XIX THE FATIMID KHALIFATE IN ITS RELATION TO GENERAL HISTORY

A few words may be added to define more plainly the part taken by the Fatimid Khalifate in the general course of history. So long as the Fatimite movement merely took the form of a sectarian body in Asia it had hardly more than a local interest, and even the formation of a Fatimid Khalifate at Kairawan does no more than illustrate the disintegration of the empire of the Khalifs of Baghdad. But the conquest of Egypt brought the Fatimids into relation with a wider world and induced them, unwisely no doubt, to venture on the conquest of Syria. It is a question how far the power ruling in Egypt ever can be free from Syria: the ancient Pharaohs were drawn into Egyptian expeditions, and the two lands have been closely involved one with the other ever since: nearly always Syria has proved the grave in which the prospects and hopes of Egypt have been buried. In the days of the Fatimids Syria was the battle ground of the Near East, and every country from Byzantium to the Oxus was more or less drawn into the conflicts there, whilst in the later part of the period the whole of Christendom, except Spain, was involved: and every power of East or West found there either severe loss or total ruin. The whole course of the history of the 9-12th centuries of the Christian era shows the gradual sucking in of Muslim and Christian powers to this maelstrom, and in every case with disastrous results.

The whole period of the Fatimid Khalifate, from the first formation of the parent sect or conspiracy to the final downfall before Salah ad-Din, may be divided conveniently into three periods; (i) the rise of the Ismaʿilian sect and the establishment of a Khalifate claiming Fatimid descent at Kairawan, (ii) the conquest of Egypt and the period of more or less prosperous rule over Egypt and Syria, and (iii) the period of decay under the attacks of the Saljuq Turks and the Crusaders to its final downfall.

(i) The Formation of the Fatimid Khalifate. (A.H. 260-356 = A.D. 873-966.)

This was the period during which the Ismaʿilian sect was founded, spread to North Africa, and a Khalifate was established at Kairawan. It was a time during which the Khalifate of Baghdad was passing through a course of rapid decay: under no other circumstances would such progress on the part of the Ismaʿilis have been possible. The Khalif Harunu r-Rashid died in 193 (= 808) whilst actually proceeding against a rebellious son in Khurasan. His death was followed by a civil war at the end of which his rebellious son was established as Khalif, but soon afterwards in 205 (= 820) Khurasan was practically lost to the Khalifate and passed into the hands of the independent dynasty of the Tahirites, who ruled nominally in the Khalif’s name but paid him no obedience. Tahir himself was an Arab, but his supporters were mainly Persians, and this begins the period of Persian political supremacy which lasted until the rise of the Turks in the middle of the 4th cent. The Saffarids who ruled in Khurasan from 260 to 290 A.H. were purely Persian, and so were the Samanids who arose in 288 and ruled until 400. All these maintained themselves in the east, but in 320 (= 932) the Buwayhids, a Daylamite tribe from the shores of the Caspian Sea came down into the very heart of the Khalifate, and from 344 until 447 controlled Baghdad, holding the Khalif as an ornamental figure to adorn the pageant of state. Not only were these Buwayhids Persians but, like the Saffarids and Samanids, they were Shiʿites, not themselves recognising the Khalif as the true ruler of Islam, but using him simply as a tool to give effect to their rule over those who did. This was the golden period of Arabic philosophy and literature.

In North Africa the Aghlabid dynasty of Zairawan went down before the followers of the Fatimid Mahdi, who increased in power and prosperity until they conquered Egypt in 356. Only in the far West the rival Khalifate of Cordova held its own, minor independent states were formed in the further parts of North Africa, and in Sicily a popular movement declared for the orthodox Khalif of Baghdad.

During all this time Islam hardly enters into the political history of Europe, save in Spain. The Byzantine Empire held its own owing to the weakness of Islam: the Latin Empire was in process of disintegration and new states were being formed in the west. Almost contemporaneously two sturdy races begin to appear at points far removed, the Turks who are gradually filtering across the Oxus into Persia and becoming Muslims, and the Northmen who are settling on the sea-board of the North-West of Europe and becoming Christians.

