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The Epistle of the Fatimid Caliph al-Āmir (al-Hidāya al-Āmiriyya)—its Date and its Purpose

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

S. M. Stern
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Extract

The strife over the succession of the Fatimid Caliph al-Mustanṣir left a decisive mark on the later history of the Ismaili sect. The quarrel between the followers of his two rival sons, al-Musta'lī and Nizār, did not end with the defeat and death of the latter; his adherents, the Nizāris, formed a sect of their own, and the rulers of the Musta'lid branch had no enemies more bitter. The fortunes of the whole Ismaili movement might have taken a very different turn had the redoubtable Assassins made common cause with the Fatimids of Egypt, instead of seizing every opportunity to harm them.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 82 , Issue 1-2 , April 1950 , pp. 20 - 31
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1950

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References

page 20 note 1 For a general outline of the historical facts see Enc. of Islam, s.v. Nizār and Musta'lī (H. A. R. Gibb); Wiet, , Matériaux pour un Corpus Inscr. Arab., Égypte, ii, 155–6Google Scholar.—There are some excellent remarks on the historical significance of the Nizāri Schism by Lewis, B., in his review of , Fyzee's edition of the Hidāya, BSOR, x, 255–7Google Scholar.

page 20 note 2 Lewis is equally of the opinion that al-Musta'lī's accession was mainly due to a coup d'état.

page 20 note 3 In the series of the Islamic Research Association; see also the analysis of the Rauḍat al-taslīm in JRASQ 1931, p. 527 ff. It is much to be desired that the last named work should be fully published. In general, the Nizāri books are in need of further study.

page 21 note 1 Islamic Research Association Series, no. 7, Oxford University Press, 1938. It was W. Ivanow who first drew attention to the treatise (see A Guide to Ismaili Literature, p. 50, No. 173). The occasion is taken to propose a few corrections to the text. On p. 22, 1. 9, the correct reading is probably that quoted in the footnote: ; p. 36, 1. 2, instead of and instead of . On p. 37, 11. 6, 7, 12, should be and on p. 16, 1. 7, should be ib., 1.8, should be . The same strangely mutilated forms of the well known Biblical names Rehoboam, Jeroboam, and Absalom return in the Index, too (p. 20: Bari'un and Rajiun, sons of Solomon, and Aishalom (?) son of David, the latter even getting a question mark).

page 22 note 1 Publications de l'Institut français d'archéologie orientals, Cairo, 1919. For all questions concerning this book, the highly important review of Wiet, G.: Journal Asiatique, llième série, t. xviii (1921), p. 65–125Google Scholar should be consulted. It was Wiet who made the suggestion to regard Ibn al-Ma'mūn as the source of Ibn al-Muyassar for the account of the assembly (loc. cit., pp. 85–6).

page 22 note 2 Wiet (p. 91) finds it “inexplicable” that in the Khiṭaṭ of al-Maqrīzī no mention should be made of the declaration of the sister of Nizār.

page 23 note 3 pp. 66–9.

page 23 note 1 This official, a native of Aleppo (d. 522), is also mentioned in the list of al-Āmir's high officials (Ibn al-Muyassar, pp. 61, 74); cf. also al-Maqrīzī, , Khiṭaṭ ii, 291Google Scholar, and Björkman, W., Beiträge zur Geschichte der Staatskanzlei, p. 64Google Scholar. About his title (kātib al-dast), borne by the head of the chancery, cf. al-Qalqashandī, i, 103, iii, 490, Khiṭaṭ, 244.

page 23 note 2 See the list just mentioned (p. 61), and cf. Wiet, p. 110.

page 23 note 3 Instead of we must read: .

page 23 note 4 The argument—fully developed in the corresponding passage of the Hidäya, to be quoted later—implies that al-Mustanṣir's heir, al-Musta'lī, bore the title walī 'ahd al-mu'minīn, while the other sons of the Caliph had conferred upon them that of w. 'a. al-muslimīn, the usual title of the crown-prince. I can quote no other evidence in support of the first assertion; the second one is, however, fully borne out by a passage in the proclamation of al-Ḥāfiẓ, ;, Subḥ al-a'shā, ix, 295Google Scholar. The higher value attributed to mu'min, as against muslim, is based, on one hand, on a wellknown dogmatic distinction, on the other, on the Ismaili practice which designed the members of the sect al-mu'minūn, distinguishing them from the general body of Moslems.

page 24 note 1 The dispute was made possible by the fact that the Caliph al-'Azīz, too, had the proper name of Nizār. As a matter of fact, dīnār manqūṭ probably means the gold dinar of al-'Azīz, which has in its centre a “pellet within a circle” (Lane-Poole, S.Catalogue of Oriental Coins in the B.M., vol. iv, Coinage of the Fatimids, etc., p. 14Google Scholar). The partisans of Nizār seem to have paid little heed to the fact that on the coinage the name Nizār is clearly qualified by the title “al-Imäm al-'Azīz billāh” !

