Shi'ite Rulers, Sunni Rivals, and Christians in Between: Muslim-Christian Relations in Fāṭimid Palestine and Egypt 1463244738, 9781463244736

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Shiʿite Rulers, Sunni Rivals, and Christians in Between

Islamic History and Thought

32 Series Editor Series Editorial Board

Peter Adamson Beatrice Gründler Beatrice Gruendler Ahmad Ahmad Khan Khan

Jack Tannous Isabel Toral-Niehoff Manolis Manolis Ulbricht Ulbricht

Jack Tannous

Advisory Editorial Board Islamic History and Thought provides a platform for scholarly research on any geographic areaUlbricht within the expansive Islamic Manolis Binyamin Abrahamov Konrad world, stretching from the Mediterranean to Hirschler China, and dated to Asadthe Q.eve Ahmed Howard-Johnston any period from of Islam untilJames the early modern era. This Jan Just Witkam Mehmetcan Akpinar Maher Jarrar(Arabic, Persian, series contains original monographs, translations Syriac, Greek, and Latin) and edited volumes. Abdulhadi Alajmi Marcus Milwright Mohammad-Ali Amir-Moezzi Harry Munt Arezou Azad Gabriel Said Reynolds Massimo Campanini Walid A. Saleh Godefroid de Callataÿ Maria Conterno Jens Scheiner Farhad Daftary Delfina Serrano trice Gruendler Wael Hallaq Georges Tamer Bea Ahmad Khan

Jack Tannous Islamic History and Thought provides a platform for scholarly research Isabel Toral-Niehoff on any geographic area within the expansive Islamic world, stretching from the Mediterranean to China, and dated to any Manolis Ulbricht period from the eve of Islam until the early modern era. This series contains original monographs, translations (Arabic, Persian, Syriac, Jan Justand Witkam Greek, Latin) and edited volumes.

Shiʿite Rulers, Sunni Rivals, and Christians in Between

Muslim-Christian Relations in Fāṭimid Palestine and Egypt

Steven M. Gertz

gp 2023

Gorgias Press LLC, 954 River Road, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA www.gorgiaspress.com Copyright © 2023 by Gorgias Press LLC

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC. ‫ܒ‬

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2023

ISBN 978-1-4632-4473-6

ISSN 2643-6906

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A Cataloging-in-Publication Record is available from the Library of Congress. Printed in the United States of America

Dedicated to my beloved children: Naomi, Josiah, Ethan, Miriam, and Selah

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Table of Contents ....................................................................... vii Foreword and Acknowledgements .............................................. ix Chapter 1. Introduction ................................................................ 1 Fāṭimid Caliphs and their Christian Subjects in Jerusalem.................................................................... 17 Sunnism, Shīʿism, and the Pact of ʿUmar in Pre-Fāṭimid Palestine ..................................................................... 32 Method, Sources, and Purpose ........................................... 44 Chapter 2. Sectarianism and Dhimmīs in the Nahj al-Balāgha.... 49 Sectarianism in the Nahj .................................................... 55 Dhimmīs and Unbelievers in the Nahj................................. 60

Chapter 3. Sectarianism and Dhimmīs in the Daʿāʾim al-Islām ... 71 Sectarianism in the Daʿāʾim ................................................ 75 Dhimmīs in the Daʿāʾim ..................................................... 80 Sunnīs, Imāmīs, and Ismāʿīlīs on Dhimmīs: A Comparative Reflection .............................................. 85 Conclusion .......................................................................... 89 Chapter 4. Governing the Dhimmīs in Palestine and Egypt: Fāṭimid Perspectives........................................................... 93 The Amān of al-Muʿizz ....................................................... 95 Al-ʿAzīz bi-llāh (r. 365–386 / 975–996) ............................ 97 Al-Ḥākim bi-Amr Allāh (r. 386–411 / 996–1021) ........... 102 Al-Ẓāhir li-iʿzāz Dīn Allāh (r. 411–427 / 1021–1036) ..... 106 Al-Mustanṣir bi-llāh (r. 427–487 / 1036–1094) .............. 110 Conclusion ........................................................................ 114

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viii SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN Chapter 5. Governing the Dhimmīs in Palestine and Egypt: Melkite Perspectives ......................................................... 119 Al-ʿAzīz bi-llāh (r. 365–386 / 975–996) .......................... 120 Al-Ḥākim bi-Amr Allāh (r. 386–411 / 996–1021) ........... 126 Al-Ẓāhir li-iʿzāz Dīn Allāh (r. 411–427 / 1021–1036) ..... 131 Sinai Manuscript Arabic 692 ............................................ 137 Conclusion ........................................................................ 144 Chapter 6. Conclusion .............................................................. 147 Revisiting Sectarianism and Religious Identity ................ 153

Bibliography ............................................................................. 159 Primary Sources ............................................................... 159 Secondary Sources ............................................................ 161 Index......................................................................................... 171 Index of Personal Names .................................................. 171 Index of Places ................................................................. 174 Subject Index .................................................................... 176 Sūrat Index ....................................................................... 184

FOREWORD AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Not every research project need be inspired by personal experience or have a personal connection. Many a project has come simply from identifying gaps in research and pursuing them. This study, though, does indeed emerge from interpersonal relationships. I can pinpoint my interest in this topic to one meal in the spring of 2006, when my wife Lisa and I invited to dinner Sunnī and Shīʿite classmates of mine at the University of Edinburgh. A friend of ours had told us that not every Muslim is concerned with whether a meal is ḥalāl (permissible), and so we took a chance that my classmates would not be bothered that the meat we were preparing was not ḥalāl. They did worry, though, and I am glad that they did, because it led to a conversation that over a decade later has led to the work at hand. When we mentioned to our friends that our meal was not ḥalāl, we received differing responses. My Sunnī classmate said that she would consent to eat with us, citing a Qurʾanic verse (5:5) that gives believers permission to eat with People of the Book (typically understood to be Jews and Christians), while my Shīʿite classmate politely declined without giving us a reason. Not wishing to offend my Shīʿite classmate, my wife and I quickly adjusted our plans and prepared a vegetarian meal instead. The exchange mystified me, though, especially because I personally felt closer to my Shīʿite classmate than I did to my Sunnī one. Years later, I came across a passage in Ignaz Goldziher’s Introduction to Islamic Theology that seemed to shed some light on this encounter, in which he writes that “despite the explicit permission given in the Qur’an (5:5), Shi‘i law regards food prepared by Christians and Jews as forbidden meat, and the meat ix

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of animals slaughtered by them as forbidden meat (216).” This discovery in turn led me to the more recent work of David Freidenreich, which I have highlighted in my research here. This said, jurisprudence should not be the scholar’s only consideration, and ought to be balanced with the study of other factors that influence people’s actions. Prior to beginning my doctoral program at Georgetown University, I studied classical Arabic at a Sunnī institute in which one of my classmates revealed to me surreptitiously that he was Shīʿite. In what was very much an act of taqiyya (dissimulation), he pretended to be Sunnī so as to access some of the curriculum at the school that he could not otherwise do as a professed Shīʿite. What he would not tell his teachers and classmates, though, he confided in me as an ‘outsider’ who was Christian and who had no stake in preventing him from accessing the full curriculum of the school. When it came to our interaction, then, as Muslim and Christian, the context was just as important as the rules that ostensibly governed our relationship. This awareness and sensitivity to the incidentals, to the conditions and personalities driving behavior, has played an important part in shaping my research project, as I have tried to give equal (and indeed greater) attention to history as I have to legal theory. A brief word of clarification is needed regarding my approach to transliteration of Arabic words in this book. I am in general following the transliteration table and rules of the third edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam. While I am using diacritics and italics for most transliterations, I have chosen not to do so for certain words (such as when I refer to one of the twelve Imams, or to the Qurʾan and Hadith, that is, when I am referring to the latter as a corpus rather than as a single tradition), and where I thought diacritics and italics would obstruct the flow of reading. However, even for words where I do not use diacritics or italics, I am still using the transliteration symbols for the hamza and ʿayn. I have also chosen to use Anglicized words for Arabic titles and names now common in English (such as caliph or Medina). Every work of significance has been built on the shoulders of others, and this project is no different in that respect. I would first like to thank my dissertation supervisor, Daniel Madigan, S.J.,

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who patiently guided me through the different stages of my project. His encouragement early on not to rush my research (despite various pressures on me to do so) kept me from pursuing questions leading to dead ends, and I am grateful for his many helpful suggestions, as well as his facilitating connections with scholars, none the least David Freidenreich. I would also like to thank the readers on my dissertation committee: Shainool Jiwa at The Institute of Ismaili Studies in London, and Alexander (Sasha) Treiger at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, for their indefatigable help and expertise at various stages of my research and writing. Both of them have brought deep knowledge of their fields to my topic (Ismāʿīlī and Melkite studies, respectively), and I am also especially grateful to Sasha for his careful copy-editing and checking of my translation and transliteration of Arabic. I am also thankful to the Tantur Ecumenical Institute and to Fr. Russ McDougall, its rector at the time, who through the support of the University of Notre Dame gave me an academic year’s fellowship in Jerusalem. Not only did this fellowship give me the space and time to research and write, but it put me in proximity to the places that are important for this project, especially the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The fellowship also gave me access to scholars in Israel/Palestine working in fields and on projects similar to my own, as well as to libraries where I could conduct manuscript research. I am especially grateful to Archbishop Aristarchos and his remarkable assistant Anna Koulouris for giving me access to the Greek Patriarchate Library in Jerusalem, to Khader Salameh at the Khalidi Library in Jerusalem, and to Fr. Justin at St. Catherine’s monastery in the Sinai. I am also thankful for a research grant in 2018 from the Association of the Study of the Middle East and Africa, which helped support my work in Jerusalem and my visit to St. Catherine’s. In addition, I wish to express my gratitude for the years of mentoring I received from Ida Glaser and Martin Whittingham, now based at the Centre for Muslim-Christian Studies in Oxford, and for the model of Muslim-Christian dialogue they practiced, exemplified in an early motto of the center, “Building Respect, Seeking Truth.” I aspire to and have tried to practice these virtues

xii SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN in my work and relationships with Muslims. Moreover, it was their encouragement during my master’s program at the University of Edinburgh that started me down this path of the academic study of Muslim-Christian relations, and I have greatly appreciated their support and friendship over the past decade and more. As with any acknowledgement, there are others whom I could name who have helped in some way with this project, and I must apologize to those whom I may neglect to mention. Nevertheless, my thanks go to the following: Omar Abedrabo (a scholar working on the Fatimids at Bethlehem University), Matthew Anderson, Halla Attallah, the Israeli archaeologist Dan Bahat, Kaveh Farrokh, David Freidenreich, Robert Gleave (under whom I began this project at the University of Exeter before I transferred to Georgetown), Sidney Griffith, Yaacov Lev, Milka Levy-Rubin, Christian Sahner, Uriel Simonsohn, Shawqi N. Talia, and Kevin van Bladel. I am also grateful for the assistance of Faisal Matadar of the Qasid Institute and to members of the Palestinian staff of Tantur in helping me with my translations at various points in this work. Finally, I wish to express my thanks to my family who stood by me through the many, many hours of study and research that occupied more than a decade of my life, and which took us to Edinburgh, Oxford, ‘Amman, Jerusalem, and Washington, D.C. I also would like to express my gratitude to my parents (Greg and Jeanette) and to my sister Genelle, who at various points in my study encouraged me to keep going, despite the difficulties and hardships involved. It does indeed take a village to raise a scholar.

