Download PDF | Kirsten Thomson - Politics And Power in Late Fāṭimid Egypt_ The Reign of Caliph al-Mustanṣir-I.B. TAURIS (2016).
250 Pages
INTRODUCTION
AL-MUSTANȘIR BI'LLAH - THE STATE OF THE FIELD
Whatever else he may be accused of, al-Mustanşir bi'llah could never be called well-known in the modern world. In Cairo the average inhabitant has never heard of him; in the West he is practically unheard of. Furthermore, his entire dynasty has failed to win recognition on the scale as that given to the Ottomans or Mamluks. Whilst scholarship on the subject continues to expand, the Fāțimids remain a specialised subject, with al-Mustanşir himself attracting only a very small proportion of that attention.
This obscurity shrouding the Fäțimids lies in part in the destruction of the dynasty's physical and spiritual legacy. When the last caliph al-'Adid died in 1171, the then wazir Saladin deliberately erased evidence of this Shi'ite rule; the Fäțimid library's contents were emptied and destroyed as Egypt returned to the Sunni fold. Of the Fatimid palace city of Cairo, little remains beyond al-Hakim's mosque and the three Bäbs of Naşr, Futūh and Zuwayla Bayn al-Qasrayn, where al-Mustanşir angrily burned 'Abbasid robes, is now just a rubbish-strewn, pot-holed lane. As the visible marks of the Fäțimid era disappeared, the dynasty's Ismā'īlī religion also entered a long period of secrecy. Following the collapse of Fäțimid rule, the Ismā'īlīs went underground. Since they also kept hidden most Ismā'īlī literature, many sources that dealt with the Fäțimids were lost outside a few private collections. Those sources available until the nineteenth century were almost miformly hostile towards the Ismä'īlīs, misleading the first European works on the group. Indeed, it was not until the late nineteenth century that the balance began to be redressed and wider possibilities for research on the Ismailis and the Fäțimids arose.
The cause of this change was the appearance of some original Ismā'īli texts in Paris, finally offering a non-hostile perspective and authoritative information from within the group. Earlier works by historians such as Silvestre de Sacy were thus seen to be inaccurate. On the other hand, the collection was fairly small and major misconceptions remained in studies published on the Ismä'īlīs and Fatimids. DeLacy O'Leary's A Short History of the Fatimid Khalifate is a case in point. Published in 1923, it is clearly based on few sources; whilst some statements are a precursor to modern research, others are wildly inaccurate. For example, al- Mustanşir's pleasure-loving father al-Zahir is described as burning 3,000 dancing girls in a mosque, the outrageousness of the claim an indication of Sunni hostility. Fortunately the 1930s saw a much greater number of Isma'īlī texts become available; studies in the area were also given a major boost by Ismā'īlī scholars who used sources in their own private collections to further research. Texts preserved by Ismä'īlī communities in Central Asia, India and Yemen were released.
This continuing progress was tracked by W. Ivanow, who in 1933 published his A Guide to Ismärir Literature; updated in 1963, it was then superseded in 1977 by I.K. Poonawala's Biobibliography of Ismaili Literature. By the 1970s Poonawala could list over 1,300 relevant titles and more than 200 authors; however, not all of these were published texts and many still remain in manuscript form within collections. Meanwhile, the growth of study between Ivanow's first compilation and Poonawala's lists reflect the increasing attention paid to Ismā'īlī research from the 1930s.
The list of eminent scholars in the field also widened, including A.A.A. Fyzee, H.F. al-Hamdani (one of the very few scholars to produce work specific to al-Mustansir), C. Cahen and M. Canard. From another angle, Fäțimid history received another boost from the publication of S.D. Goitein's comprehensive A Mediterranean History, detailing the lives of Fäţimid. Jews from the Cairo Genize papers. 10 Work on the Geniza continues to complement specifically Ismä'īlī research when examining the Fatimid dynasty." Following Poonawala's 1977 publication, scholars of the Ismailis have had enough evidence to research both the group and the Fäțimids in considerable detail. Farhad Daftary's The Ismä ilis offered ground- breaking research on an exhaustive scale of the group's history, naturally involving the Fäțimids.
Scholars such as Lev, Halm, Brett" and Daftary himself have built further on these foundations; from the 1970s onwards narrower remits on the Fäţimids were possible, with Sanders concentrating primarily on the dynasty's ceremonial aspects,17 Lev on its military and Bierman on Fäțimid texts." At the time of writing, new Fäțimid work includes research on al-Mustanşir's chief dā'ī al-Shīrāzī and the Ismaili Qadī al-Qasim b. Abd al-Aziz b. Muhammad b. al-Nu'man.
Clearly, the amount of evidence available to Fäțimid scholars is now significant and wide-ranging. On the other hand, within this academic flowering al-Mustanşir continues to be overlooked. Sanders, in her work Ritual, Politics and the City in Fatimid Cairo, skips over al-Mustanşir's period on the grounds that hardly any evidence is available, although this is not in fact accurate. Brett offers a fascinating examination of a wazir in "The Execution of al-Yüzürī" without drawing in the caliph," whilst Lev's work on al-Mustanşir's armies shows no interest in al-Mustanşir himself. This indifference is summed up in Halm's recent work Die Kalifen von Kairo, in which the author's cut-off date is 462/1070.24 This surprising choice of year thus cuts off al-Mustanşir's reign in the middle of the civil war and entirely misses out his last 20 years as a puppet caliph that fundamentally altered Fäțimid history; it thus tells only half a story.
