Tamim ibn al-Muizz

Abu Ali Tamim ibn al-Muizz ( Arabic أبو علي تميم بن المعز, DMG Abū ʿAlī Tamīm ibn al-Muʿizz ; * 948 or 949 in Mahdia ; † between 984 and 986 in Cairo ), also known as Tamim al-Fatimid , was a prince (amīr) of the Arab dynasty of the Fatimids and the eldest of four sons of Caliph al-Muizz .

As the eldest son of the ruling caliph, Tamim was viewed by many members of the courtly circle of the Fatimids in al-Mansuriya in Africa as the most promising candidate to succeed his father as caliph and imam of the Shia of the Ismailis , especially since all four previously incumbent imam caliphs from this dynasty were the eldest sons of their fathers. However , according to Islamic legal understanding, there was no regulation of any kind of succession to the throne that would have provided for an explicit primogeniture . It was up to the owner of the imamate to decide to which of his sons the salvific and indivisible charisma ( baraka ) was passed on, who is then to be named as successor by designation (naṣṣ) . During the preparations for the move of the court to the Egyptian al-Qahira (Cairo) , Caliph al-Muizz designated his second son, Prince Abdallah , as his successor to the surprise of his confidants around 971 . After the death of Prince Abdallah and the Caliph in Cairo in December 975, the third Prince Nizar was paid homage to the third Prince Nizar as the new Caliph under the name of al-Aziz .

The reason given for Prince Tamim's bypassing his father's too often shown proximity to disloyal circles from broader relatives of the Fatimid dynasty was given. The fact that he had no sons of his own, who could have guaranteed the linear inheritance of the Imamate, also spoke against him.

Detached from dynastic obligations - Fatimid princes were not used in state or military service - Prince Tamim was able to pursue a secular lifestyle and was best known as a connoisseur and promoter of poetry. His entourage, consisting of poets and writers, helped the Fatimid court to achieve intellectual and artistic splendor and contributed to Cairo's reputation as a new cultural center in the Arab world in competition with Baghdad . Tamim himself worked as a poet; a collection (dīwān) of poems written by him has survived, in which he praised love, joie de vivre and the art of horticulture, among other things. But he also used his talent to praise the Ismaili teaching and its imams, especially his father al-Muizz and his brother al-Aziz. Apparently, Tamim had come to terms with the loss of the throne in old age and was able to establish a relationship of trust with his brother al-Aziz. After he died between 984 and 986, he was buried in the mausoleum of the Fatimids in Cairo; his body was washed by the Kadi an-Nu'man and the funeral prayer was said by al-Aziz.

In later centuries, some Egyptian scholars claimed that the historian al-Maqrizi was a descendant of the Fatimids, with Prince Tamim as the connecting genealogical link. However, since Tamim had no offspring of his own, this claim is untrustworthy. Al-Maqrizi himself had not commented on his ancestry in his work.

literature

• Farhad Daftary , Ismaili Literature: A Bibliography of Sources and Studies. London 2004.
• Farhad Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines. 2nd edition, London 2007.
• Heinz Halm , The Empire of the Mahdi. The rise of the Fatimids 875–973. CH Beck, Munich 1991.
• 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.
• Paul E. Walker, Al-Maqrīzī and the Fatimids. In: Mamluk Studies Review, Vol. 7 (2003), pp. 83-97.

source

• Ibn Challikan : "The Death of Eminent Personalities and the News of the Sons of Time" (Wafayāt al-aʿyān wa-Anbāʾ abnāʾ az-zamān) , ed. by William Mac Guckin de Slane : Ibn Khallikan's biographical dictionary, Vol. 1 (1942), pp. 279 ff.

Remarks

1. ↑ See Halm (1991), p. 308 f.
2. ↑ See Halm (1991), p. 370; Walker (1995), p. 246.
3. ↑ See Daftary (2007), p. 172 f.
4. ↑ See Walker (2003), p. 87.
5. ↑ See Daftary (2004), p. 157.
6. ↑ See Walker (2003), pp. 85 ff.