Nizār ibn al-Mustansir

Abū l-Mansūr Nizār ibn al-Mustansir ( Arabic أبو منصور نزار بن المستنصر, DMG Abū l-Manṣūr Nizār ibn al-Mustanṣir ; * September 26, 1045 ; † 1095 ) was a prince of the Ismaili-Shiite Fatimid dynasty in Egypt . As the eldest son of the eighteenth imam and eighth caliph al-Mustansir († 1094), he had been passed over in the line of succession, which led to a split in the Ismaili Shia. His followers ( šīʿa ) , the Nizarites , which still exist today , recognize him as the rightful nineteenth imam and continue a line of imams descended from him.

biography

Nizar was the eldest of at least ten sons of the Imam Caliph al-Mustansir, of whom at least four were of adult age when he died in December 1094. In addition to the forty-nine year old Nizar, there were Abdallah, Ismail and Ahmad, the latter of whom was only about twenty years old. In the same year as the caliph, his powerful vizier Badr al-Jamali died , whose successor was his son al-Afdal Shahanshah (X 1121), who had previously been in charge of government affairs for some time. Up until then, Nizar and the al-Afdal's family had cultivated a mutual hostility, since they kept the prince away from government affairs and from his father. Conversely, he is said to have mocked the viziers because of their Armenian descent.

The death of the caliph was the first to become known to the new vizier, who immediately grasped the situation, brought the young prince Ahmad to the throne room of Cairo, put him on the throne and named him "the exalted by God" ( al -Mustaʿli billāh ) proclaimed. Thereupon the three older princes were called into the throne room, where the vizier announced to them that their brother was the successor designated by the father, who had been proclaimed caliph following this designation and was now awaiting their homage. All three princes initially refused and Nizar pointed out that his father had once confirmed the designation (naṣṣ) for the successor in writing. The expression of will of an imam corresponds to a religious dogma and should have been implemented by his Shia. Nizar fled the palace to Alexandria under the pretext of wanting to get the document from his rooms . The local governor Alptegin, who is a Turk by origin, confessed to him and called him caliph with the name “the one chosen for God's religion” (al-Muṣṭafā li-Dīn Allaah) . Under this ruler's name, Nizar had his own gold dinar struck in Alexandria to promote his caliphate for propaganda purposes. As early as February 1095, al-Afdal, who had meanwhile eliminated all opposition in Cairo, moved with army against Alexandria. But Nizar was able to repel the attack, gain control of the Nile Delta and march to Cairo himself. In an open field battle, al-Afdal was victorious and Nizar had to retreat to Alexandria with the remains of his army. After the city was starved after a blockade, Nizar and Alptekin had to surrender to the vizier in October 1095 after an assurance of a security guarantee. Despite the guarantee, Alptegin was executed and Nizar was walled up in a dungeon.

Although the succession battle was decided relatively quickly, it had far-reaching consequences for the Ismaili Shia. Outside Egypt, Nizar had a charismatic and determined follower in the missionary ( dāʿī ) of the Persian followers Hassan-i Sabbah . He had been convinced of the existence of the designation in his favor and had been able to convince the entire Persian and a large part of the Syrian Ismaili Shia of it. This newly formed Shia had given up their allegiance to the Imam Caliph enthroned by al-Afdal and recognized Nizar as the rightful Imam instead.

progeny

According to the historiographical canon of the Nizaritic Ismailis, the three imams of their Shia immediately following Nizar ( Ali al-Hādī ; Muhammad al-Muhtadī ; Hassan al-Qāhir ) lived in secrecy ( ġaiba ) . The 23rd Imam Hassan II, who emerged from it in 1164 in Alamut , is said to have been Nizar's great-great-grandson. Even by medieval contemporaries, especially from the ranks of the Sunna, this lineage was rejected as a construct of lies, and modern historical research also tends to classify it as fiction.

Regardless of the genealogical credibility of the imam lineage, which continues to this day, one of Nizar's descendants has also come down from contemporary narrative sources. The son Hussein (Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥusain ibn Nizār) managed to escape to the Maghreb at the end of the father in 1095. In the turmoil after the assassination of the caliph al-Amir , he attempted to take power in Cairo in 1131/32. But he was betrayed by his followers to al-Hafiz , who had meanwhile been established as the caliph, and who had him executed in prison. In 1161 a son of Hussein, Muhammad al-Mustansir (Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥusain ibn Nizār al-Mustanṣir) , also attempted an overthrow from the Maghreb, but soon after his landing near Alexandria he too was caught by the rulers of the ruling vizier Ruzzik captured and then strangled in Cairo.

Apparently descendants of Nizar also fled to the east. When the vizier Ibn al-Bataihi fell out of favor with Caliph al-Amir in Cairo in 1125 , he was awarded a coinage commissioned in Yemen in the name of an "chosen Imam Muhammad, son of Nizar" (al-imām al-muḫtār Muḥammad ibn Nizār) was charged . Perhaps this was identical with the hidden 21st Imam Muhammad al-Muhtadī , who is said to have been a grandson and not a son of Nizare.

literature

• Farhad Daftary : The Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines. Cambridge University Press, 1990. pp. 241-243.
• Farhad Daftary : Brief History of the Ismailis. Traditions of a Muslim Community (=  culture, law and politics in Muslim societies . Volume 4 ). Ergon, Würzburg 2003, ISBN 3-89913-292-0 (English: A Short History of the Ismailis . Translated by Kurt Maier).
• HAR Gibb : Nizār b. al-Mustanṣir. W: CE Bosworth , E. Van Donzel, WP Heinrichs, G. Lecomte: The Encyclopaedia of Islam . New Edition. Volume VIII. Leiden: EJ Brill, 1995, p. 83. ISBN 90-04-09834-8 .
• Heinz Halm : Caliphs and Assassins. Egypt and the Middle East at the time of the First Crusades 1074–1171. Munich: CH Beck, 2014. pp. 87-91.
• Paul E. Walker and Paul Walker: Succession to Rule in the Shiite Caliphate, in: Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, Vol. 32 (1995), pp. 239-264.

Web links

• AL-NIZAR (487-490 / 1095-1097)

References and footnotes

1. ↑ See Daftary (2nd edition 2007), p. 364.
2. ↑ See Halm, p. 261.
3. ↑ See Walker, pp. 255 f.
4. ↑ See Walker, p. 256.

predecessor	Office	successor
al-Mustansir	19. Imam of the Nizari Ismailis	Hādī

Nizār ibn al-Mustansir (alternative names of the lemma)
Nizār; Nizar bin al-Mustansir