al-Hafiz

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Abu'l-Maimun Abd al-Majid ibn Muhammad ( Arabic ابو ميمون عبد المجيد بن محمد, DMG Abūʾl-Maimūn ʿAbd al-Maǧīd ibn Muḥammad ; * September 1074 in Ashkelon ; † October 10, 1149 in Cairo ) was under the ruler name al-Hafiz li-din Allah ( Arabic الحافظ لدين الله, DMG al-Ḥāfiẓ li-dīn Allāh ) the eleventh caliph of the Fatimids (1130–1149) and the twenty-first imam of the Shia of the Hafizi Ismailis .

Life

As a prince, Abd al-Majid is said to have already been involved in the attack against the ruling vizier al-Afdal Shahanshah in 1121, unless he was murdered by the Nizari Ismailites (aka " Assassins ") according to the official version .

After the murder of his cousin, Caliph al-Amir , on October 7, 1130, Abd al-Majid assumed the nominal reign over the Fatimid caliphate, probably for the underage son of his cousin Abu l-Qasim at-Tayyib . However, the military commanders fought over actual rule, and on October 21, 1130, Abd al- Majid was forced to appoint Abu Ali Ahmad "Kutaifat" as vizier, who was a son of al-Afdal and despised the caliph's family. He immediately locked Abd al-Madschid in a dungeon and the vizier was probably also responsible for the disappearance of little at-Tayyib at the same time. In fact, the Fatimid Caliphate has been without a caliph since then. On December 8, 1131, Kutifat fell victim to a conspiracy of loyal followers of the dynasty. On the same day, Abd al-Majid was freed from his prison by the conspirators and reinstated as regent. Probably after the disappeared at-Tayyib was declared dead, the regent was proclaimed the new caliph and imam of the Mustali Ismailis on January 23, 1132 under the ruler name al-Ḥāfiẓ li-dīn Allāh ("the keeper of God's religion") , which ended the interregnum, which lasted more than a year.

The caliphate of al-Hafiz was built on weak foundations from the start. He is the first caliph and imam who did not immediately succeed his father. His assumption of office was legitimized by a designation (naṣṣ) allegedly issued by al-Amir in his favor, who had designated his cousin as his successor, just as the Prophet Mohammed once designated his cousin Ali with the leadership of the faithful. The designation of al-Hafiz was only recognized by the Ismailis in Egypt , as well as in Aden and Sanaa . Those in the Yemeni highlands and in India, however, recognized the disappeared at-Tayyib as their rightful Imam, who was raptured into secrecy and whose return has been expected of them ever since. After the division of the Ismailis into the branches of the Nizari-Ismailis and Mustali-Ismailis, which occurred in 1094, the latter were now split into the branches of the Tayyibi-Ismailis and Hafizi-Ismailis.

Following on from the policy of al-Amir, al-Hafiz sought to exercise personal rule without a vizier. In the late year 1132 he was able to eliminate the pretender Hussein, a son of Prince Nizar, who had been passed over from the Maghreb in 1094 . But in 1134 his eldest son and designated heir Suleiman died, whereupon he appointed his second son Haidara as heir to the throne. The third son successfully rebelled against this decision, Hassan, who was able to bring Cairo under his control and force his father to appoint him as the new heir to the throne. But Prince Hassan quickly made himself unpopular with the army because of his brutal regime. In the spring of 1135, the revolting soldiers forced al-Hafiz to hand his son the cup of poison. He also had to appoint the army officer Bahram as the new vizier, a Christian Armenian who favored Christians and Armenian compatriots in his regime, which is why a Muslim opposition quickly formed, which plunged the country into another civil war. In February 1137 Bahram had to give up his office and leave Cairo, whereupon al-Hafiz had to appoint the leader of the opposition Ridwan as the new vizier. He then led a Muslim reaction against Christians and Jews who were deprived of previously granted rights and who were obliged to wear outward symbols as a mark of their faith. Ridwan was a Sunni and sought to strengthen the Sunni creed in Shiite-Ismaili Egypt. He even intended to overturn the Fatimid caliphate, but failed because of al-Hafiz and the Ismaili clergy, which is still influential in Cairo. On May 31, 1139, the vizier undertook a coup d'etat in which he wanted to replace al-Hafiz with one of his sons on the throne of the caliphate. But the court remained loyal to al-Hafiz, who executed the apostate son and removed Ridwan from his office.

For the last ten years of his life, al-Hafiz was now able to exercise direct rule without a vizier. He freed himself from the influence of the powerful army officers by assigning ministerial posts only to trained specialists, often including Christians and Jews. However, he did not succeed in bringing peace to Egypt, which is why the caliph had to forego any foreign policy engagement with the exception of a friendly rapprochement with King Roger II of Sicily . In 1144 an uncle of the caliph carried out an unsuccessful coup and in 1146 the army commander revolted in Upper Egypt. In May 1148, Ridwan, who had been imprisoned for years, managed to escape after digging an escape tunnel out of his dungeon, which could only be defeated by bribing his supporters after days of fighting in Cairo. In June 1148 al-Hafiz again had to fight a descendant of Nizar who had been brought up with an army from the Maghreb. This too could only be brought down by an expensive bribe of his followers.

The ongoing anarchy in the country was compounded by a prolonged period of drought. The water level of the Nile sank continuously during the time of al-Hafiz until it unexpectedly reached the record level of 19 cubits and 4 fingers in 1148, so that it overflowed the banks and reached the city walls of Cairo. Al-Hafiz died on October 10, 1149 at the age of seventy-four. After his death, Egypt finally sank into anarchy, which could only be ended when the Sunni Sultan Saladin came to power in 1171.

Sons

  • Suleiman († 1134).
  • Haidara († before 1149).
  • Hassan († 1135).
  • Yusuf († 1154).
  • Jibril († 1154).
  • Abu'l-Mansur Ismail (* 1132, † 1154), twelfth caliph of the Fatimids under the name of az-Zafir .

literature

  • Farhad Daftary : Historical Dictionary of the Ismailis (Historical Dictionaries of Peoples and Cultures). Rowman & Littlefield 2011 ( books.google.de )
  • 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 .
  • Samuel M. Stern: The succession to the Fatimid Imam al-Amir, the claims of the later Fatimids to Imamate, and the rise of Ṭayyibī Ismailism . In: Oriens , Volume 4, 1951, pp. 193-255.
  • Paul E. Walker, Paul Walker: Succession to Rule in Schiite Caliphate. In: Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt , Volume 32 (1995), pp. 239-264.

source

  • Ibn Challikan : "The Death of Eminent Personalities and the News of the Sons of Time" (Wafayāt al-aʿyān wa-Anbāʾ abnāʾ az-zamān) , ed. by William Mac Guckin de Slane : Ibn Khallikan's biographical dictionary , Volume 2, 1843, pp. 179-181.

Remarks

  1. See Walker, p. 262; Halm, p. 222.
  2. See Halm, p. 141.
  3. See Halm, p. 182; Walker, p. 260 f.
  4. See Walker, p. 262.
  5. See Walker, pp. 258 f.
  6. See Halm, pp. 183-186.
  7. See Walker, p. 255.
  8. See Halm, p. 187; Walker, p. 263.
  9. See Halm, pp. 189, 193 f.
  10. See Halm, pp. 195-198.
  11. See Halm, p. 218 ff.
  12. See Walker, p. 256.
  13. See Halm, p. 222.
predecessor Office successor
al-Amir Ruler of Egypt ( Fatimid Dynasty )
1130–1149
az-Zafir