili they represented, apostates from Orthodox-Sunni Islam. The rise of his officers to viziers of the Fatimid caliphate therefore caused some irritation at Nur ad-Din Mahmud in Damascus and should mark the beginning of his estrangement from his Kurdish general Saladin, who from then on appeared as an independent actor in the power games of the Near East.

For several decades, the Fatimid vizier had been endowed with powers of perfection, in that the viziers, like kings, ruled over the territory of the caliphs. In fact, some viziers had previously acquired the Arab title of king (malik) , which Saladin now took as a model. The person of the caliph, on the other hand, had already degenerated into a mere puppet since the 11th century, who was formally at the head of the religious community only used for the purpose of legitimation, but hardly had any political authority itself. A condition that applied equally to the Fatimids in Cairo and the Abbasids in Baghdad. The caliph only had true authority for the followers of the Ismailis' religious doctrine, who, as their “chief” ( imām ) in direct descent from the Prophet Mohammed, was their spiritual leader and defined their religious dogmas. In the 12th century, however, the Ismailis were already divided into several factions, each of which had its own line of imams. Caliph al-Adid was only valid for the Ismailis ( Hafizites ) living in Egypt as a legal imam, whereby the community here represented only a dwindling minority compared to the Sunni Muslims and Coptic Christians . One of the reasons for this development was probably the fact that the acceptance of the Ismaili doctrine was based on a voluntary basis. With the exception of the reign of the caliph al-Hakim (996-1021), there were no forced conversions in favor of Ismaili in Egypt or in other regions of the Fatimid caliphate . The majority of the country's population remained Sunni throughout the Fatimid period, which is why the caliphs could hardly rely on the support of the broad masses, especially during the state collapse in the 12th century. The pillars of the Fatimid regime were the Armenian and Sudanese troop units, whose loyalty had to be bought with expensive monetary gifts.

When Saladin took over the vizier, he immediately sought to consolidate his personal rule in Egypt by favoring the troops he had brought with him from Syria and loyal to him, to which he diverted the wages drawn from the state treasury. In order to provide for his officers, he provided them with lucrative military fiefs (iqṭāʿ) Egypt, much to the annoyance of the old Fatimid officer ranks. In July 1169, Saladin eliminated the chief eunuch of the caliph because he had planned a conspiracy with the Franks against the vizier. As a result, the deprived of their benefices, the Fatimid regiments of the Sudanese and Armenians rose and fought heavy battles with the Syrians in the streets of Cairo and under the eyes of the caliph. Ultimately, Saladin's troops, led by his brother Turan Shah, emerged victorious from the battle and the last remnants of the defeated Fatimid army fled to Upper Egypt, where they were crushed over the next few weeks. The fighting in Egypt in the late year 1169 once again encouraged King Amalrich to invade the Nile Delta, who besieged the seaport Damiette there in league with a Byzantine fleet . But Saladin was able to supply the city from across the Nile, so that the besieged could hold out for almost two months. Instead, the Christians had to retreat in December 1169, starved and discouraged by continuous rains. Saladin had thus proven himself as a defender of Islamic Egypt and was able to increase his prestige among the population; In the following year he made the first attacks on the border castles of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. At the same time, he had the rest of his family members come from Syria, who took over the most important posts in the state in Egypt, which ultimately laid the foundation for the future rule of the Ayyubids .

Saladin was now powerful enough to purposefully cement the new supremacy of Sunnis in Egypt. He had teaching facilities ( madrasa ) set up in the suburbs of Cairo for the various schools of Sunni law, imitating the tried and tested model of the Seljuks and Zengids . Then in January 1171 he obtained the appointment of a Sunni in the office of chief judge (qāḍīʾl-quḍāt) for Egypt, while at the same time he ordered the cessation of the Ismaili teaching sessions that had been held in Cairo for two centuries and the deletion of the traditional Ismaili confession from the call to prayer. The powerless al-Adid could only watch the creeping dissolution of the caliphate of his dynasty from his palace, which had actually become a prison for him. On September 7, 1171, he held an audience for the last time, whereupon he was stricken with a severe fever and tied to the bed. On September 10, Saladin had the name of the Sunni Abbasid caliph al-Mustadi read out in the Friday sermon ( ḫuṭba ) , officially completing the change in rule over the believers in Egypt and ending the Fatimid caliphate in the 262nd year of its existence.

death

Whether al-Adid consciously lived to see the end of his dynasty remains unclear; on September 13, 1171, at the age of twenty, he succumbed to his fever. According to the Islamic calendar , this date was the tenth day of the month of Muharram , the holy day of Ashura for all Shiites , on which Imam Hussein was martyred near Karbala . According to a different tradition, the ex-caliph only died on September 15 as a result of a fit of anger in which he was provoked by the Turan Shah. In historical research, however, September 13th is assumed to be the more likely day of death. On the other hand, the allegations of later reports of a desperate caliph's suicide by means of poison, or even of his murder by strangling himself with his own turban, are denied any credibility.