(ii) The Golden Age of the Fatimids. (A.H. 356-469 = A.D. 966-1076.)

During the period of the decay of the Abbasid Khalifate the Fatimids were able to seize an important part of the Abbasid dominions and make themselves rulers of Palestine and Syria, with more or less intermittent control over Arabia. At this time the three leading powers in the Near East were the Khalifate of Baghdad, the Fatimid Khalifate of Egypt, and the Byzantine Empire, but of these three the Fatimid Khalifate of Egypt was the most vigorous and aggressive. Under Karl the Great the Western Empire had assumed a kind of protectorate over the Christians in Palestine, but in Fatimid times this had become obsolete. The two rival Khalifates were separated by a wide gulf of religious difference, how wide cannot be appreciated without following the history of the formation and development of the Fatimid Khalifate. Both made overtures to the Greeks, but the relations of Byzantium with the Muslim world generally turned on questions connected with Fatimid rule: Fatimids and Greeks faced one another in North West Syria, and it was only in Sicily that the Greeks had to deal with the Baghdad Khalifate. Before the beginning of this period Crete which had fallen into the hands of the Muslims in A.D. 825, was recovered (in A.D. 961): Sicily, conquered by the Muslims between A.D. 827 and 878, remained in their hands but, after the Fatimid conquest of North Africa it revolted and gave in its allegiance to the Khalifate of Baghdad. North Africa was divided amongst various Muslim groups, and Spain was fully occupied with its own problems. In A.D. 1038 Byzantium lost control over North Syria, so that on the whole the Greeks were receding before the Muslims. In A.D. 1029 (= A.H. 419) there was, however, a modus vivendi reached between the Fatimids and the Greeks by which, in return for help during famine, the Muslims were allowed to have a mosque in Constantinople provided prayer was offered there for the Fatimid Khalif, and, apparently, the Christians were allowed freedom to visit Jerusalem. The persecution of Christians under Hakim had culminated in the destruction of the church of the Holy Sepulchre in A.D. 1009, but this was re-built soon afterwards: the persecution was an isolated incident: in Muslim lands generally neither Christians nor Jews suffered any serious disabilities, the penal laws were long obsolete, and the only penalty enforced was against a Muslim who became a convert to another religion. An additional tax had to be paid by non-Muslims, but this was in lieu of military service from which they were exempt.

The real stirring of history lay in the extreme east and west, in the rise of the Turks and of the Normans, both gradually converging upon western Asia and at the close of this period are both approaching Syria, bringing even greater disasters to their co-religionists than to those whom they regarded as their foes. During the period under present consideration both were already in this arena in small numbers, employed as mercenaries by all the three Near Eastern powers, Turkish soldiers of fortune serving under the Khalifs of Baghdad and under the Fatimids of Egypt, Northmen serving in the employ of the Emperors of Byzantium, but neither Turks nor Northmen had as yet moved in in sufficiently large numbers to become independent factors in politics.