CHAPTER 1.

INTRODUCTION In the field of Islamic Studies (and Religious Studies more generally), scholars are giving increased attention to the process and components of religious identity formation, studying how Muslims are negotiating sociological, political, and ethnic differences with the societies in which they live. What some are finding is that there exists not one but multiple Muslim identities, and that identity is often formed in conversation with or in response to non-Muslims. 1 This book wishes to bring to the table a case study of Fāṭimid Ismāʿīlī Shīʿite religious identity formation See, for example, Derya Iner and Salih Yucel, Muslim Identity Formation in Religiously Diverse Societies (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015), viii–xiii. Much of the current literature, while exploring Muslim identity formation, is focused on the context of Muslims living in majority non-Muslim societies and thus has limited utility for this study. For more on Muslims’ religious identity formation in contexts where they are a demographic and political minority, and sometimes living with disadvantaged means or in hostile environments, see Synnøve Bendixsen, The Religious Identity of Young Muslim Women in Berlin: An Ethnographic Study (Leiden: Brill, 2013); Majdouline Aziz, Randy Lowell, Kelsey Granger, and Katy Self, “Measuring Muslim Religious Identity Formation: Instrument Assessment with a Sample of Muslim-American Students,” Journal of Islamic and Muslim Studies 3.1 (May 2018), 58–85; and Jonas R. Kunst, Hajra Tajamal, and David L. Sam, “Coping with Islamophobia: The effects of religious stigma on Muslim minorities’ identity formation,” International Journal of Intercultural Relations 36.4 (July 2012), 518–32.

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occurring in a sectarian milieu. Jerusalem during the fifth/ eleventh century offers us an especially interesting study of Muslim and Christian sectarianism, for though the Fāṭimid Ismāʿīlī Shīʿa ruled Palestine at that time, their predecessors had been Sunnī (as were their rivals), and Jerusalem still had a large and diverse Christian population, along with a smaller Jewish one. This study will consider, then, how sectarian tensions affected and arguably influenced the decisions of Fāṭimid caliphs in roughly the fifth/eleventh century when it came to their relations with Christian subjects in Jerusalem and Palestine more generally (and indeed Egypt as well, since Palestine was directly connected with the Fāṭimid caliphate in Cairo). It will also consider how Christians responded to these decisions. Further, it will examine what impact (if any) Fāṭimid legal thinking had on such exchanges. In the process of doing so, we will learn more about the nature of the formation of Fāṭimid religious identity, and how religious principles (ascertained through the study of law) and politics (ascertained through the study of history) interact in a sectarian milieu. First, though, we must be careful to define our terms. What exactly do we mean by the phrase ‘religious identity formation’? In this study, we are concerned primarily with communal identity (rather than with individual identity), and particularly with the question as to how that which is ‘other’ (or outside the community) affects that identity. David Freidenreich has written on this notion in his exploration of the roles non-Muslims have played in the identity formation of sects within Islam as evidenced in Islamic law. He first identifies two different kinds of law, the first being “reflexive” food laws (that is, laws that Muslims impose on their own community regarding foreign food), while the second are laws “imposed” on dhimmīs (usually understood to be Jews or Christians living under Muslim rule) in order to demonstrate Muslim supremacy. Then, after analyzing Imāmī Shīʿite “reflexive law” in the early fifth/eleventh century, he argues that Imāmīs began to identify Jews and Christians as being completely ‘other’, that is, intrinsically impure on the basis of their unbelief. This is in contrast to Sunnīs, who on the basis of Sūrat al-Māʾida 5:5, which assures believers that “the food of

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those who were given the Book is permitted to you,” elevated People of the Book above other non-Muslims. Freidenreich argues that Imāmīs adopted their uncompromising views toward Christians because they wished to demonstrate how morally lax Sunnīs had become, as evidenced by their permissive attitudes toward Jews and Christians. Shīʿites, by contrast, saw themselves as retaining a superior measure of moral and religious rigor by following the Imams. 2 Religious identity for Imāmī Shīʿites, then, developed in relation both to fellow Muslims and to non-Muslims, as jurists worked to determine what Imāmīs were not as much as what they were. In order to reflect on religious identity formation among the Fāṭimids, it is important to first recognize the political and theological differences between the Imāmīs and the Ismāʿīlīs, particularly during the period under consideration. While both groups shared a strong loyalty to ʿAlī and to his progeny as far as the sixth Imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (d. 148/765), the Imāmīs formed in the midst of Sunnī ʿAbbāsid power, and, following the practice of taqiyya (dissimulation or caution), they adopted a quietist approach toward authorities, especially after the ghayba (occultation or disappearance) of the twelfth Imam, Muḥammad al-Mahdī, in the late third/ninth century. 3 Though they also See David M. Freidenreich, “Christians in early and classical Shīʿī law”, in Christian-Muslim Relations 600–1500. General Editor David Thomas. See . See also David M. Freidenreich, “The Implications of Unbelief: Tracing the Emergence of Distinctively Shiʿi notions Regarding the Food and Impurity of Non-Muslims.” Islamic Law and Society 18 (2011), 53–84. Another Qurʾanic passage that addresses food laws is Sūrat al-Anʿām 6:136–47, where the Qurʾan permits believers to eat any food except pork and dead animals with blood spilled out, and states that Jewish dietary laws were God’s punishment for the Israelites’ injustice (baghy). For more on this, see Mehdy Shaddel, “Food, Identity, and ‘Third-Way’ Groups in Late Antiquity and at the Origins of the Qurʾan,” Mizan Project, December 21, 2015, http://mizanproject.org/food-identity-and-third-way-groupsin-late-antiquity-and-at-the-origins-of-the-quran/. 3 Farhad Daftary has described the Imāmiyya as “the common heritage of the Ismailis and the Ithnāʿasharīs, or Twelvers…” This would imply 2

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formed inside the ʿAbbāsid empire near Kūfa, the Ismāʿīlīs (known as the ‘Seveners’, since in the second/eighth century, when they broke from other Shīʿa, they acknowledged only seven Imams), took on an apocalyptic and activist character. In the late third/ninth century, the Ismāʿilī leadership sent out dāʿīs (missionaries) across Muslim lands as far east as Rayy near the Caspian Sea and as far west as present-day Algeria. Crucially, their aim was to overthrow the ʿAbbāsid caliphate in Baghdād. When the dāʿī Abū ʿAbdallāh al-Shīʿī conquered Qayrawān in what is modern-day Tunisia in 296/909, he proclaimed a state that would become known as the Fāṭimid caliphate (named after Fāṭima, the wife of ʿAlī and daughter of the Prophet Muḥammad). Over the course of the fourth/tenth and fifth/eleventh centuries, the Fāṭimids would become the great political enemy of the ʿAbbāsids. 4

that the term ‘Imāmī’ is more inclusive than how it is used by Freidenreich. I have chosen, nonetheless, to retain Freidenreich’s usage, as the last Twelver Imam, al-Mahdī, is not believed to have gone into the greater occultation (al-ghayba al-kūbra) until 329/941. Moreover, Etan Kohlberg has observed that while the anti-Shīʿite writer ʿAbd al-Qāhir alBaghdādī (d. 429/1037) uses the term “Ithnāʿashariyya” to refer to a subset of the Imāmiyya, the term does does not appear in the Fihrist of the Imāmī Ibn al-Nadīm (d. 380/990). Kohlberg, then, concludes that the term was probably first used around the year 390/1000. As we are focused here on the contemporary period of Fāṭimid formation (the fourth/tenth century), it seems premature to speak of the ‘Ithnāʿasharīs’ as such. See Farhad Daftary, “The Early Ismaili Imamate: Background to the Establishment of the Fatimid Caliphate” in Farhad Daftary and Shainool Jiwa, The Fatimid Caliphate: Diversity of Traditions (London: I.B. Tauris, 2018), 11. See also Heinz Halm, Shiʿism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 32–6; and Etan Kohlberg, “From Imāmiyya to Ithnāʿashariyya,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 39:3 (1976), 521–34. 4 For relatively concise descriptions of the formation of and significant features of the Ismāʿīlī movement and Fāṭimid caliphate, see Halm, 160– 201, and Shainool Jiwa, Towards a Shiʿi Mediterranean Empire: Fatimid Egypt and the Founding of Cairo (London: I.B. Tauris, 2009), 2–11. The most comprehensive work on the Ismāʿīlīs, though, is Farhad Daftary,

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What has not been studied (and what this book, in part, intends to explore) is whether this more activist and indeed militant orientation of the Ismāʿīlīs also translated into the kind of perceptions of the ‘other’ that Freidenreich describes in his research on Imāmī jurists. Put differently, was the ḥukm (juristic categorization) Imāmīs employed regarding non-Muslims also drawn in Fāṭimid fiqh, or do we see some significant divergences in thought between the two schools? We know that, at least in some areas of law, the Ismāʿīlīs were more permissive than were the Imāmīs. In a survey he conducted of Muslim juristic attitudes over dietary laws, Michael Cook found that Sunnīs were generally more generous in what they permitted Muslims to eat (the Mālikīs the most so, allowing even the consumption of serpents and other creeping things). By contrast, the Imāmīs were generally the most restrictive, prohibiting the eating of the hare, eel, lizard, and hedgehog, whereas most Sunnīs permitted it. Cook also found that Ismāʿīlīs, while more restrictive than Sunnīs, were slightly less restrictive than were Imāmīs, permitting the eating of the hare and only discouraging (not prohibiting) the eating of eel, lizard, and hedgehog. 5 Such analysis does not mean, of course, that the Fāṭimids were likewise more forbearing in their fiqh and policy toward dhimmīs than were the Imāmīs. However, Cook’s study is nonetheless instructive for our thinking about the similarities and differences between the Imāmīs and Ismāʿīlīs. Another important clarification is needed here regarding our study of Islamic religious identity formation, and that is that we need to specify whose identity formation we are studying here. In brief, we are interested in the religious identity formation of the elite, that is, of the caliph and of those in his court and government bureaucracy, and not necessarily of those in the lower echelons of society. This decision to limit the study has been necessary in large part because of the sources we will be The Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 5 See Michael Cook, “Early Islamic Dietary Law.” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 7 (1986), 218–77. Cook provides a table of school doctrines on page 259 that is especially helpful.

