MICHAEL BRETT, The Rise of the Fatimids: The World of the Mediterranean and the Middle East in the Tenth Century C.E. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2001). Pp. 508.

Extract

This book represents a breakthrough in Fatimid research. Brett challenges the prevalent approach that the Fatimids were a minority heretic sect on the fringes of Islam. To date, scholars have interpreted Fatimid history in terms of success and failure of their political and religious doctrine. This view is the outcome of the huge gap between the meager traces left of the Fatimids in Egypt's history following almost two hundred years of rule and the high aspirations set up in the doctrinal “platform” of the Ismaעili mission, which aimed toward universal fulfillment of the true faith and just rule. Brett, in contrast, suggests that Fatimid secular and religious history must be examined in terms of its impact on Islamic civilization and on Christian Europe of the Middle Ages. From this point of view, the appearance of the Fatimids in the 10th century was a major event.