Note 617 — Chapter VI · (continued 2)

See our note 2, p. 400-401, relative to Sáid, under the name of Muhammed Obaid-alla, Mahdi. The friends and enemies of the Fatemites concur in the account, that he descended from Maimún, surnamed Kaddah, “the oculist,” whom some make a descendant of Ali, whilst others say that he was the son of Daísan, “the dualist,” so called because he ascribed the good to God and the evil to man, and some attribute to him an origin, not only foreign to the race of the prophet, but even connected with a Magian and Jewish lineage. Obaid-allah made Kairwan or Kurm (the ancient Cyrene) the capital of his dominion, but at the same time he laid the foundation of a new capital, which he called Mahedia, from his assumed surname Mahdi. Abu Tamim Moadd Moezzledin allah, the fourth in descent from Obaid allah, but the first acknowledged Fatimite khalif removed his seat to Cairo in Egypt: this town became then the rival of Baghdad, which continued to be the residence of the ancient line of khalifs. Moezz died in the year of the Hejira 365, A. D. 975.