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consulting: ḥadīths, fiqh, and caliphal history are products of the literate elite and not of the commoner. Fāṭimid caliphs and their policies did, of course, influence the general population, but this study is not a social history of the lower classes, and it does not presume to make broad claims about Islamic religious identity as it relates to all Muslims across time. Rather, it has a more modest ambition, focusing instead on the influences on and building blocks of the religious identity of the Fāṭimid caliphs vis-à-vis Sunnī counterparts and Christian and Jewish dhimmīs (many of whom themselves were elites in their own communities). Before turning to our next term needing definition, it will be helpful here to consider the work of Shahab Ahmed as it concerns Islamic religious identity formation. One point of debate in the study of Islam is the question as to whether Islam is so diverse that one should think of Muslims as belonging to different ‘islams’ rather than to one Islam. Ahmed has observed that Muslims do not agree with one another on many points of doctrine and practice because their hermeneutical engagement with the Revelation given to Muhammad leads them to different conclusions. He suggests that we conceptualize Islam “as engagement by an actor or agent with a source or object of (potential) meaning in a way that ultimately produces meaning for the actor by way of the source.” 6 In Ahmed’s conception, Islam is a human and historical phenomenon in which Muslims are engaged (that is, involving and committing themselves) in a meaning-making venture. This raises the question, though: with what do Muslims engage? Muslims engage with the Revelation to Muhammad in what was sent down from the World-of-the-Unseen, issuing in a Relevatory Product in the World-of-the-Seen. This is what Ahmed calls the “Text,” principally the Qurʾan and Hadith. Yet the Text is not co-extensive with the full reality of Revelation to Muhammad. Inherent in the logic of the structure of the Revelatory act is the “Pre-Text,” that is, the Revelatory Premise or the source of the Revelation of the Text. It is the Unseen See Shahab Ahmed, What Is Islam? (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 345. 6

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Reality or the Truth of the Unseen God. The term “Pre-Text” should not be taken to indicate just that it is chronologically prior to the Text. Rather, it lies beyond and behind the Text, is ontologically and alethically prior to the Text, and is that upon which the Text is contingent. The Pre-Text is continuously present at all times and in all places “as the domain of higher and prior Truth.” Ahmed writes that “The Truth of the Text of the Revelation is only the Revelatory Product; as such, it is but an expression in the here-and-now of this world of the Truth of the Pre-Text of the Revelation.” 7 Ahmed goes on to say (and this is important for this study’s reflection on sectarianism in Islam) that disagreement among Muslims has formed over the questions as to whether, in what degree, and by what mechanism the Truth of Pre-Text may be accessed. Muslims have engaged with the Text in multiple ways, with some saying that Truth can only be accessed in the Text, others saying via the Text, and others still saying it may be accessed without the Text. 8 Thus, Muslim philosophers engage Revelation through what they take to be Reason itself as found in “the cosmos or God’s Rational Creation”; and, indeed, Ahmed says that the Text is “a rationally and semantically inferior instantiation” of that Pre-Text. For the philosopher, then, Reason is Revelation. 9 For their part, Sufis engage Revelation through personal experience of God’s Existence (the Real Truth of the PreText, or ḥaqīqa), and they hold that the Prophet himself was a Sufi who accessed the Real-Truth of the Pre-Text through his Visionary Imagination. Thus, Sufi exegesis of the Qurʾan conceives of the language of the Text as “pointers” (ishārāt) to the higher Unseen Truth of the Pre-Text. 10 At the opposite end of the spectrum, the fuqahāʾ, while they use Reason to construct Islamic law, constrain it in relation to the Text. The discourse of Islamic law holds either that the Truth of the Pre-Text cannot be directly accessed, or that if it is accessed, Ahmed, 346–7. Ahmed, 347. 9 Ahmed, 348–50. 10 Ahmed, 351–2. 7 8

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it cannot be acted upon publicly or socially but is Truth that is entirely private and subjective. Rather, the fuqahāʾ accept only those Truths from the Pre-Text that are plainly and transparently available in the Text. Ahmed contrasts this approach with that of the philosophers when he writes that while the “rational business of philosophy is the business of the Pre-Text, … the rational business of Islamic law is the business of the Text.” 11 For their part, kalām scholars are in the middle, seeking Truth about the Pre-Text (that is, about God and the Unseen), but they constrain themselves to engagement with the Text, concerning themselves with the question of when to read the Text literally and when to read it metaphorically. Kalām theologians accept that statements of the Text about the Unseen God are “limited expressions” of the Truth of the Pre-Text, but they caution that we cannot know anything more about the Pre-Text than what has been put into the words of the Text of Revelation. 12 Ahmed goes on to say that these different kinds of engagements with Revelation in turn lead Muslims to the “ConText” of Revelation. The Con-Text is “the entire accumulated lexicon of means and meanings of Islam that has been historically generated and recorded up to any given moment; it is the full historical vocabulary of Islam at any given moment.” 13 Ahmed says further that “when a Muslim seeks to make meaning in terms of Islam, he necessarily does so in engagement with and in use of the existing terms of engagement—that is, in engagement with and by use of the existing vocabulary of Islam.” 14 Con-Text is “the full historical vocabulary of Islam at any given moment,” a “built environment of meaning … which Muslims inhabit,” and is indeed “the centuries-old city of Islam, a great and sprawling city consisting of various edifices erected for the various purposes of living by Muslims of bygone and present times.” 15 Con-Text, then, incorporates not only all the discourse that has been generated Ahmed, 353–4. Ahmed, 354–5. 13 Ahmed, 357. 14 Ahmed, 357. 15 Ahmed, 358. 11 12

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through engagement with the Revelation to Muhammad, but also the “various individual and collective practices” such as prayer, fasting, almsgiving, pilgrimage, visitation of saint-tombs, feast and saint days, animal slaughter, etc. 16 Also, Text and Pre-Text are part of Con-Text, since it is in Con-Text that Revelation is received and meanings are reached. Con-Text is “the entire storehouse of means and meanings in Islam,” but it is not present in its entirety at any one time, in that Con-Text is local and is thus “available for mobilization and utilization in any given hermeneutical engagement.” 17 Now that we have covered Ahmed’s key ideas concerning Revelation, how do they relate to the current work at hand? A central concern of this book has to do with the sectarian divisions within Islam: how sects developed, what forms they took, and how they were perceived by the Muslims who were divided among themselves. We must ask then: what do we make of such divisions, and of the tensions that existed between them? Did one community (or communities) constitute the ‘true’ Muslims while the other community did not? That Muslims understand Revelation to be a multi-dimensional phenomenon helps us understand, says Ahmed, how it is that “they have been able to conceive of contradictions of Truth and Meaning as coherent with and coherent within Islam.” 18 Moreover, these are not contradictions that come from the subjectivity of Muslim interpreters, but they arise “from the intrinsic structure and dimensionality of the fact and phenomenon of Revelation to Muhammad.” 19 Contradiction, then is “coherently Islamic: contradiction inheres to and coheres with the spatial-structural dynamic of Revelation to Muhammad.” 20 Ahmed’s observations, while not directed at the question of sectarianism, are nonetheless useful for our thinking about Islamic religious identity formation in a sectarian milieu. They provide us with a framework for Ahmed, 357. Ahmed, 362. 18 Ahmed, 364. 19 Ahmed, 365. 20 Ahmed, 366. 16 17

10 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN thinking about the Sunnī-Shīʿa divide insofar as the Muslim community, diverse as it was (and still is), came to conceive of authority in different ways yet could still view a member of another sect as being Muslim (however flawed). Ahmed’s ideas are also helpful in reminding us that law, as important as it is to Islam, is only one piece in the puzzle of religious identity formation, and that other pieces of that puzzle may or may not confirm the law yet are no less Islamic. While law is a central concern of this study, it is not the only one. We will explore both of these ideas at greater length. Let us turn now to another term that needs definition. In addition to our deliberation over religious identity formation, we need to consider what we mean by the word ‘sectarianism’. Several decades ago, the sociologists Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge proposed a definition of ‘sect’ as “a deviant religious organization with traditional beliefs and practices,” while they defined a cult to be “a deviant religious organization with novel beliefs and practices.” 21 That definition assumed that ‘sect’ was primarily a category of religious ideas or doctrinal belief. Later in their chapter on sects, though, Stark and Bainbridge posited that schism (that event or process which results in different sects) occurs along “networks of attachment” or social cleavage. When speaking of sect formation, they posit that those most powerful tend to be in harmony with their surrounding society, while those less powerful tend to be in tension with their society. At times of tension, those in power tend to stay in power, while persons of moderate power in the original religious organization tend to lead schisms, since they already have standing and trust with many of the people in the organization, and can gain status by breaking away from those with the most power. 22 While not abandoning the position that ideas and doctrine are central to the development of sectarian identity, Stark and Bainbridge, then, take seriously the notion of political power, and argue that sectarian identity forms in the Stark and Bainbridge, A Theory of Religion (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996), 124. 22 Stark and Bainbridge, Theory, 143–9. 21