page 24 note 2 There are, in fact, coins from the reign of al-Ḥākim which bear the name of 'Abd al-Raḥīm besides the Caliph's name: Lane-Poole, op. cit., p. 26. The argument of the theologians is, of course, misleading: al-Ḥākim did, in fact appoint 'Abd al-Raḥīm as his heir. In the text of Ibn al-Muyassar read instead of .

page 24 note 3 Read with Wiet (p. 111): . This is the reading in the passage Ibn Muyassar, p. 9, where there is a more detailed account of this coinage. Lane-Poole, (A History of Egypt, 2nd ed., p. 142Google Scholar) remarks: “Suyūṭi says he (the vizier al-Yāzūri, 442–450) was allowed for a month to add his own name to that of the Caliph on the coinage, but there is no numismatic confirmation.”

page 24 note 4 Ergo, al-Musta'lī was the favourite son of the Imam. The allusion is most probably to the Syrian campaign of 482 (1089). At that time al-Musta'lī was 15 Nizār 45 years old—which would explain the above facts in a more natural way than does the casuistic argumentation of the theologians. (If one of the earlier campaigns of 471 (1078) or 478 (1085) was meant, this would be true to an even greater degree.)

page 25 note 1 Cf. al-Maqrīzī, ii, 333 (quoted by Wiet, p. 111).

page 25 note 2 This is the probable meaning of the phrase: . A similar—legendary—answer of al-Mustanṣir is quoted in a work of the later Ismaili literature, the Majālis al-nashh wal-bayān of ‘Alī b. Muḥammad b. al-Walīd (d. 612/1215): Ibn Ṣabbāḥ asked al-Mustanṣir about his successor. The latter answered evasively, promising that he would let him know in its due course. And this was—the author adds—before al-Musta'lī was born. (See Ivanow, W., Kalami Pir, p. xx, n. 1Google Scholar.)

page 26 note 1 These words () seem to resume the last words of the account of the assembly ()—a fact which apparently corroborates our analysis of the sources.

page 27 note 1 No actual book of this title must be sought for—as the editor seems to do (Intr. p. 17).

page 30 note 1 Abu-1-Qāsim 'Alī b. Munjib Ibn al-ṣayrafī was born in a.h. 463 (a.d. 1071), appointed a secretary in 495 (1101), and died, after service of nearly half a century, in 542 (1147). Of his writings there are known to be extant: (1) Qānūn Dīwān al-Rasā'il, finished in 497 (1103) and dedicated to al-Afḍal (ed. Ali Bahgat, Cairo, 1905); (2) al-Ishära ilā man nāla-l-wizāra, a history of the Fatimid viziers (ed. Mukhlis, Ali, in the Bulletin de l'Institut français du Caire, 1924Google Scholar). See Brockelmann, , Supplement i, p. 489–490Google Scholar, and the introductions to the editions of his books named above, where are also printed the sijills composed by him, as far as they have been conserved by the historians. Sa'īd, Ibn professes ('Unwān al-murqiṣāt, p. 11)Google Scholar to have seen a collection of Ibn al-Sayrafī's letters in twenty volumes.—There is question in the chronicle of a second letter drawn up by Ibn al-Sayrafī and addressed to Ibn al-Sabbäḥ; but it is said that it was never dispatched.

page 30 note 2 The story of the origin of the Īqā' is recapitulated, as the remarks of the Introduction in regard to this (p. 12) are not quite satisfactory.

page 31 note 1 The name for “meeting” is remarkable: (p. 28, 1. 6) “the reading of the excellent majlis”. The meetings of the Ismaili lodges were evidently occupied mainly by the reading of those lectures of which we have some representative samples in the Majālis of al-Mu'ayyad, and in the so-called Majālis Mustanṣiriyya (the latter published in Cairo, 1946)Google Scholar. It is in this way that the word majlis “meeting”, assumed the meaning “lecture”. I shall deal more fully with these matters in a paper on the organization of the Ismaili sect.

page 31 note 2 The editor states that during the reign of al-Ämir the 27th Dhu-l-ḥijja fell on a Thursday in 512 and 520. But, as he rightly points out (Intr., p. 4), owing to the intricacies of the Moslem calendar, still more complicated by the difference of one day or two between the Ismaili and the orthodox Sunni computation, the possibility of some discrepancy between the comparative tables (based on astronomical calculations) and the dates as given by the historians, must always be taken into consideration. The editor, therefore, admits as eligible also the years 515, 517, 518, 523. I am unable to investigate the chronological side of the question, but it seems to me that the evidence in favour of the year 516 is cogent enough to over-rule any possible hesitation caused by the omission of this year from the above list—especially if one bears in mind the editor's words about the possibility of error in these calculations.