Rasad (concubine of az-Zahir)

Rasad ( Arabic رصد, DMG Raṣad  'Talisman') was a concubine (ǧihāt) of the Fatimid caliph az-Zahir (d. 1036) and mother of his successor al-Mustansir (d. 1094).

Life

Rasad is described by Ibn Muyassar (d. 1278) as a "black" (sūdān) slave who was first sold from her Nubian homeland to the Jewish merchant Abu Sad Sahl ibn Harun at-Tustari in Egypt . In Cairo, this was one of the palace's purveyors to the court, who had apparently given them to Caliph az-Zahir to promote his business relationships. On July 2, 1029, she became the mother of the only known child of the Caliph, Prince Maadd, who later became Caliph al-Mustansir. The rank as "son mother" (umm walad) helped her to influence the court and after the death of az-Zahir in 1036 to the status of a freedman. She had made her former owner her closest confidante and administrator of her private household (dīwān wālidat al-ḫalīfa) .

After the death of the vizier al-Jardjarai in March 1045, the court party formed around Rasad took over the government of the caliphate, with Sahl at-Tustari and his brother Abu Nasr Ibrahim acting in the background and with the Jew Sadaqa ibn Yusuf al- Falahi as executive puppet on the post of vizier. The balance sheet of the triumvirate turned out to be particularly successful in its fiscal policy, but intrigues among each other led to its early end. Sahl at-Tustari fell victim to an attack by Turkish guardsmen on October 25, 1047, which was orchestrated by Vizier al-Falahi. He, in turn, was deposed and executed at the instigation of the Rasad in June 1048. The next vizier, a nephew of al-Jardjarai, tried to completely oust the party of the caliph's mother by executing her last confidante Ibrahim at-Tustari. But in the Palestinian al-Yazuri , another favorite of the Rasad had achieved a rapid rise at court, who was installed in this office on June 1, 1050 at their instigation after the removal of the old vizier.

For the next eight years the state was effectively ruled by al-Yazuri and the Rasad, while Caliph al-Mustansir himself was never involved in the affairs of the state in any way. A special concern of the Rasad was the purchase of Sudanese "merchant slaves" (ʿabīd aš-širāʾ) from their homeland, who were to displace the Turkish associations in the Fatimid army in the foreseeable future, as they were considered to be less loyal to them. However, it had also promoted a competitive situation in the army, which soon after the overthrow of al-Yazuri in February 1058 erupted in a prolonged civil war between the troops that led to the collapse of the Fatimid caliphate. When the Turkish general Ibn Hamdan, victorious against the Sudanese, was able to take power in Cairo in April / May 1072 and imprisoned al-Mustansir in his orphaned palace, Rasad and other family members had already fled the city by that time. Most of the princes, including al-Mustansir's sons, have taken refuge in the fortified seaports of the Levant . Rasad is said to have obtained exile in Baghdad , of all places, at the court of the Abbasid caliph, where she died at an unknown time.

literature

• Delia Cortese, Simonetta Calderini: Women and the Fatimids in the World of Islam. Edinburgh University Press 2006.
• Simonetta Calderini: Sayyida Rasad: a Royal Women as Gateway to Power during the Fatimid Era. In: Urbain Vermeulen, K. D'Hulster (ed.), Egypt and Syria in the Fatimid, Ayyubid and Mamluk eras, Vol. 5 (2007), pp. 27-36.
• Walter Joseph Fischel: Jews in the Economic and Social History of Medieval Islam. London 1937, pp. 68-89.
• Heinz Halm : The Caliphs of Cairo. The Fatimids in Egypt 973-1074. 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.
• Yaacov Lev: Army, Regime, and Society in Fatimid Egypt, 358-487 / 968-1094. In: International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 19 (1987), pp. 337-365.