1. INTRODUCTION

11

context of personal and social relationships in which some have more power than others. In the context of Muslim societies, this modified definition of sectarianism is indeed appropriate, for it captures both the political and religious nature of the rupture that occurred between ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib and what became the Umayyad establishment of Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān. Maria Dakake has argued that early Shīʿism is “rooted in a set of basic principles that remained essentially unchanged from its inception in the first Islamic century through the period of its doctrinal solidification in the late second and early third centuries.” 23 Among those principles, she focuses principally on the concept of walāya. While there are different ways to translate this word, it entails in Shīʿite understanding the belief that the family of ʿAlī requires and commands both political and spiritual loyalty. Dakake writes that the concept “represents a principle of spiritual charisma that lies at the heart of all major Shiʿite sectarian beliefs and most comprehensively embodies the Shiʿite religious ethos.” 24 She finds an especially apt description of the Shīʿite understanding of walāya in Max Weber’s definition of charisma: “a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional qualities.” 25 Ultimately, she argues that walāya “became the ideological foundation for a set of rules of social and intellectual interchange between themselves and the larger Islamic ummah that both reflected and enhanced their own sense of unique sectarian identity.” 26 This relationship between personality and rules, between charisma and the routinization of that charisma, is a theme to which we will return. Yet it will be helpful here to contrast this Maria Dakake, The Charismatic Community: Shiʿite Identity in Early Islam (New York: State University of New York Press, 2007), 3. 24 Dakake, Charismatic Community, 7. 25 Max Weber, Theory of Social and Economic Organization, trans. A. R. Anderson and Talcott Parsons (New York: Free Press, 1947), 358. 26 Dakake, Charismatic Community, 10. 23

12 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN focus on charisma in Shīʿism with the routinization of authority in Sunnism. Hamid Dabashi has posited that unlike the Shīʿa, who sought to perpetuate the authority and indeed ‘light’ of the Prophet through the charisma of ʿAlī and the Imams, Sunnīs sought to routinize that authority in the office of the caliph, thereby establishing a “permanent relationship” (to use Weberian terminology) between the ruler and the umma. Drawing on the pre-Islamic tribal and patrimonial mode of granting authority, Sunnīs held at least in theory (if not in practice) that a council of elders should nominate and elect the next caliph, and Abū Bakr’s election as caliph following the death of the Prophet came to serve as the model for this. 27 Alongside this commitment to tribal election, the Sunnīs retained strong tribal allegiances, so that the caliph ʿUthmān privileged members of his tribe over others when appointing officials to positions of power, Umayyad caliphs privileged Arabs over non-Arab converts (mawālī), and all Umayyad and ʿAbbāsid caliphs came from the Quraysh tribe (in essence, taking the form of familial dynasties). 28 In this way, Prophetic authority was routinized through tribal commitments and practices in Sunnī government. Another important feature of Sunnism is that while Sunnī caliphs enjoyed temporal political authority, they over time came to lose much of their judicial power and religious authority. This process began no later than with the Umayyad caliphs, who appointed qāḍīs to adjudicate the law. Dabashi has noted that in Sunnī forms of government, the comprehensive and charismatic authority of Muhammad was divided into a number of different constituencies, with one class assuming authority for each of these domains. Initially, the office of the caliphate appropriated the political authority. Gradually, the judicial power was institutionalized in the office of the qadis. The military power was assigned to the amirs, administrative responsibilities to the wazirs, religious to the

See Hamid Dabashi, Authority in Islam: From the Rise of Muhammad to the Establishment of the Umayyads (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1989), 1–16. 28 See Dabashi, 71–93. 27

1. INTRODUCTION

13

ʿulamaʾ, and finally, with the gradual development of Sufism, the spiritual authority was appropriated by the Sufi saints. These figures of authority constituted independent spheres of authority that at each particular period of Islamic history could impede or facilitate the respective claims and objectives of each other. 29

This is not to say that the caliph had no religious authority whatsoever. Patrica Crone and Martin Hinds have argued that the Umayyad and early ʿAbbāsid caliphs thought of themselves as spiritual as well as political leaders, and indeed that “there is no point in Islamic history at which the caliphate can be said to have been devoid of religious meaning.” 30 Yet when we compare the scope of religious authority held by Umayyad and ʿAbbāsid caliphs with the authority of their counterparts in Shīʿism, Shīʿīte Imams exercised more religious authority with their communities than Sunnī caliphs did, claiming as they did the Prophetic charisma. In making this comparison, though, it should be emphasized (following the thought of Shahab Ahmed above) that neither sect of Islam was less “Islamic” than the other, but rather that each drew on different notions of authority to substantiate their claims. Let us now return to our discussion of the term “sectarianism.” Sectarianism in the context of Muslim-Christian relations in the Levant (that is, the greater area of Syria and Palestine) has an even more specific meaning than what has been discussed thus far. Christian Sahner has observed that scholars of the modern Middle East understand sectarianism as a phenomenon that politicians have used to organize society and its relationship with the state as one in which each confessional community (Muslims and nonMuslim alike) receives representation according to its proper demographic weight (as in modern Lebanon).” Sahner then goes on to define sectarianism as: the activation of religious identity as one of the main principles of social and political life. It exists in the context of See Dabashi, 92–93. See Patrica Crone and Martin Hinds, God’s Caliph: Religious Authority in the First Centuries of Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986), 97.

29 30

14 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN mixed societies in which, very often, different confessional groups live side by side and share many cultural practices, even beliefs. Therefore, it is an instrument of differentiation, powering identity formation in times of peace, though especially in times of conflict with the social and religious ‘other’. … Indeed, from the early Islamic period forward, an individual’s religious affiliation was the basis of his political affiliation. 31

Sahner’s definition of sectarianism, then, as a melding of religious, political, and social affiliation in the context of different confessional groups living side by side will be useful for our thinking about sectarianism in the context of Fāṭimid Palestine. There is one further matter to discuss regarding the word ‘sectarianism’; which concerns the suggestion that it is somehow a ‘dangerous’ word to use. This is due in large part to its frequent usage among Western media outlets when they report on conflicts in the Middle East. Sahner relates how, when attending a meeting of Syrian opposition activists in 2013, he encountered the argument from one activist that “religion plays no role” in the sectarian conflict then occurring in Syria. After first rejecting this statement, which he saw as a “studied denial of the reality of the war,” Sahner later came to appreciate the point that “the allegedly immutable tie between sect and politics” is not always as strong as thought. Yet even more significantly, he perceived a deeper fear in this activist, that “by treating sectarianism as a politically and strategically salient dimension of the conflict, we would somehow give credence to it, legitimize it, and normalize it through discussion.” 32 It is in this way that the word is dangerous, for some activists and scholars perceive the usage of this word to be unnecessarily stirring up religious strife when these conflicts, they say, are strictly (or primarily) political. 33 This Christian Sahner, Among the Ruins: Syria’s Past and Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 83–4. 32 Sahner, Among the Ruins, 95–7. 33 A good example of this might be the statement by Ussama Makdisi that “the ‘sectarian’ Middle East simply does not exist; it is imagined to exist, and then it is produced.” While Makdisi later goes on to qualify this assertion, saying that sectarianism in the Middle East does exist but that he 31

1. INTRODUCTION

15

is an issue that we will need to keep in mind as we proceed with this study, and we will return to its discussion at the conclusion of the book.

Fāṭimid era mosque built inside the Monastery of St. Catherineʼs in the Sinai.

simply wants to point out that the West has exacerbated it, the way he begins his article suggests unease with the term. See Ussama Makdisi, “Understanding Sectarianism in the Middle East,” The Cairo Review of Global Affairs, July 12, 2017, https://www.thecairoreview.com/tahrirforum/understanding-sectarianism-in-the-middle-east/. Nader Hashemi, who takes a more sophisticated approach to this question relative to Makdisi, similarly identifies sectarianism as a product of political authoritarianism rather than as issuing from “ancient theology.” See Nader Hashemi, “The politics of sectarianism: What causes sectarian conflict, and can it be undone?” ABC Religion and Ethics, October 17, 2019, https://www.abc.net.au/religion/the-middle-east-and-the-politics-ofsectarianism/11613338.

16 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN

Mosque of ʿUmar (left) and Church of the Holy Sepulchre (right)

Old Justinian wall surrounding the Monastery of St. Catherineʼs in the Sinai.

1. INTRODUCTION

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Dinar minted by the Fāṭimid caliph al-Muʿizz li-Dīn Allāh (ca. 969 CE)

FĀṬIMID CALIPHS AND THEIR CHRISTIAN SUBJECTS IN JERUSALEM

Let us begin our study with texts recounting two different moments of conflict between Jerusalem’s Christians and their Fāṭimid rulers. The first is by historian Taqī al-Dīn Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī al-Maqrīzī (d. 845/1442), a Sunnī Mamlūk Egyptian with ʿAlīd sympathies who took a deep interest in the history of the Ismāʿīlī Shīʿite dynasty of the Fāṭimids, with its capital in Cairo, Egypt, and a historian whose work we will examine in the fourth chapter. 34 In [the year 400/1009], Christians (al-Naṣārā) went up from Egypt to Jerusalem to be present at Easter (Fiṣḥ) in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (al-Qumāma), 35 according to their habit every year, to make stately adornments [to the church], much as the Muslims do in going out on pilgrimage (ḥajj). So [the Fāṭimid caliph] al-Ḥākim asked Khatkīn al-Ḍayf al-ʿAḍudī, one of his commanders, about that, due to [Khatkīn’s] knowledge of the affairs of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. [Khatkīn] said, “This church the Christians greatly revere, and Shainool Jiwa argues that al-Maqrīzī’s Shāfiʿī and Ṣūfī inclinations meant that he had a certain devotion to and love for the ahl al-bayt (the family of the Prophet), and this along with his love of country accounted for his even-handed treatment of the Fāṭimids in his work. See Jiwa, Towards a Shiʿi Mediterranean Empire, 32–47. 35 Al-Qumāma is a derogatory term meaning “rubbish” that Muslims used when referring to the church of the Holy Sepulchre. The Christian name for the church, al-Qiyāma, means “resurrection” in Arabic. 34