In a specific study of the Fatimid caliphs, this date simply makes no sense and is characteristic of the dismissive attitude found in many Fäțimid works towards a man who accounts for over a third of the Fäțimid lifespan. Whilst this accusation cannot be labelled at all Fäțimid scholars the works of Daftary and S.M. Stern being particularly useful the frequent impression when hunting for work on al-Mustanşir is of modern historians preferring to seek greener intellectual pastures. There are several possible reasons behind this lack of work on al- Mustanşir.
In the first instance he is not an easy or attractive man on which to hang six decades worth of history. His weak, retiring, unexciting character is so often absent from the sources that it cannot be used as a focus for the events of his reign. Finding a focus thus becomes particularly difficult given the sheer length of his rule and the massive upheavals contained within it. The civil war is a large topic in itself, as is the arrival and wazirate of Badr al-Jamālī. Faced with the prospect of researching such a long and complex reign by a somewhat colourless character, it is unsurprising that scholars have tackled more approachable tasks within the Fäçimid remit.
Nor is al-Mustanşir alone; most of his successors remain unscrutinised by modern research. The bulk of the attention paid the dynasty is lavished on the first dynamic phase of its history, from its foundation to the reign of the charismatic al-Häkim. There is still much work to be done beyond the century this period represents, into the second half of the dynasty's existence. In addition, Sanders' claim of too scanty evidence, whilst not entirely the case, highlights the other main difficulty of al-Mustanşir's reign; whilst evidence is available for his period, it is much less than that of some other Fäțimid caliphs and frequently harder to find. Some of it is only arrived at after a process of eliminating other possibilities. Meanwhile, the caliph's shadowy character again requires stronger analysis to draw out events.
This lack of obvious evidence and the large range of history covered by al-Mustanşir's reign have thus led research of his period into smaller, more specific areas where al-Mustanşir himself is merely incidental to the work. Moreover, some historians have omitted to look beyond the Muslim primary sources. Given the multi-religious identity of the Fäțimid empire's population, it is no surprise to find more information relevant to al-Mustanşir's history in the Jewish Geniza documents, as has been seen, and the contemporary Christian chronicle The History of the Patriarchs of the Egyptian Church.26 However, removing al-Mustanşir from the events of this time is to provide a misleading impression of Fäțimid history. The fact remains that even behind the scenes the caliph was the most important figure of the time. Despite seldom actively exerting his authority, he was nonetheless the pivot of events throughout the 60 years of his caliphate. The civil war came about through his own weakness as a ruler; the capture of Baghdad was in his name. Badr al-Jamālī's seizure of power in Egypt in 466/1074 was caused by al-Mustanşir and affected the rest of his dynasty. In every event of Fäțimid history al-Mustanşir was a vital figure, either by his own actions or more commonly by the lack of them, When viewed from this angle, it then becomes clear that to understand individual events in his reign, it is necessary to put them into the context of al-Mustanşir's caliphate.
The civil war makes little sense unless placed alongside the political build up to hostility within the army and the caliph's own inability to suppress trouble. Similarly, al-Yazūrī's quarrel with the Zīrids of Ifriqiya studied in detail by Brett, as already noted needs al-Mustanşir's presence to explain the significance of the wazir's actions on further levels than the territorial. To date, however, the only work specifically available on al-Mustanşir's reign is an unreliable work by 'Arif Tamir in 1990, solely available in Arabic. 27 The irony in this neglect of al-Mustanşir is that his rule as a whole offers a fascinating study of Islamic history. There is the fleeting glamour of Baghdad's capture and the Cutting of the Canal ceremony, followed by the desperation within and outside of the palaces as Cairo fell into anarchy and starvation. The political capability of the wazir al-Jarjarā'ī contrasts powerfully with the furious egotism of al-Yazūrī, the grasping of the Tustarīs and the all-encompassing might of Badr al-Jamālī. At times events verge on the comic such as when the squabbling Coptic bishops are ordered sent to Abyssinia to build mosques the outrageous, as with Sayyida Rasad and her astonishingly violent approach to politics, and the tragic. In the middle of it all, al-Mustanşir offers a surprisingly rounded picture of a man who simply was not equal to all the tasks he had been set in life.
It is therefore long past time to take an in-depth look at al-Mustanşir himself and his role in various aspects of his reign, from life in Cairo to international relations and the experiences of his non-Muslim subjects. Without understanding the caliph, it is impossible to make full sense of this crucial period in history, and of what comes afterwards; there will always be a huge piece of the jigsaw missing. To put him back in his rightful place is to retrieve that piece, gaining a far greater understanding of why Fäțimid history went the way it did, and the pivotal part al-Mustanşir played in shaping events within and beyond his own borders.
Link
Press Here
0 التعليقات :
إرسال تعليق