THE FATIMITE CALIPHS.

III

in their turn were driven from power, we must go back somewhat, and must extend our view in two directions.

Egypt, during the ninth and tenth centuries, was the theatre of several revolutions. Two dynasties of Turkish slaves, the Tolunides and the Ilkshidites, established themselves in that country, which was only reunited to the Caliphate of Bagdad for a brief period between their usurpations. But early in the ninth century a singular power had been growing up on its western border. I mentioned in my last lecture that a schism arose among the followers of Ali regarding the legitimate succession to the sixth Imam Jaffer. His eldest son, Ismail or Ishmael, dying before him, Jaffer appointed another son, Moussa or Moses, his heir. But a large body of the sect denied that Jaffer had the right to make a new nomination; they affirmed the Imamate to be strictly hereditary, and formed a new party of Ishmaelians, who seem to have made something very like a deity of their hero. A chief of this sect, Mahomet, surnamed Al Mehdi, or the Leader, a title given by the Shiahs to their Imams, revolted in Africa in 908. He professed himself, though his claims were bitterly derided by his enemies, to be a descendant of Ishmael, and consequently to be the legitimate Imam. Armed with this claim, it was of course his business to acquire, if he could, the temporal power of a Caliph; and as he soon obtained the sovereignty of a considerable portion of Africa, a rival Caliphate was consequently established in that country. This dynasty assumed the name of Fatimites in honour of their famous ancestress Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet. The fourth in succession, Muezzeddin by name, obtained possession of Egypt

about 967. He is said to have made this important conquest by sending a large army at a time when the country was at once in a state of political confusion, owing to the death of the last Ilkshidite prince, and was also suffering from a grievous famine. The Fatimite army carried with them vast stores of corn, which they distributed to the starving natives, who thereupon willingly recognized the spiritual and temporal claims of the African Caliph. This certainly reads like a bit of oriental romance. But undoubtedly the Ilkshidites and their nominal sovereigns the Abbassides lost Egypt with great rapidity. Al Muezzeddin transferred his residence thither, and founded the city of Cairo, which he made his capital. Egypt thus, from a tributary province, became again, as in the days of its Pharaohs and Ptolemies, the seat of a powerful kingdom. The claims of the Egyptian Caliphs were diligently preached throughout all Islam, and their temporal power was rapidly extended into the adjoining provinces of Syria and Arabia. Palestine became again, as it had been in the days of Necho and Nabuchodonosor and in those of the Ptolemies and Seleucidæ, as it has been once more among the Pashas and Sultans of our own time, the battle-field for the lords of Egypt and of the East. Jerusalem, the holy city of so many creeds, was conquered and reconquered, and the mosque of Omar echoed to prayers and sermons which denounced its founder as viler than the lowest dregs of Judaism or Christianity.

The most famous of these Egyptian Caliphs is Al Hakem, who reigned from 996 to 1020. Unless, as is most probable, he was, like Caligula, out of his senses, we must accord to him the bad preeminence of being the worst ruler recorded even in oriental history. He

began his reign as a zealous Mahometan, and in that capacity was a cruel persecutor of Jews and Christians; he afterwards gave himself out as an incarnation of the Deity, and in that character he became an equally cruel persecutor of orthodox Mahometans. The Christians were compelled to drag about heavy crosses; the Jews were in like manner laden first with the head of a calf, to commemorate their idolatry under Aaron, and afterwards with large wooden bells. As a Fatimite, Al Hakem was bound to curse Omar; possibly it may have been partly to outrage his memory that he destroyed the Church of the Resurrection at Jerusalem, which had hitherto remained as a monument of the good faith of that illustrious Caliph. The assigned motive however is indignation at the fraud, then already practised, with respect to the miraculous fire at Easter. Yet he also destroyed a thousand other churches, in which no such deception is recorded to have taken place. Strange to say, when he began to give himself out as a God, he relaxed his cruelties to the Christians, and allowed them to rebuild their temples. His civil government consisted in the promulgation of petty meddling regulations about the private life of his subjects, especially the female portion of them; and in the infliction of barbarous punishments upon all who infringed them. Women were condemned to more than the ordinary oriental seclusion; one day the Caliph saw, as he thought, a woman in the streets of Cairo, in defiance of the Commander of the Faithful. On coming nearer she proved to be only an image of pasteboard, but she held in her hand a document accusing the Caliph's sister of unchastity. Hakem on the one hand ordered a general massacre of the inhabitants of Cairo, and on the other instituted a strict

I

1

inquiry into the private morals of his sister. It was easier to deal with the multitude than with the individual. The massacre took place, but the inquiry was thwarted by the sister, who hired assassins who speedily put the tyrant out of the way.

Such was Hakem, the God of the Druses. His divinity was no unnatural deduction from the Ishmaelite doctrines, and to this day he is worshipped by that extraordinary sect. The Egyptian Caliphate survived him a century and a half, and during that period it played an important part in the history of the Crusades. At last in 1171, it was abolished by the famous Saladin.1 He himself became the founder of a new dynasty; but the formal aspect of the change was that Egypt, so long schismatic, was again restored to the obedience of Bagdad. Saladin was lord of Egypt, but the titles of the Abbasside Caliph, the true Commander of the Faithful, appeared again on the coin and in the public prayers instead of that of his Fatimite rival.

This event however did not take place till after the name of a Fatimite Caliph had been proclaimed in Bagdad itself, the very metropolis of orthodox Islam. We left the unfortunate descendants of Abbas under the tutelage of the Bowides or Dilemites, who had been called in to deliver them from the Turkish mercenaries. For more than a century Bagdad was disturbed by the disputes of these Dilemites for the post of Emir-al-Omra. At last, in 1055, a person variously called Arslan, Abul Hareth, and Besasseri, took upon him to set aside the Caliph Al Kayem altogether, and to cause the name of Al Mostanser the Egyptian Fatimite to be substituted in the public prayers. This was too much for imperial and 1 Vide Gibbon, p. 253, vol. vii.

ORIGIN OF THE SELJUK TURKS.

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pontifical patience to endure. But Al Kayem had no means of resistance; the arm of the Emir-al-Omra was far stronger than that of the Emir-al-Momenin1. The Dilemites had delivered his predecessors from the Turks; he had now nothing to do but to implore the Turks to deliver him from the Dilemites.

But the Turkish race had thriven wonderfully since we last had occasion to mention them. The Turk to whom Al Kayem applied was not a captain of mercenaries, but a sovereign prince, master of the greatest empire upon earth. He was Togrel Beg, the Seljukian. His family formed the second of those great Turkish dynasties which have borne sway in Persia and the surrounding countries. The first was that of the Ghaznevids, of whom sprang the famous Mahmoud. Of him we shall have much to say in our concluding lecture, but his dynasty was not very intimately connected with the Caliphate. Yet we may mention that even he, the conqueror of Hindostan, demeaned himself as a dutiful subject of the Commander of the Faithful. He received from the Caliph Al Kader various gifts and titles, and was the first of his race who bore the proud appellation of Sultan. The Taherites, Soffarides, Samanides, and Dilemites had been contented with the humbler title of Emir.

Togrel Beg was the son of Michael the son of Seljuk. Seljuk is said to have been a Turk in the service of the Chagan of the Chozars, who, discontented with his sovereign, retired to Samarcand, became a Mahometan, and gradually rose to power. He was followed by numbers of his countrymen, so that we now find the first instance south of the Oxus of the appearance of a Turkish horde or nation, as distinguished from

1 Commander of the Faithful.