18 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN they go on pilgrimage to it from all the lands. Kings come to it, and carry to it great wealth, garments, curtains, furnishings, lamps, crosses made of gold and silver, and vessels of that [kind]. There are in [the church] a great many things of that [kind]. When it is the day of Easter, the Christians gather at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, crosses are erected, and lamps placed in the altar. They employ artful means in connecting the fire to it by means of elder oil [mixed] with mercury. It creates for [this purpose] a bright light such that those who see it suppose it came down from the heavens.” Al-Ḥākim denied [the plausibility of] that and ordered Bishr ibn Sūrīn, the scribe of the epistolary, to write to Aḥmad ibn Yaʿqūb, the dāʿī, to go to Jerusalem to destroy the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and to allow the people to plunder it until its traces were obliterated. [Aḥmad b. Yaʿqūb] did that. Then [al-Ḥākim] ordered that [Aḥmad b. Yaʿqūb] destroy the synagogues and churches that were in the various districts of his kingdom. Yet fearing that the Christians would destroy the mosques of the Muslims that were in their lands, [Aḥmad b. Ya ʿqūb] refrained from doing that. 36

Caliph al-Ḥākim’s order to destroy the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem is an incident well known to both medieval and modern scholars in the West. This is so especially due to the judgement of the crusader-era bishop William of Tyre (d. 583/1187) that the sins of al-Ḥākim “so far exceeded those of his predecessors and successors alike that his name has become proverbial to later generations who read of his madness.” 37 A few lines later, William clarifies that the most notorious of his actions Taqī al-Dīn Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ al-ḥunafāʾ bi-akhbār alaʾimma al-Fāṭimiyyīn al-khulafāʾ (Lessons for the true believers in the history of the Fatimid imams and caliphs), vol. 2 (Cairo: al-Lajnat Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-Islāmī, 1971), 74–5. See also the translation by Paul E. Walker, Caliph of Cairo: Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, 996–1021 (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2009), 75. 37 William of Tyre, A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, ed. and trans. Emily Atwater Babcock and A.C. Krey, vol. 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943), 66. For the original text in Latin, see William of Tyre, Chronique, ed. R.B.C. Huygens, vol. 1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1986), 110. 36

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was “the total demolition of the church of the Lord’s Resurrection.” Western historians since have focused on the impact al-Ḥākim’s destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre had on the Christian West. For example, the Crusades historian Christopher Tyerman writes that “news of the outrage rang across the west,” 38 and Carole Hillenbrand notes that alḤākim’s actions “are usually considered to have been a contributing factor to the gradual evolution of the desire in Christian Europe to launch the First Crusade and to rescue what were perceived as the endangered holy places of Christendom.” 39 Comparatively fewer historians, though, have considered the impact of the church’s destruction on Muslim-Christian relations in Palestine itself, and along with this, the sectarian undercurrents present in this passage. In his biography of al-Ḥākim, Paul Walker noted that Abū al-Manṣūr Bishr ibn Sūrīn, mentioned by alMaqrīzī as the clerk who issued the caliph’s order to destroy the church (and who indeed composed the decree) was himself a Nestorian Christian. Walker, though, does not speculate on the significance of this extraordinary fact. He says only that this “added a strange twist not easily accepted.” 40 Yet it raises the question: how could a Christian draft the order to destroy the very Christopher Tyerman, God’s War: A New History of the Crusades (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 2006), 55. 39 Carole Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives (New York: Routledge, 2000), 17. 40 Paul E. Walker, Caliph of Cairo: al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah. 996-1021 (New York: The American University in Cairo Press, 2009), 135. Abū al-Manṣūr Bishr ibn Sūrīn came from the Sūrēn family. (The vowels differ, as Sūrīn is the Arabic form while Sūrēn is the middle Persian form.) The Sūrēn family was an aristocratic Iranian one, the origins of which are preSasanian. Several are known to have been martyrs and bishops for the Church of the East in Sasanian and then Umayyad and ʿAbbāsid Iraq. Of particular note is Sūrēn of al-Madāʾin (Ctesiphon), bishop of Nisibis, then of Holwan and, for a short time, Patriarch around the year 137/754 in Baṣra. For more on this, see Ferdinand Justi, Iranisches Namenbuch (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1963), 316–7. My thanks go to Kaveh Farrokh and Kevin van Bladel for alerting me to the prominence of the Sūrēn family in the Church of the East. 38

20 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN building that commemorates the location of the death and resurrection of Jesus? Was it because the Melkites (Byzantine Chalcedonians) had control of the church, and Ibn Sūrīn deemed this to be an opportunity to weaken Melkite control of Jerusalem? Alternatively, was Ibn Sūrīn simply following orders and afraid to contravene the will of al-Ḥākim? If one looks closely enough, one may also detect sectarian undercurrents among the Muslims in this passage. Al-Maqrīzī wrote that Ibn Sūrīn asked a Syrian dāʿī, Abū al-Fawāris Aḥmad b. Yaʿqūb, to carry out the order to destroy the Holy Sepulchre. In the Fāṭimid government, the dāʿī was a member of an inner circle of Ismāʿīlī missionaries whose purpose was to work throughout Sunnī regions in an effort to turn supporters of the ʿAbbāsids into rulers loyal to the Fāṭimids. 41 Yet the Fāṭimids also had an army, navy, and police that reported to al-Ḥākim through the wāsiṭa (a kind of lesser wazīr). 42 Why, then, was a dāʿī (and not an officer in the military) tasked with the destruction of Christendom’s most symbolic church? Al-Ḥākim apparently deemed the task important enough not to entrust it to anyone except an Ismāʿīlī missionary, one who represented those Muslims most committed and loyal to the Fāṭimid caliph. This event may become more intelligible when compared with other measures al-Ḥākim instituted against Christians. AlMaqrīzī writes that in 395/1004, “a decree read in the mosques ordered the Jews and Christians to fasten on the zunnār [a waist Walker notes that the Ismāʿīlī daʿwa had a notable if temporary success when in 401/1010, Qirwāsh ibn al-Muqallid, the ʿUqaylid ruler of northern Mesopotamia, invoked the name of al-Ḥākim in the Friday sermon (khuṭba), thereby switching his allegiance from the ʿAbbāsids to the Fāṭimids. See Walker, Caliph of Cairo, 119–20. Jiwa has observed that other rulers in al-Anbār to the north of Baghdad, in al-Madāʾin (Ctesiphon) and Qaṣr Ibn Ḥubayra to the south, and in Kūfa, also switched allegiances, thereby creating a “noose” around the ʿAbbāsid caliph. See Shainool Jiwa, “The Baghdad Manifesto (402/1011): A ReExamination of Fatimid-Abbasid Rivalry” in Farhad Daftary and Shainool Jiwa, eds, The Fatimid Caliphate: Diversity of Traditions (London: I.B. Tauris, 2018), 48. 42 Walker, Caliph of Cairo, 107, 135–7 41

1. INTRODUCTION

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band] and wear the ghiyār [a badge] and to make them black, the symbol of the seditious ʿAbbāsids.” 43 Milka Levy-Rubin has observed from her study of al-Ṭabarī and a Samaritan chronicle from the third/ninth century that the ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Mutawakkil (d. 247/861) ordered that dhimmīs should wear yellow ghiyār, and further specified that men should wear yellow hoods and turbans, women yellow mantles, and slaves yellow patches on garments. She clarifies that yellow was considered to be a ‘bad’ color in Muslim tradition, citing, for example, a ḥadīth from the Prophet Muḥammad prohibiting yellow clothes as those of low quality. Levy-Rubin also cites a denigrating comment by the grammarian Ibn al-Washshāʾ (d. 325/927) that yellow was a color used by women during times of menstruation and illness. What alMutawakkil would not permit, however, was that dhimmīs might wear “the black and blue which he reserved for his faith.” 44 By dressing dhimmīs in black rather than yellow, then, al-Ḥākim was making an expressly political statement, putting the ahl al-kitāb in the same category as the ʿAbbāsid arch-enemies of the Fāṭimid caliphs. 45 See al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ, 53, and a translation in Walker, Caliph of Cairo, 65. 44 Levy-Rubin places this demarcation by color in the context of the earlier pre-Islamic Sasanian class structure, which also separated its classes according to color, and which, Levy-Rubin believes, was an inspiration for al-Mutawakkil and later ʿAbbāsid caliphs such as al-Muqtadir (d. 320/932) who sought to separate Muslims from dhimmīs. She posits that the term ghiyār has no early usage in Arabic and may have come from the Pahlavi term judāgih, which had to do with distinctions or differences. See Milka Levy-Rubin, Non-Muslims in the Early Islamic Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2011), 104–12, 135, 144, 148–9. 45 The color of the Fāṭimids appears to have been white. The caliph alMuʿizz dispatched “seven of the famous white Fatimid banners” along with a letter to his dāʿī in Sind in 354/965, declaring that white banners would be the symbol of the authority of the Ismāʿīlī imām-caliphs. White banners also flew over the city of Fusṭāṭ when al-Muʿizz’s general Jawhar led the Fāṭimid army into the city. See Shainool Jiwa, The Fatimids: 1. The Rise of a Muslim Empire (London: The Institute of Ismaʿili Studies, 2017), 108, 129. 43

22 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN There is also the matter of the ʿUmar mosque to consider. Scholars know of a mosque that existed in the Christian quarter and was dedicated to the second caliph ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb (d. 23/644), who upon Jerusalem’s surrender to his armies, is said to have refused to worship in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for fear that the church might be turned into a mosque. The mosque was probably built sometime in the early fourth/tenth century (and possibly earlier), before Jerusalem fell under Fāṭimid control. 46 Moreover, it was built west of the Cardo Maximus (the road separating the two northern quarters), at the southeast corner of the Holy Sepulchre complex, and thus still within the Christian quarter (see maps below). Given the well-known disdain that the Shīʿa have long had for ʿUmar as one of the caliphs who ‘robbed’ ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib of his rightful place as ruler of the Muslim umma, 47 it is possible that al-Ḥākim had his dāʿī destroy the mosque at the same time that he destroyed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Unfortunately, scholars have not yet been able to identify when the mosque was destroyed, so such claims must necessarily be speculative. Moreover, the Russian Orthodox built the Church of St. Alexander Nevsky over the site of the old