The first assertion of the Turks appears in the career of Mahmud of Ghazna. Turkish soldiers had been employed by the Samanide of Khurasan, and one of these, Alptekin, was made governor of Khurasan, but at a disputed succession in the house of Samani he unfortunately took the side of the candidate who proved unsuccessful and so had to flee the country. With a body of followers he established himself in the mountain fortress of Ghazna (in A.H. 350 = A.D. 961), and there he and his son Sebektakin held their own, nominally as vassals of the Samanids, really as an independent brigand state. The third ruler of Ghazna, Mahmud, declared himself independent in 390 (= 999), and received investiture directly from the Khalif of Baghdad, assuming the title of Sultan, a title which he was the first to introduce into the community of Islam. Mahmud of Ghazna is one of the brilliant figures of history, but one whose importance can easily be over-estimated. In a series of twelve expeditions to India he won both fame and booty, but was not in any real sense a conqueror of India. In A.H. 407 (= A.D. 1016) he extended his power northwards to the shores of the Caspian Sea, and here before long he was brought into contact with other kinsmen of his own, Turks living across the Oxus, and it was the advance of these Turks led by the Saljuq tribe which, in his son’s days, cut off the Sultanate of Ghazna from Persia and the West and compelled the Ghazni dynasty to turn its attention eastwards. This led to the foundation of a Muslim state in India which, under the successive rule of Turks, Afghans, and Mongols, had a continuous existence to the time of the Indian Mutiny in the 19th cent. Although Mahmud and his followers were Turks he gave the civil administration mainly into the hands of Persian officials, and thus Persian became the court language of Muslim India, though Arabic was sometimes employed in important charters,—both foreign languages to rulers and subjects; and thus, when the native Hindi began to be used as a literary medium it appeared as a language which, though thoroughly Hindi in structure and grammar, had a vocabulary full of Persian and Arabic words, and in this form is known as Urdu or Hindustani. Thus Indian history, through the pushing eastwards of the Ghazni Turks by the advance of the Saljuqs, connects with the history of the West.

The Persian dynasties of the Saffarids, Samanids, and Daylamites were Shiʿite in religion, but the Turks were Sunni, that is to say “orthodox” in the sense of adhering to the traditional school which was in communion with the official Khalifate of Baghdad, so that when they came westwards they came as its champions, in contrast to the Normans who were unfriendly towards the Greek Church.

The Saljuq Turks migrated from Turkistan to Balkh about 345 (= A.D. 956), and there accepted Islam. They settled on the farther side of the Oxus about 20 parasangs from the town of Balkh, and there they were found by Mahmud of Ghazna. He removed then to the near side of the Oxus and distributed them through the province of Khurasan where, as they were broken up into small groups, they were harshly treated, and plundered until a body of 2,000 fugitives fled to Ispahan for protection. The governor there wished to employ them in the army, but Mahmud sent orders that they were to be imprisoned and their property confiscated, and followed up these orders by sending a force to scatter them. After this they took to brigandage under a leader named Tughril, and finally were pardoned by Mahmud on condition that they reduced the whole province of Khurasan to obedience to him. This work they took in hand but, in the days of Masud, the successor of Mahmud, they were able to establish their own independence and compelled the Sultan of Ghazna to abandon all control over Persia and turn his attention eastwards (Ibn Khall. iii. 224-226x).

The Saljuqs were now so prominent that al-Qaʾim the Khalif of Baghdad sent to Tughril as a loyal Sunni to deliver him from the tyranny of the Buwayhids. In response Tughril marched to Baghdad and formally restored the temporal power of the Khalif in 447 (= A.D. 1055), though this soon meant simply that the Khalif was under the guardianship of a Saljuq Turk instead of a Daylamite Buwayhid; though there was this much gain, that the Saljuqs were theoretically orthodox supporters of the Abbasid Khalifate.

The Saljuqs were now established as the champions and defenders of the Baghdad Khalifate. Under Tughril’s successor, Alp Arslan, they came into direct conflict with both the Fatimids and the Greeks. By 457 (= A.D. 1068) they were in possession of Georgia and Armenia, and had become a very serious and pressing menace to the Byzantine Empire. A few years later the Emperor Romanus IV. was totally defeated by them in 460 (= A.D. 1071), and all Asia Minor lay open to the Turks, though the Saljuq position there was insecure until they took Antioch from the Greeks. Alp Arslan was succeeded by Malah Shah who, in the course of 467-477 (= A.D. 1074-1084) established the Saljuq power in Asia Minor, and in 469 conquered Jerusalem from the Fatimids, so that practically the Saljuq Sultan, theoretically the Commander-in-Chief serving under the Khalif of Baghdad, was the master of all Western Asia. This brings us to the close of the second period and to the end of the golden age of the Fatimids.

