Sitt al-Mulk

Sitt al-Mulk ( Arabic ست الملك, DMG Sitt al-Mulk  'Lady of the Empire'; * September / October 970 in al-Mansuriya ; † February 5, 1023 in Cairo ) was a member of the Fatimid dynasty and from 1021 to 1023 the regent of her caliphate .

Life

Early years

Sitt al-Mulk, whose personal name was not mentioned in history, was born in "Africa" ​​(Arabic Ifrīqiya , now Tunisia ) in September / October 970, probably in the royal seat of al-Mansuriya, as the daughter of Prince Nizar, who later became caliph al-Aziz . Her mother, the "Princess of Aziz" (sayyida al-ʿAzīzīya) , is unknown by name, but since she is often referred to as the "son's mother" (umm walad) , she may have borne a son to her father who probably died early is. The mother died in Cairo in 995 , the new seat of the Fatimids in Egypt , to which the court had moved in 973.

Sitt al-Mulk is said to have maintained a close relationship of trust with her father, the caliph al-Aziz, who has ruled since 975. At his instigation, a palace of her own was built in Cairo, which was guarded by a specially formed guard regiment, over whose authority she had sole authority. In relation to her father she obtained the pardon of the Christian vizier Isa ibn Nasturus, who had fallen out of favor around the year 990 . As is customary with the Fatimids, Sitt al-Mulk was never married as a female member of the dynasty, but she seems to have fallen in love with a cousin, a son of Prince Abdallah . When her father died in Bilbeis in 996 , she attempted a coup d'état to elevate her cousin to the throne of the Caliphate, but this plan was thwarted by the observant eunuch Bardjawan , who placed her under house arrest. In spite of all this, she continued to be influential and wealthy. The allowance she received for the year 999 alone amounted to 100,000 dinars, which guaranteed her independence and the maintenance of her own court.

In the first years of al-Hakim's autocracy from 1000 onwards, Sitt al-Mulk tried to establish an amicable relationship with her brother, to whom she was a confidante and a consultant who was often consulted. But from the year 1013 this relationship began to change after some of the princess's confidants fell into disgrace and her brother's sword for the first time. In the same year she took her nephew Prince Ali and his mother into her palace, allegedly after her brother's terror was also directed against her own harem, to which several concubines and children are said to have fallen victim. Apparently, Sitt al-Mulk became the head of an opposition movement at that time, which opposed the policy of accommodating her brother towards the Sunnis , his discrimination against Christians, the tolerance of heretical missionaries within the Ismaili Shia and the double succession regulation he had decreed, which did not the succession of his son in the caliphate and imamate, but that of two cousins.

Regency

On February 13, 1021, al-Hakim disappeared after a nocturnal horseback ride into the extensive surroundings of Cairo. And after his blood-soaked clothes were found, he was initially declared dead behind closed palace walls. Sitt al-Mulk immediately took over the reins by having her brother's alleged murderers executed. Then she succeeded her almost sixteen-year-old nephew Prince Ali, who had lived in her care for eight years. She compelled Prince Abbas , who was designated for the Imamate, to give up his claims "with the sword over her head", and Prince Abdarrahim , who was intended for the caliphate, had her captured in Damascus and later killed in prison. The sermon to sacrifice festival on March 27, 1021 was held still in the name of al-Hakim, but the same in the afternoon the day was publicly announced his death and Prince Ali under the ruler up close "appears to increase the religion of God" (Ali az-Zahir li-ʾIʿzāz Dīn Alāh) enthroned as the new caliph. Shortly afterwards, Sitt al-Mulk also had the Kutama Berber Ibn Dawwas, who was intended for the office of vizier, executed, whom she accused of having been the leading man behind the murder of her brother. In fact, however, some contemporary observers such as the judge al-Qudai (d. 1062) suspected the princess herself, who, fearing for her own life, decided to launch a coup d'état by eliminating her brother. The pros and cons of this suspicion remained a much-discussed aspect of her biography. In any case, in the weeks after taking power, she had any opponents eliminated until her reign in the name of her nephew was undisputed.

The policy of the regent Sitt al-Mulk was in the spirit of revising her brother's rule by withdrawing his seemingly puritanical moral laws, ending the discrimination he pursued against Christians, and renewing the supremacy of the Ismaili Shia while rejecting the Sunnah in the Fatimid state. All in all, she tied in with the politics of her forefathers, for which she won the praise of contemporary commentators. The measures taken by her include the beginning persecution of the adherents of the religion of uniqueness, who became known as the " Druze ", whose teachings had competed with the Ismaili in recent years with the tacit tolerance of al-Hakim and therefore now considered heretical has been classified. The mission of the Druze doctrine was quickly stopped in Cairo, so that it had to regroup in the underground in Alexandria . Later on, their relatively small following emigrated from Egypt to the mountains of Lebanon , where they could continue to exist largely undisturbed by the government in Cairo.