The Israeli archaeologist Dan Bahat proposed a date of 323/935 for the founding of the ʿUmar mosque. See his maps in Donald Whitcomb, “Jerusalem and the Beginnings of the Islamic City” in Katharina Galor and Gideon Avni, Unearthing Jerusalem: 150 Years of Archaeological Research in the Holy City (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2011), 402–3. Jürgen Krüger, though, has identified an Arabic inscription in Kūfic letters at the site of the now destroyed mosque, which suggests that the mosque could have been established even earlier. The inscription unfortunately does not identify a ruler or date in which the mosque was built. See Jürgen Krüger, Die Grabeskirche zu Jerusalem (Regensburg: Schnell und Steiner, 2000), 72–3. 47 Heinz Halm names several ‘opponents’ of ʿAlī, ʿUmar among them, who are routinely cursed at Shīʿite festivals and from the mosque’s pulpit, which he says “even today result in conflicts with the Sunnis who are provoked by vituperation directed against the first Caliphs and prominent Companions of the Prophet.” See Halm, 11–12. 46

1. INTRODUCTION

23

Constantinian church, making excavation of the area more difficult. 48 Lest one discount al-Ḥākim’s actions as that of a madman (a position we will consider at some length in chapter five), there is reason to believe that al-Ḥākim was deliberately pursuing a policy fueled by sectarian tensions. Jennifer Pruitt has argued that alḤākim’s demolition of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and other churches in the Fāṭimid empire occurred after al-Ḥākim turned away from esoteric Ismāʿīlī thought to embrace sharīʿa-based rule that appealed to Sunnīs as well as to Shīʿa. She observes that early in al-Ḥākim’s reign, “the young caliph continued the general pattern of church tolerance established by the early Fatimid caliphs,” with al-Ḥākim even visiting some monasteries within the caliphate. 49 She notes, though, that due to local tensions simmering between Christians and Muslims, al-Ḥākim did destroy a few churches and introduced a series of laws that penalized Jews and Christians. 50 At the same time, al-Ḥākim embarked on an anti-Sunnī program of denigrating the Companions and the first caliphs in an attempt to ‘Ismāʿīlize’ public spaces. Yet when Abū Rakwa, a Sunnī who claimed to be a descendant of the Umayyads, rebelled against al-Ḥākim and marched on Cairo in 395/1005, al-Ḥākim changed his tactics, and began a rapprochement with Sunnīs in Egypt in order to win their loyalty. 51 Among the various policies al-Ḥākim instituted was a more systematic persecution of Christians, and it was in this context that he ordered the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a church that had irked many Muslims due to its Krüger speculates that the second (and present) Mosque of ʿUmar was built to the south of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre because the main entrance to the Holy Sepulchre shifted to the south after the destruction of the eastern part of the Constantinian church. See Krüger, 73. If this is correct, then it is possible that the original ʿUmar mosque was destroyed at the same time as the Constantinian church and rebuilt to the south following the Holy Sepulchre’s reconstruction. 49 See Jennifer Pruitt, “Method in Madness: Recontextualizing the Destruction of Churches in the Fatimid Era,” Muqarnas 30 (2013) 122. 50 Pruitt, “Method in Madness,” 123. 51 Pruitt, “Method in Madness,” 125–6. 48

24 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN prominence in Jerusalem and its importance to Christians more generally. Pruitt writes: “By destroying a formerly protected monument that had resided at the heart of Muslim-Christian struggles for centuries, al-Hakim had accomplished something that previous Muslim rulers were reluctant or unable to do.” 52 If we accept Pruitt’s argument, then, al-Ḥākim intensified hostilities toward Christians in order to appease Sunnīs in Palestine and Egypt who were jealous of the Christians there, and thereby win their support. This tactic is quite different from the Imāmī juristic approach that Freidenreich describes, which censures dhimmīs as part of an effort to distance the Shīʿa from ‘corrupted’ Sunnīs. Let us turn now to another symbolic incident that occurred in Fāṭimid Jerusalem, one that occurred long after al-Ḥākim’s rule, during the caliphate of his grandson al-Mustanṣir (d. 487/1094). The Latin text comes from the aforementioned Crusader bishop William of Tyre: It is a fact, however, that from the time the Latins [Crusaders] entered Jerusalem, and, indeed, for many years before, the patriarch had held as his own a fourth part of the city. How this came about, together with the origin and reason for his so holding it, may be briefly stated.… Ancient traditions say that during the time this city was held by the infidels it never enjoyed continuous peace, even for a short time. On the contrary, it was harried by repeated wars and endured many sieges because the neighboring princes desired to win it for themselves. As a consequence, through age and the havoc wrought by siege, its walls and towers had fallen into ruins, and the place lay exposed to the machinations of enemies from every direction. At this period, the kingdom of the Egyptians [Fāṭimids] surpassed all other kingdoms of the East and the South…. Pruitt, “Method in Madness,” 128. Pruitt argues that al-Ḥākim’s destruction of the churches appears to have spurred the political conversion of the ʿAbbāsid Iraqi governor Qirwāsh ibn al-Muqallid to the Fāṭimid cause, though he reverted to the ʿAbbāsids after they issued the ‘Baghdad Manifesto’, a decree that called for Sunnīs and Shīʿa to unite in opposition to the Fāṭimids. 52

1. INTRODUCTION Desiring to enlarge the limits of his empire and expand his sovereignty far and wide, the caliph of Egypt sent out his armies and seized by force the whole of Syria…. He ordered each city to rebuild its walls and raise strong towers round about. In accordance with this general edict, the procurator in charge of Jerusalem compelled the inhabitants of that place to obey the common orders and to restore the wall and towers to their former condition. In the distribution of this work it happened, rather by malice aforethought than by a just parceling out, that a fourth part of this reconstruction work was assigned to the wretched Christians who were living at Jerusalem. These faithful people, however, were already so ground down by corvees and extra corvees [that is, forced labor in lieu of taxes], by tributes and taxes, and by the rendering of various ignominious services that the wealth of their entire community was scarcely sufficient to enable them to restore even one or two of these towers. Perceiving, therefore, that their enemies were seeking occasion against them and having no other resort, they betook themselves to the governor. Humbly they prayed to him with tears that he would impose upon them a task in proportion to their strength, for they were utterly unable to accomplish that which had been assigned to them. But the governor ordered them to be sent forth from his presence under heavy threats…. Through the intervention of many mediators and the free use of gifts, they finally succeeded in obtaining a stay of sentence from the governor until envoys could be sent to the emperor at Constantinople to implore alms from him for the accomplishment of their task. Envoys were at once sent to the emperor. On arriving they explained to the best of their ability the appalling condition of the Christians, their groans and their tears. The recital evoked the compassion of all who listened. The envoys described in detail the sufferings of the Christians, the insulting blows and spitting, the shackles and incarcerations to which they were exposed for the name of Christ. They told how the wretched people constantly suffered the loss of their goods by confiscation—nay, more, how they were subject to crucifixion and all kinds of torture. They went on to explain

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26 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN the pretexts by which their enemies were seeking to destroy that pitiful people. At that time, Constantine, surnamed Monomachus [Constantine X], a wise and splendid man, was wielding the scepter and administering with vigorous energy the empire of Constantinople. He gave a ready assent to the pitiful petitions of Christ’s faithful ones and promised them money with which to accomplish the task laid upon them, for he felt full and loving sympathy with their continued troubles and afflictions. He added this condition, however: the money should be given if they could obtain a promise from the lord of the land that none but Christians should be permitted to dwell within the circuit of the wall which they proposed to erect by means of the imperial donation.… Messengers were immediately dispatched to their great and supreme lord, the caliph of Egypt. Divine favor attended these envoys, for they succeeded in their mission and obtained a document confirmed by the caliph’s signature and his seal. Having at last brought the matter to a successful end, the deputies returned home, and the Christians, by the help of God, completed the portion of wall allotted to them. This was in the year of the Incarnation of the Lord 1063, in the thirtysixth year before the liberation of the city, under the reign of the Egyptian Caliph Mustanṣir. Up to that time the Saracens and Christians had dwelt together indifferently. Thenceforward, by the order of the prince, the Saracens were forced to remove to other parts of Jerusalem, leaving the quarter named to the faithful without dispute. By this change, the condition of the servants of Christ was materially improved. Because of their enforced association with the men of Belial, quarrels had often arisen, which greatly increased their troubles. When at last they were able to dwell by themselves, without the disturbance of discord, their lives flowed more tranquilly. Any disagreements which arose were referred to the church, and the controversy was settled by the decision of the patriarch then ruling as sole mediator. From that day, then, and in the manner just described, this quarter of the city had had no other judge or lord than the

1. INTRODUCTION

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patriarch, and the church therefore laid claim to that section as its own in perpetuity. 53

There is a great deal to consider here, but let us first focus on William’s comment that Jerusalem “was harried by repeated wars and endured many sieges because the neighboring princes desired to win it for themselves.” Though it is not obvious from William’s words, the background for Jerusalem’s continued misfortune was that of Islamic sectarian conflict. Jerusalem was located in a region of the Fāṭimid empire that was at its north-eastern frontier, and by al-Mustanṣir’s time, the city and Palestine more generally were becoming increasingly vulnerable to the growing threat of the Sunnī Saljūq Turks, who in 447/1055 had conquered Baghdad, the symbolic seat of the ʿAbbāsid empire, and then northern Syria five years later. This advance does much to explain al-Mustanṣir’s efforts to fortify Jerusalem’s walls. Yet the effort ultimately proved vain. The year 463/1071 was particularly momentous for the Saljūqs, for at the same time that the Saljūq sultan Alp Arslan inflicted on the Byzantines a decisive defeat at Manzikert (in what is now eastern Turkey), Saljūq armies took both Damascus and Jerusalem from al-Mustanṣir. The Fāṭimids only briefly recaptured Palestine in 491/1098, a year before the Crusaders arrived in 492/1099. 54 See William of Tyre, A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, 405–7, for the English translation, and Chronique, 442–4, for the Latin. 54 For an overview of the decline and fall of the Fāṭimids in Palestine, see chapter 6 of Moshe Gil, A History of Palestine: 634–1099 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992). In addition to fortifying Jerusalem against Saljūq attack, the caliph al-Ẓāhir also embarked on ambitious reconstruction projects in Jerusalem, notably that of the al-Aqṣā Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, previously damaged by an earthquake. Yaron Friedman has argued that this threatened Sunnī dominance in Jerusalem, and he quotes the Sunnī historian alMusabbiḥī (d. 422/1030) as recording that visiting pilgrims from Khurāsān (mostly likely Sunnī pilgrims) spoke favorably of the “heresy,” much to al-Musabbiḥī’s chagrin. Friedman also mentions that the Persian Ismāʿīlī traveler Nāṣir Khusraw, who died in the late fifth/eleventh century, said that those pilgrims who cannot make the obligatory ḥajj to Mecca make it to Jerusalem, thereby suggesting that 53