Saladin arranged for al-Adid to be properly buried in accordance with Islamic rite, but his death was secretly hailed by the Sunni authors. The head of the new ruler's office, Imad ad-Din al-Isfahani , associated this above all with the end of heretical teachings in Egypt in favor of orthodox Sunniism, which has shaped the country since then to this day. In fact, Ismailism in Egypt only survived the fall of its caliphate for a few generations. The followers of their doctrine were persecuted under the Ayyubids and Mamluks until at the end of the 13th century only a few village communities in Upper Egypt professed Ismailism. As imams, they recognized the descendants of al-Adid ( Daoud , Suleiman ), the last of whom died in the Citadel of Cairo in 1248 . The Shia of the Hafizi Ismailis completely disappeared in Egypt during the 14th century and is now considered to be non-existent.

More than a hundred Fatimid princes were fed under princely arrest for several decades under the following dynasties. The last news from living princes comes from the reign of the Mamluk Sultan Baibars I (1260–1277), under whose rule the establishment of the Shiite Fatimids, Cairo, became the new residence of the Sunni Abbasids, after the city of Baghdad was destroyed by the Mongols in 1258 . For the next eight hundred years, however, the real rulers of Egypt were provided by dynasties of foreign origin. It was not until 1953 that General Muhammad Nagib , a native Egyptian of Arab descent, was to take power in the country again.

literature

• Heinz Halm , Caliphs and Assassins: Egypt and the Near East at the Time of the First Crusades 1074–1171. CH Beck, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-406-66163-1 .

sources

• William of Tire , “History of the deeds beyond the sea” (Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum). In: RHC, Historiens Occidentaux , Vol. 1 (1844), pp. 909-917.
• Abu'l-Fida , "A Brief History of Humanity" (Muḫtaṣar taʾrīḫ al-bašar). In: RHC, Historiens Orientaux, Vol. 1 (1872), pp. 33, 41.
• Ibn al-Athir , "The Perfect Chronicle" (Al-Kāmil fī ʾt-taʾrīḫ). In: RHC, Historiens Orientaux, Vol. 1 (1872), pp. 519-521, 527-529, 532-537, 547-551, 553-564, 568-570, 577-581.
• Ibn Challikan , "The Demise of Great Figures and the News of the Sons of Time" (Wafayāt al-aʿyān wa-Anbāʾ abnāʾ az-zamān). Edited by William Mac Guckin de Slane , Ibn Khallikan's biographical dictionary, Vol. 2 (1843), pp. 72-74.

Remarks

1. ↑ See Halm, p. 247.
2. ↑ See Halm, p. 263.
3. ↑ See Halm, p. 264 f.
4. ↑ See Halm, p. 266.
5. ↑ See Halm, p. 267 f.
6. ↑ See Wilhelm von Tire, p. 913.
7. ↑ See Halm, p. 271 f.
8. ↑ See Halm, pp. 273-276.
9. ↑ See Halm, p. 276 f.
10. ↑ See Halm, p. 278 f.
11. ↑ See Ibn al-Athir, p. 560.
12. ↑ See Halm, p. 280 f.
13. ↑ See Halm, p. 282 f.
14. ↑ See Halm, p. 285 f.
15. ↑ See Halm, p. 287.
16. ↑ See Halm, p. 288 ff.
17. ↑ See Halm, p. 289 f.
18. ↑ See Ibn al-Athir, p. 579 f; Abu'l-Fida, p. 41.
19. ↑ See Ibn Challikan, p. 74.
20. ↑ See Halm, p. 290.
21. ↑ See Halm, p. 291, note 188.
22. ↑ See Halm, p. 291.

predecessor	government office	successor
al-Fa'iz	Ruler of Egypt ( Fatimid dynasty ) 1160–1171	Saladin ( Ayyubid Dynasty )