Meanwhile in the West the Normans, destined to be the protagonists of the Saljuq Turks, were becoming a leading power in another way. In 1038 we find them serving in Sicily, in 1040 they were conquering Apulia, and soon afterwards they began minor encroachments on the Byzantine Empire. Their chief settlement, Normandy, dates from 911, and it is significant that this was one year after the foundation of the Abbey of Cluny, from which proceeded a religious reformation which found its warmest supporters in the Normans. When Pope Leo IX. made an expedition against the Normans in Apulia and was defeated by them, his greatest surprise came in finding his victorious enemies ready to pay him a reverent loyalty far beyond anything he had previously experienced. The recently converted Normans were no less definite in their orthodoxy as Christians than the recently converted Saljuqs in their orthodoxy as Muslims.

It is, no doubt, impossible to regard the Crusades as entirely religious in their spirit and character, but it is equally impossible to ignore the fact that religious motives played a very large part in their history. We may venture to say that they commenced under the influence of the Cluniac reformation, and that most of those who took part in the First Crusade, if they had any regard for religion at all, accepted the Cluniac standards: whilst the Second Crusade was still more definitely associated with the Cistercian order, itself an after-math of the Cluniac reformation. The attitude of the Latin clergy towards the Greek Church was exactly the same as that of the Cistercian missionaries towards the native Keltic clergy of Ireland a few years later: wherever religion enters into the programme of the Crusaders it is always treated according to Cluniac standards, and everything is disapproved which does not conform to those standards. The Normans and Burgundians formed the most loyal contingent of those who contended for Cluniac ideals, and they, the Normans especially, formed the real nucleus of the First Crusade. The Crusading movement cannot be separated from the Cluniac reformation.

In referring to the Cluniacs we do not confine the term to those who were actually monks in the Abbey of Cluny, nor even to those in the priories which were in obedience to Cluny, but extend it to all those portions of the Latin Church which followed the leadership of Cluny in the way of church reform and saw the ideal Christianity in the Cluniac programme, an ideal of which we have the fullest expression in the writings of S. Peter Damian. These reformers were loyal to the Papacy, but to an idealised Papacy reconstructed on Cluniac lines; they were outspoken in their criticism of the actual Papacy and its entourage as it existed in the 10th cent. Incidentally Rome ceased to be the chief place of pilgrimage, not because there was any repugnance felt towards Rome or the Papal court, but because, in conformity with the spirit of Cluny, a greater emphasis was laid upon the suffering Christ, and thus greater prominence was given to the sites connected with the Passion: thus Palestine tended to become a “Holy Land,” and Jerusalem itself the chief object of the pilgrim’s devotion. Thus, early in the 11th century, the thoughts of the leading and most vigorous element in the Latin Church began to turn towards Jerusalem and predisposed men to regard the liberation of the holy sites of Palestine from infidel rule as a work of piety.

In 1074 Pope Gregory VII., himself a product of the Cluniac movement, laid a programme of reform before a council assembled at Rome; the liberation of Jerusalem did not actually figure in this programme, but later in the same year (on Dec. 7) we find it expressed in a letter to Henry IV. (cf. Gregor. Pp. VII. Epist. II. 31, in Jaffe: Mon. Greg., pp. 14415, but a previous suggestion had been made by Silvester II. as far back as 999). No doubt the news of the Saljuq advance into Asia Minor had something to do with his proposal, the report of vast numbers of “Christians living beyond the seas” slain by “the pagans” so that the Christian community was reduced to nothing (id. p. 145), but the chief point was that Gregory and his party looked at the world through a Cluniac medium and so to them Palestine was the “Holy Land,” and it was a terrible thought that the sacred sites of Christ’s passion were in the hands of unbelievers. The violent storms aroused by the reforming programme of 1074, however, prevented any action being taken in this direction.

(iii) Third Period. Fatimid decline. (A.H. 469-564 = A.D. 1076-1168.)

When Urban II. became Pope in 1087 events had moved forward with startling rapidity. In 1076 Jerusalem had fallen into the hands of the Saljuqs, and the Byzantine Empire was practically deprived of all its Asiatic possessions, so that both Egypt and Byzantium were at bay. In this desperate crisis the Greeks made an appeal to the West, and this was laid before two councils assembled in the year 1095, the one at Piacenza in March, the other at Clermont-Ferrand in November, and from these councils proceeded the First Crusade.