28 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN Here is the full description of the boundaries of the Christian quarter by William of Tyre during the Crusader period: This quarter is described as follows: the outer boundary is formed by the wall which extends from the west gate, or the gate of David, past the corner tower which is known as the tower of Tancred as far as the north gate which is called by the name of the first martyr Stephen. The inner boundary is formed by the public street [Cardo Maximus] which runs from the gate of Stephen straight to the tables of the money-changers, and thence back again to the west gate. Within these boundaries are contained the sacred places of the Lord’s passion and resurrection, the house of the Hospital, and two monasteries, one of monks and the other of holy women. Both these cloisters are known as the monasteries of the Latins. The house of the patriarch and the cloister of the canons of the Holy Sepulchre with their appurtenances also lie within its limits. (See William of Tyre, Chronique, v1, 444–5; 407–8 in Babcock and Krey’s translation.)

the Fāṭimids may have intended to make Jerusalem an alternative site for the ḥajj. If that is true, this would surely not have pleased the ʿAbbāsids. See Yaron Friedman, The Shīʿīs in Palestine: From the Medieval Golden Age until the Present (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 14–16.

1. INTRODUCTION

Figure 1. Maps of Jerusalem All maps here are reproduced from Eric H. Cline, Jerusalem Besieged: From Ancient Canaan to Modern Israel (Ann Arbor: Univ of Michigan, 2004), 140, 152, 168. They were originally produced by Mark Stein of Mark Stein Studios, and appeared in Karen Armstrong, Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996.

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30 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN

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32 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN

SUNNISM, SHĪʿISM, AND THE PACT OF ʿUMAR IN PREFĀṬIMID PALESTINE

Though it will not be the focus of this book, it is important to give our study both historical and legal context, which entails a brief study of Sunnī Palestine, and particularly that of Sunnī legal reflection concerning dhimmīs. In this section of the chapter, then, we will seek to summarize scholarship on Palestine prior to the Fāṭimids (that is, Umayyad and ʿAbbāsid Palestine during the first three centuries of Islam) as well as review the so-called ‘Pact of ʿUmar’. Given this work’s limitations of space and scope, it will be impossible to do both of these tasks full justice, but we will at least try to cover those details that are most salient to our study. Among modern scholars, Moshe Gil has written the most comprehensive history of Islamic Palestine prior to the Crusades. 55 Following his introduction, Gil details in his second See Moshe Gil, A History of Palestine: 634-1099 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992). While it is undoubtedly the most important modern work of scholarship on Palestine prior to the Crusades, Gil’s history is not the only one. An older and more general work in this field is Guy Le Strange, Palestine under the Moslems: A Description of Syria and the Holy Land from A.D. 650 to 1500. London: Alexander P. Watt, 1890. The book is a geographical study of the region based on accounts from 24 medieval Muslim travellers and historians. Of special interest is Le Strange’s chapter on Jerusalem and its holy places of al-Aqṣā, the Dome of the Rock, and the Holy Sepulchre. Curiously, Le Strange does not include the Mosque of ʿUmar in his study. A much more recent work is Yaron Friedman’s The Shīʿīs in Palestine, in which he traces the general development of Shīʿism in Palestine during this period as well as the decline of Shīʿism in Palestine after the expulsion of the Fāṭimids there. For works on medieval Palestine’s Jewish community, see Marina Rustow, Heresy and the Politics of Community: The Jews of the Fatimid Caliphate. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 2014; and Judith Olszowy-Schlanger, Karaite marriage documents from the Cairo Geniza: legal tradition and community life in mediaevel Egypt and Palestine. Leiden: Brill, 1998. Other works that cover this period of Palestine’s history from the perspective of archaeology include Gideon Avni, The Byzantine-Islamic Transition in Palestine: An Archaeological Approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014; Myriam Rosen-Ayalon, Islamic Art and Archaeology of Palestine. 55

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chapter the transformation of Jerusalem from a Christian into a Muslim holy site. He examines the traditions tying the Prophet Muḥammad’s Night Journey to Jerusalem, and considers reasons why the Umayyad caliph ʿAbd al-Malik would have built the Dome of the Rock at the end of the first/seventh century. In the third chapter, he examines varying Muslim attitudes toward dhimmīs in Palestine, and he observes how, prior to the Crusades, Jerusalem was inhabited primarily by Christians. In the fourth chapter, Gil turns to a study of Palestine’s economy, noting how Christians worked mainly as scribes and physicians, while Jews typically worked as bankers. He also notes how Palestine’s economy was important to the Umayyad caliphate, given Palestine’s close proximity to Damascus. The ʿAbbāsid revolution and the subsequent move of the caliphate to Baghdad, however, changed all this, and in his fifth chapter, Gil shows how Palestine’s tribes became less important in the affairs of the caliph’s court. This in turn led to tribal rebellions and infighting between the Qays and the Yamanīs in Palestine. In 254/868, the ʿAbbāsid governor in Egypt, Aḥmad b. Ṭūlūn revolted, formed his own state, and took Palestine away from the ʿAbbāsids. Though the ʿAbbāsids were able to regain Palestine in 292/905, they ended up ceding real control to the Ikhshīdids three decades later, retaining only notional authority. The Ikhshīdids in turn were overthrown by the Fāṭimids in Egypt in 358/969 and ousted from Palestine a year later. Significant to our study is that all of these governments in Palestine prior to the Fāṭimids were Sunnī. We should not assume from this, though, that all Muslims living in Palestine were therefore Sunnī. On the contrary, Gil mentions that Shīʿite tendencies among the population were strong in Palestine, especially during the fourth/tenth century. 56 Gil writes that Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2006; and Robert Schick, The Christian Communities of Palestine from Byzantine to Islamic Rule: A Historical and Archaeological Study. Princeton: The Darwin Press, 1995. 56 It is better, perhaps, to say that Palestine had a proto-Shīʿite population, since Shīʿism was not fully formed during the Umayyad and early ʿAbbāsid times. Najm Haider has observed that the two core beliefs

34 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN Ibn al-Faqīh wrote in ca. 900 that the people of Tiberias, Nābulus and Jerusalem, as well as the majority of the people in ʿAmmān (referring to the Muslims, that is the tribes) were Shiites. ʿAbd al-Jabbār, writing in 995, also explicitly noted the considerable influence of the Shiites in many places, including Ramla, Tyre, Acre and Ascalon. The congenial atmosphere for Shiism was the background to the stay of the Fatimid mahdī, ʿUbaydallah, in Palestine. After he managed to escape from Salamiyya in Syria, he at first went to Tiberias, where a Fatimid missionary (dāʿī) lived. He welcomed him and his entourage and warned them not to go into the city lest they be recognized by the authorities. They continued on to Ramla, where the governor was a follower of the Fatimids, one of ʿUbaydallah’s devotees. He looked after them and supplied them with all their needs for two years. When a letter arrived from the governor of Damascus probing into the matter of the mahdī and requesting that if he were seen, he should be caught, the governor of Ramla replied that no one of that description had arrived in Ramla. The latter also swore allegiance to the mahdī, who lived in his house. 57

that all second/eighth-century Shīʿa shared in Kūfa, a city closely associated with ʿAlī and the home of many of the Imams, “were the conviction that ʿAlī was the rightful successor to the Prophet and the acceptance of the institution of the Imāmate. Within this broad umbrella, there was potential for considerable variation.” Haider’s description of Shīʿism in Kūfa serves nicely as a general description of the basic beliefs of proto-Shīʿites, while still allowing for differences within the various communities that identified with ʿAlī. See Najam Haider, The Origins of the Shīʿa: Identity, Ritual, and Sacred Space in Eighth-Century Kūfa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 13. 57 See Gil, History, 312. ʿUbaydallah was the diminutive form of the titleʿAbdallāh al-Mahdī, and a pejorative term used by those who opposed the Fāṭimids. Crone observes that ʿAbdallāh al-Mahdī, whose proper name was Saʿīd b. al-Ḥusayn, was not (and did not pretend to be) the son of the Imam Ismāʿīl, given as he was from the city of Salamiyya in Syria, where he was known to be from the family of ʿAqīl b. Abī Ṭālib, the elder brother of ʿAlī. Thus, his claim to the imamate, which he made through the eldest son of Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, ʿAbdallāh, did not go uncontested, and indeed the vast majority of Ismāʿīlīs did not accept it.

