One Patriarch succeeds another; one after another has to pay extortionate bribes. Imprisonment, scourging, massacre go on in sickening uniformity.[1]
4. The Fatimids (969-1171)
In the 10th century a great revolution took place in Egypt, after which the country for two centuries accepted a different form of Islam as State religion, breaking all dependence on the Khalif at Bagdad. For a long time a party among Moslems had secretly maintained the hereditary principle, holding that the lawful head of Islam should be a descendant of Mohammed, through his daughter Fāṭimah and his son-in-law 'Ali ibn 'Abi-Tālib. These are the Shi'ah Moslems.[2] They would not acknowledge the Khalifs of the Ommeyad house at Damascus, nor their successors (since 749) the Abbasid Khalifs at Bagdad. Instead they venerated a line of Imāms (Chiefs) beginning with 'Ali, his two sons Ḥasan and Ḥusain, Ḥusain's son, and so on, by hereditary descent to Mohammed Abū-lḲasim, the 12th Imām, who disappeared in the 9th century of our reckoning. The Shi'ah faith teaches that he is not dead. He lives hidden somewhere and will one day return as the Imām Mahdi, to reward his faithful and punish the wicked.[3] Especially under the Abbasid Khalifs did the Shi'ah make secret propaganda. One of their missionaries came in 893 to Western Africa (the Mugrib, Morocco) and there proclaimed one 'Ubaidullah as the true Khalif. This 'Ubaidullah professed to be of the blood of the Prophet, through Fāṭimah. He begins the line of Fatimid Khalifs.[4] A large army was rapidly
- ↑ AlMaḳrīzī gives details, pp. 58-81.
- ↑ Shī'ah, "a following" (collective). They now form the official religion of Persia.
- ↑ This is the normal Shi'ah faith, held by most, and now the official form in Persia. A sect of Shi'ah, however (the Ismā'ilīyah), acknowledge only seven Imāms. There are other schisms among them, which turn on the question of the succession of the Imām. The best short account of Shi'ah I know is in I. Goldziher: Vorlesungen über den Islam (Heidelberg, 1910), pp. 208-230.
- ↑ 'Ubaidullah is variously represented as being the brother of the 12th Imām, or the son of a hidden Imām recognised by the Ismā'ilīyah, or in other ways descended from Fāṭimah. There is considerable doubt as to who he was really. His opponents said he was a Jewish impostor.
