Maria (concubine of al-Aziz)

Maria is the adopted name of a concubine of the Fatimid caliph al-Aziz (d. 996), who gave birth to the subsequent caliph al-Hakim (d. 1021). She was a member of the Melkite (Greek Orthodox) Church of Egypt .

The mother of al-Hakim was probably only accepted as a concubine (ǧāriya) in their harem after the Fatimid court had moved to Cairo in 973 . On August 18, 985 she gave birth to the Caliph al-Aziz, Prince Mansur, who later became Caliph al-Hakim. Tracing back to an inaccurate comment by the chronicler Yahya al-Antaki , she is often referred to as the mother of Princess Sitt al-Mulk (d. 1023), who was born in "Africa" ( Ifrīqiya ) in 970 and whose mother died in 995. As the “mother of a son” (umm walad) , she is likely to have risen in the hierarchy of the harem and achieved the position of a favorite with the caliph. Building on the influence thus gained, she was able to promote the rise of her own family to higher positions. In 986 her brother Orestes was appointed the new patriarch of the Orthodox Church of Jerusalem on the instructions of the caliph , and after her son was able to take over the autocracy in 1000, he ordered the appointment of her second brother Arsenios as patriarch of Alexandria . Al-Hakim's mother was still alive in 1008/09 when he ordered the confiscation of all estates and foundations of the Christian churches, including those belonging to his mother's property.

The monk Rodulfus Glaber (died around 1040), who wrote in distant France, attributed the merit of the rebuilding of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, which had been destroyed by her son , to the “all Christian mother” (mulier christianissima) of the “Prince of Babylon” (principem Babilonis) to have. However, this news is considered untrustworthy, as this credit goes to her stepdaughter, the Sitt al-Mulk. Glaber is also the only medieval author who mentioned the personal name of the caliph's mother (Maria) , although here too there are doubts about the correctness of this information. The name is not mentioned in the works of the geographically closer authors such as al-Musabbihi (d. 1029), Yahya al-Antaki (d. 1065), or that of the Coptic patriarchal history .

literature

• Delia Cortese, Simonetta Calderini: Women and the Fatimids in the World of Islam. Edinburgh University Press 2006.
• Heinz Halm : The Caliphs of Cairo. CH Beck, Munich 2003. ISBN 3-406-48654-1
• Heinz Halm: princes, princesses, concubines and eunuchs at the Fatimid court. In: Maurice A. Pomerantz, Aram A. Shahin (Eds.), The Heritae of Arabo-Islamic Learning. Studies Presented to Wadad Kadi. BRILL, Leiden / Boston 2015, pp. 91–110.

Remarks

1. ↑ See Halm (2015), p. 100; Cortese / Calderini, p. 95 f.
2. ↑ See Halm (2003), p. 219 f.
3. ↑ See Halm (2003), p. 221.
4. ↑ See Glabri Rodulphi cluniacensis monachi historiarum sui temporis. In: RHGF 10, p. 35.