Another central concern of the Sitt al-Mulk was the resumption of diplomatic relations with the Byzantine Empire . Since the Fatimid annexation of Aleppo in 1015, which was previously a Byzantine vassal principality, contacts with Constantinople had been broken off and trade between the empires interrupted. Since the summer of 1021, Emperor Basil II was back in Asia Minor with his army, which is why a military confrontation with him threatened. In the meantime, however, the emperor devoted himself to fighting the Georgian King Giorgi I , who was to be neutralized as a potential Fatimid ally. After the emperor's first victory over the Georgian, Sitt al-Mulk sent a delegation to his camp in Trapezunz in autumn 1021 , and entrusted the leadership to the patriarch Nikephoros of Jerusalem . A component of the Byzantine-Fatimid settlement to be negotiated should be the reconstruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, as promised by Sitt al-Mulk . The negotiations with Byzantium dragged on after the regent's death, but as a result they resulted in an extension of the armistice between the two great powers that had existed since 1001 for another quarter of a century.

According to the contemporary observer al-Musabbihi (d. 1029), Sitt al-Mulk had largely lost her power in 1022 to a scheming clique of new court officials around their secretary al-Jardjarai . She died of diarrhea on February 5, 1023 at the age of fifty-two .

literature

Overview works:

• Delia Cortese, Simonetta Calderini: Women and the Fatimids in the World of Islam. Edinburgh University Press 2006.
• Heinz Halm : The Caliphs of Cairo. The Fatimids in Egypt 973-1074. CH Beck, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-48654-1 .
• Yaacov Lev: State & Society in Fatimid Egypt. Leiden 1991.
• Fatima Mernissi : women rulers under the crescent moon. The repressed power of women in Islam. (= Herder spectrum. 5478). Herder, Freiburg (Breisgau) a. a. 2004, ISBN 3-451-05478-7 .

Special literature:

• Heinz Halm: Le destin de la princesse Sitt al-Mulk. In: Marianne Barrucand (ed.), L'Égypte fatimide, son art et son histoire. Paris 1999, pp. 69-72.
• 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: The Fatimid Princess Sitt al-Mulk. In: Journal of Semitic Studies, Vol. 32 (1987), pp. 319-328.
• Yaacov Lev: The Fatimids and Byzantium, 10th – 12th Centuries. In: Graeco-Arabica, Vol. 6 (1995), pp. 190-208.
• Maria Rustow: A petition to a woman at the Fatimid court (413-414 ah / 1022-23 ce). In: Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Vol. 73 (2010), pp. 1-27.
• Paul E. Walker: The Fatimid Caliph al-Aziz and his daughter Sitt al-Mulk: a case of delayed but eventual succession to rule by a woman. In: Journal of Persianate Studies, Vol. 4 (2011), pp. 30-44.

Fiction:

• Johanna Awad-Geissler : The shadow caliph. Droemer, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-426-19763-9 .

Remarks

1. ↑ Sitt is the vulgar Arabic form for sayyidat .
2. ^ See Lev (1987), p. 320.
3. ↑ See Halm (2015), p. 100; Cortese / Calderini, p. 95 f. Sitt al-Mulk is often referred to as the full sister of al-Hakim, since the chronicler Yahya al-Antaki incorrectly describes her as the niece of the Christian dignitaries Orestes and Arsenios . The Christian Melkite mother of al-Hakim, who was fifteen years younger than him, was only accepted into the harem after the court moved to Cairo. In addition, she was still alive in 1008/09. See Halm (2003), p. 221.
4. ↑ See Lev (1987), p. 320; Halm (2003), p. 128.
5. ↑ See Lev (1987), p. 321; Halm (2003), p. 168.
6. ↑ See Lev (1987), p. 322; Halm (2003), p. 183.
7. ↑ See Cortese / Calderini, p. 123.
8. ↑ See Lev (1987), p. 323.
9. ↑ See Halm (2003), p. 308.
10. ↑ See Lev (1987), p. 325; Halm (2003), p. 307.
11. ↑ See Lev (1987), p. 323 ff; Halm (2003), pp. 299-302.
12. ↑ See Halm (2003), p. 309.
13. ↑ See Lev (1987), p. 327.
14. ↑ See Lev (1987), p. 328.
15. ↑ See Halm (2003), p. 311. The presumption of poisoning made by Rustow (p. 11) lacks confirmation in the traditions.