al-Yazuri

Abu Muhammad al-Hassan ibn Ali ibn Abdarrahman al-Yazuri ( Arabic أبو محمد الحسن بن علي بن عبد الرحمن اليازوري, DMG Abū Muḥammad al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī b. ʿAbd ar-Raḥman al-Yāzūrī ; † March 18, 1058 ) was a vizier of the Fatimid caliph al-Mustansir in the 11th century.

Life

Al-Yazuri came from a Sunni judge family of the Hanafi law school in the Palestinian village of Yazur near ar-Ramla . He succeeded his father and an older brother in the office of village judge until he was removed from his post by the Fatimid governor. In order to pursue his reinstatement, he had moved to Cairo specifically to secure the support of Chief Justice al-Qasim. But after he did not grant him an audience and also refused entry to the Ismaili teaching sessions, al-Yazuri tried to win the favor of the courtiers and ministers through gifts. When he was able to buy into the allegiance of a Sudanese officer, he was promoted to the trust of the caliph mother Rasad , who made him administrator of her personal authority (dīwan wālidat al-ḫalīfa) in early 1048 . In this position he had become the rival of the incumbent vizier al-Jardjarai the Younger for his influence on the young caliph. The vizier tried to neutralize him through an intrigue by persuading the caliph to dismiss al-Qasim and appoint his intimate enemy as the new chief justice, with which al-Yazuri was promoted from the palace and thus from the caliph's surroundings in June 1049 . So he, who until then had only had the experience of a village judge, rose to the highest office of judge (qāḍī l-quḍāt) of the caliphate, which was also linked ex officio to that of the chief missionary (dāʿī d-duʿāt) of the Ismaili mission. The latter was usually filled with a devout Ismaili as soon as a Sunni acted as chief judge, but to the embarrassment of al-Yazuri, he was also charged with this office, which, as a Sunni, put him in the position of the Ismaili teaching sessions he was to lead Schia not to be able to participate in person, as only sworn believers had access to them. So he limited himself only pro forma to the office of chief missionary, which he actually placed in the hands of Ismaili deputies.

Regardless of his removal from the court, al-Yazuri could have maintained his position of trust in the mother caliph, who in March 1050 brought about the overthrow of the younger al-Jardjarai. And after his successor voluntarily resigned his post after just a few weeks, al-Yazuri was promoted to vizier and thus the actual regent of the caliphate on June 1 of the same year at the instigation of the Rasad, since caliph al-Mustansir remained incapacitated throughout his life. As the first vizier, al-Yazuri united the three most important civil state offices of the caliphate in one person, which gave him a previously unknown level of power.

One of the first measures taken by al-Yazuri was the granting of a license for the Bedouin tribes of the Banu Hilal and Banu Sulaim, who are nomadic in Egypt, to conquer Africa ( Ifrīqiya ) , where as early as 1049 the governor dynasty of the Zirids under al-Muizz az-Ziri von renounced the suzerainty of the Fatimids and placed himself under that of the Abbasids. By 1057 the Bedouins were able to conquer the province to a large extent with the capture of Kairouan and displace the renegade Zirids to a few fortresses on the Mediterranean coast, but the caliphate had actually lost this province, as the Bedouins did not feel bound by the instructions from Cairo . The most lasting consequence of this conquest was the process of Arabization of a large part of the originally Berber "West" ( al-maġrib ) , especially the present-day states of Tunisia and Algeria .

The main focus of the reign of al-Yazuri was, however, on the looming threat from the west of the migration of Turkish ethnic groups under the leadership of the Seljuks . In the upheavals it triggered, he recognized the opportunity for the unification of the Arab-Muslim world ( umma ) under the white banner of the Fatimids, through their takeover of power in Baghdad while at the same time eliminating their old rivals, the Abbasids , who had been under the protection of the Seljuks since 1055 . To counter their growing power, al-Yazuri held on to the traditional alliance with the Byzantine Empire , which was kept alive by the negotiating skills of his envoy in Constantinople , Muhammad al-Qudai (d. 1062). The Turkish renegade Arslan al-Basasiri , whom al-Yazuri contacted in the spring of 1056 through his intermediary al-Muayyad al-Shirazi (d. 1078) , offered himself as a military tool . Financed and equipped by Cairo, al-Basasiri raised an army of other Turkish militants and Arab Bedouins in the Jazira , with whom he was able to begin the confrontation with the Seljuks and inflict their first defeat at Sinjar on January 9, 1057. This success and the ensuing capture of the largest cities in Iraq, with the exception of Baghdad, was nullified in the same year by the bribe of the Seljuk Sultan, who thus induced the Bedouin clans to abandon the Fatimid cause and thus al-Basasiri to retreat from Iraq.

The setback in Iraq led to the rapid overthrow of al-Yazuri in Cairo, who was arrested and removed from office on February 28, 1058 in a coup by his own confidants. They accused him of high treason against the caliph by accusing him of a secret conspiracy with the Seljuks, which was probably based on unfounded accusations. On March 18, 1058, he was allegedly executed on the prison island of Tinnīs in Lake Manzala without the knowledge of the incapacitated caliph .

literature

• Heinz Halm : The Caliphs of Cairo. The Fatimids in Egypt 973-1074. CH Beck, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-48654-1 .
• Michael Brett: The Execution of al-Yāzūrī. In: Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta, Vol. 83 (1998), pp. 15-27.