At the moment the three great powers in the Near East were the Byzantine Empire, the Fatimid Khalifate, and the Saljuq Sultanate, but of these the two former were on the defensive and steadily losing ground; the Fatimids had just suffered the loss of Jerusalem, the Greeks had lost North-West Syria and practically all of Asia Minor. The Saljuqs were the leading military power and held the Khalifate of Baghdad absolutely in subjection, but they already showed signs of decline, their empire was beginning to be divided amongst provincial rulers known as atabegs, and these were getting to be more or less independent of the central authority: it was the old story of the Khalifate over again. Both in Cairo and in Baghdad the real power was in the hands of the wazir or prime minister.

In 1097 the First Crusade came east: its advent was hailed by Byzantium and by the Fatimids, both believing that it would prove a check to the Saljuqs. The Greeks were the first to be undeceived, and soon found that the Crusaders were extremely undesirable neighbours. The Fatimids were anxious to join in alliance with the Crusading forces but wanted to recover Jerusalem. It was a purely religious motive which prevented this,—the Crusaders were unwilling to leave the Holy Sepulchre in Muslim hands.

So far as the history of Western Asia is concerned the Crusaders produced very great results, but these were purely destructive in character. They checked the Saljuqs and effectively broke their power, though that power had already commenced its decline before the Crusaders’ arrival: but this only made way for a new Kurdish power. The Crusades as a religious war provoked an anti-Crusading movement, quite distinctly religious in its character, on the Muslim side,—a Holy War to resist the champions of the Cross. The first mover in this was Zengi atabeg of Mosul, and it was continued by his son Nur ad-Din. In the employ of these atabegs of Mosul was a Kurdish soldier named Ayyub who, at the death of Zengi in 541 (= A.D. 1146) moved to Damascus, and eight years later became governor of the city. From him were descended the Ayyubites, Shirkuh and his nephew Salah ad-Din, the instruments by which the Fatimid Khalifate was finally destroyed. It was not the rise of a new power but merely the development of one of the minor local states formed from the disintegrating Saljuq empire.

The immediate result of the Crusades lay in the formation of Latin states in Palestine and Syria, at Jerusalem, Edessa, and Antioch, and in the final exclusion of the Fatimids from Syria, but none of these states had any stable foundation. Only in quite minor issues can we find any permanent traces of the Crusaders’ presence in Asia. In the East their memory lives as a legend of tyranny and religious intolerance, whilst a few Arab tribes preserve a tradition of Crusading blood. In the West it may be possible to argue that only the Carmelite Friars show any enduring trace of the Crusades: almost every influence which has been traced to the Crusades seems to have been due to intercourse between Muslim and Christian in Spain, or to Frederick II. in Naples and Sicily,—though, of course, it might be argued that Frederick himself was a product of the Crusading age: yet it must be remembered that Frederick came more under the influence of Jews and Muslims expelled from Spain by the intolerance of the Muwahhid rulers.

The work of Salah ad-Din who put an end to the Fatimid Khalifate of Egypt and to the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, restored the semblance of authority to the ʿAbbasid Khalifate of Baghdad, but the following period 567-656 (= A.D. 1171-1258) saw no real reconstruction of the Khalifate: existing conditions were merely bolstered up whilst internal decay proceeded on its course. In 656 (= A.D. 1258) the Khalif finally went down before the Mongol invasion which was simply destructive in its results. It was not until two centuries later that the Ottoman Turks sweeping westwards evolved a new order from these elements of decay and founded an empire which has lasted some 500 years, receiving from the last exiled representative of the ʿAbbasids such title as he could give to the historic Khalifate, and practically re-organising the Sunni Muslim world on strictly orthodox and traditional lines so that, in spite of occasional dissentients, it generally won the esteem and loyalty of the world of Islam.