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In addition to the above, Yaron Friedman finds further evidence of Shīʿite presence as early as the second/eighth century, when “a convoy from Palestine” is said to have visited the fifth Imam Muḥammad al-Bāqir (d. 114/733), asking him about the interpretation of Sūrat al-Ikhlāṣ 112. Roughly a century later, alYaʿqūbī (d. 284/897) in his Kitāb al-Buldān (The Book of the Countries) also referred to a Shīʿite village in Galilee settled by the ʿĀmila tribe. Friedman then observes that there was a significant Shīʿite presence in Tiberias at the beginning of the fourth/tenth century, when a wealthy and respected Shīʿite landowner there by the name of Abū al-Ṭayyib Muḥammad b. Ḥamza was murdered by Ṭughj b. Juff al-Farghānī, founder of the Ikhshīdid dynasty, the Sunnī dynasty that preceded the Fāṭimids in Palestine. Friedman also identifies Ramla as an increasingly important city for Shīʿites, as Shīʿite scholars such as Yaḥyā b. ʿĪsā al-Tamīmī al-Nahshalī al-Fakhūrī (d. 202/817) began emigrating from Kūfa, which they called al-Ramla al-Ḥamrāʾ (the red land covered with sand), to Ramla al-Bayḍāʾ (the white land covered with sand). 58 Also important to this book is Gil’s discussion of the traditions relating to ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb, the second caliph, and his conquest of Jerusalem in 16/637. Drawing on accounts from al-Maqdisī and from al-Ṭabarī, Gil discusses how Muslims remembered the caliph ʿUmar’s visit to Jerusalem as a “demonstration of humility, modesty, and austerity” in which ʿUmar exhibited the values of a Bedouin, refusing to dress as someone in command for fear he might become arrogant. 59 The Only the Kutāma Berbers and Syrian tribesmen lent him their support, and Saʿīd b. al-Ḥusayn’s sojourn in Palestine occurred en route to the Berbers in North Africa. Crone also notes that while Saʿīd b. al-Ḥusayn was messianic in his political ideology, he did not hold that the messianic age had arrived yet, and so advocated for a government that functioned as the deputies (khulafāʾ) of the messiah, which in turn allowed the Fāṭimids to call themselves ‘caliphs’. For more on this, see Patricia Crone, Medieval Islamic Political Thought (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005), 197–218. 58 See Yaron Friedman, The Shīʿīs in Palestine, 6–9. 59 See Gil, 53.

36 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN account is not entirely without plausibility, for Gil also notes how the Christian chronicler Saʿīd ibn al-Biṭrīq (also known as Eutychius of Alexandria) recounts how ʿUmar refused an invitation by Jersualem’s patriarch Sophronius to pray in the church of St. Constantine (that is, the Holy Sepulchre) “in order to not give the Muslims a pretext and a precedent for confiscating it from the Christians.” 60 We have already mentioned this incident above in our discussion of the Mosque of ʿUmar, but what is notable here is that even a Christian recounted ʿUmar’s restraint at the moment of his victory. 61 There are other ways of interpreting this event, though, and indeed the account may well be hagiographic. S.D. Goitein believed ʿUmar’s refusal to worship in the Holy Sepulchre to be a legend useful to the Christians of Jerusalem who feared the “the encroachments of the Muslims” on their property. Further, he argues that when the mosque of ʿUmar was built, “half of the outer court of the Holy Sepulchre was taken away and a mosque erected on it (later called masjid ʿUmar, probably in order to emphasize, against Christian claims, that the caliph had prayed there).” 62 Robert Schick, for his part, cites a tradition from Saʿīd ibn al-Biṭrīq’s Taʾrīkh that says ʿUmar prayed on the steps outside the Holy Sepulchre, and Muslims later used this “as a pretext for

See Saʿīd ibn al-Biṭrīq, II, 17f in Gil, 67. Other traditions portray ʿUmar as exercising self-restraint, such as his insistence on not wearing noble or extravagant dress but entering Jerusalem in the humble clothing of a Bedouin, despite the offers of both Christians and Muslims to exchange it for finer dress. See Levy-Rubin, 131. 62 See EI2 s.v. al-Ḳuds (S.D. Goitein). Gideon Avni has noted that “the only Muslim presence in this area [the Christian quarter] is indicated by a large inscription in Arabic found in the Russian Hospice east of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre: it forbids Muslims from entering a certain mosque.” Avni says this is probably the mosque of ʿUmar, “established near the church in the 10th century.” See Avni, “The Byzantine-Islamic Transition in Jerusalem,” in Katharina Galor and Gideon Avni, eds., Unearthing Jerusalem: 150 Years of Archaeological Research in the Holy City (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2011), 394. 60 61

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taking over the church as a mosque.” 63 Regardless of how we interpret these traditions, though, what can be safely maintained is that ʿUmar’s influence over Jerusalem was significant enough to have later consequences, namely the building of a mosque in his name. This tradition, however, is not the only one that associates ʿUmar with Jerusalem. Gil also discusses a document recorded by al-Ṭabarī in which ʿUmar gave his protection to the city’s Christian inhabitants of Jerusalem. Gil’s translation of the document reads as follows: In the name of God, the merciful and compassionate. This is the covenant given by God’s slave ʿUmar, commander of the Believers, to the people of Jerusalem: He grants them security, to each person and his property; to their churches, their crosses, to the sick and the healthy, to all the people of their creed. We shall not station Muslim soldiers in their churches. We shall not destroy the churches nor impair any of their contents or their property or anything which belongs to them. We shall not compel the people of Jerusalem to renounce their beliefs and we shall do them no harm. No Jew shall live among them in Jerusalem. The people of Jerusalem are obliged to pay the same tax we impose on the inhabitants of other cities. The inhabitants of Jerusalem must rid themselves of the Byzantine army and any armed individuals. We ensure the safety of these people on their departure from Jerusalem, both of their persons and of their property, until they reach See Schick, The Christian Communities of Palestine from Byzantine to Islamic Rule, 329. Daniel J. Sahas agrees that this account “may be part of a lengthy Christian literature promulgated to safeguard the rights of the Christian community over the Holy Land and its sites.” Yet he also argues that the portrayal of both ʿUmar and Jerusalem’s patriarch Sophronius being concerned with piety, humility, and the place of prayer is in keeping with what we know of the men from another narration of this event by the second/eighth-century historian Theophanes, thereby suggesting that the account may be genuine. See Daniel J. Sahas, “The Face to Face Encounter Between Patriarch Sophronius of Jerusalem and the Caliph ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb: Friends or Foes?” in Emmanouela Grypeou, ed. The Encounter of Eastern Christianity with Early Islam (Boston: Brill, 2006), 33–44. 63

38 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN their asylum. To those who wish to remain in Jerusalem, we ensure their safekeeping, but they are obliged to pay the same tax that the other inhabitants of Jerusalem must pay. To those inhabitants of Jerusalem who wish to join the departing Byzantines in person and with their property, to vacate their churches, and abandon their crosses, we pledge to ensure the safety of their persons and that of their churches and their crosses, until they reach their destinations. Those villagers who are present [in Jerusalem] since the murder of so-and-so, should depart with the Byzantines, if they wish to do so, or return to their families; nothing will be collected from them before the harvest. 64

Levy-Rubin has argued that this treaty is authentic, noting its focus on the practical arrangements made for surrender of the city to the Muslims (such as ensuring the safety of those Byzantines departing the city and establishing the new tax regime). She also considers the clause stipulating that no Jew may live in the city as evidence of the document’s authenticity, as this would have preserved the status quo, in which Jews had not been permitted by the Roman empire to live inside the city walls of Jerusalem since the Bar-Kokhba revolt in the years 132–136 CE. Moreover, Christians had viewed the expulsion of the Jews from Jerusalem as evidence of the triumph of Christianity and would have viewed the re-entry of Jews into Jerusalem as a reversal of this and as a threat. Levy-Rubin writes: “Given that prohibiting the residence of Jews in Jerusalem was a key element in Christian policy, it is more than possible that the representatives of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, headed most probably by the Patriarch himself, demanded that the Muslims include such a clause in the surrender agreement.” 65 The Umayyad caliphs appear to have honored the treaty in some respects but not in others. In his study of Jerusalem’s architectural development following ʿUmar’s conquest of Jerusalem, Nimrod Luz has observed “the lack of drastic changes within the city following the conquest,” but that “one of the immediate outcomes of the political changes is the rejuvenation of Jewish presence in the city and the formation of 64 65

See Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, I, 2405f in Gil, 54. Levy-Rubin, 52.

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Jewish neighborhoods.” 66 He writes that “the first Jewish families settled south of the Ḥaram on the site of the former City of David,” and notes that “the existence of a synagogue [there] which was surely built after the conquest and against prevailing Islamic law should be seen as a spatial attestation of the general acceptance of minority communities in Jerusalem despite occasional setbacks.” 67 It will be instructive to compare this treaty with the so-called ‘Pact of ʿUmar’ that is commonly thought to have governed the affairs of Jews and Christians living under Islamic rule throughout the medieval and pre-modern periods. The Pact of ʿUmar is not the same as the covenant mentioned above by al-Ṭabarī, despite the fact that both treaties have the name of ʿUmar attached to them. A.S. Tritton has written the classic Western work on the Pact of ʿUmar and the dhimmīs who lived under its restrictions. In that work, Tritton offers an account of the conditions of the pact that is worth citing in full. It is from a letter allegedly from ʿUmar, in which he quotes another letter from some unnamed Christians as follows: When you [Muslims] came to us [Christians], we asked of you safety for our lives, our families, our property, and people of our religion on these conditions: to pay tribute out of hand and be humiliated; not to hinder any Muslim from stopping in our churches by night or day, to entertain him there three days and give him food there and open to him their doors; to beat the nākūs [a board beaten with a stick or hammer] only gently in them and not to raise our voices in them in chanting; not to shelter there, nor in any of our houses, a spy of your enemies; not to build a church, convent, hermitage, or cell, nor repair those that are dilapidated, nor assemble in any that is in a Muslim quarter, nor in their presence; not to display idolatry nor invite to it, nor show a cross on our churches, nor in any of the roads or markets of the Muslims; not to learn the Koran nor teach it to our children; not to prevent any of our Nimrod Luz, “Islam, Culture, and the ‘Others’: The Landscape of Religious (In)tolerance in Jerusalem 638–1517,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 40 (2013), 10. 67 Luz, 16. 66

40 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN relatives from turning Muslim if he wish it; to cut our hair in front; to tie the zunnār round our waists; to keep to our religion; not to resemble the Muslims in our dress, appearance, saddles, the engraving on our seals (that we should engrave them in Arabic); not to use their kunyas [titles, such as ‘father of’]; to honor and respect them, to stand up for them when we meet together; to guide them in their ways and goings; not to make our houses higher (than theirs); not to keep weapons or swords, nor wear them in a town or on a journey in Muslim lands; not to sell wine or display it; not to light fires with our dead in a road where Muslims dwell, nor to raise our voices at their (our?) funerals, nor bring them near Muslims; not to strike a Muslim; not to keep slaves who have been the property of Muslims. We impose these terms on ourselves and our co-religionists; he who rejects them has no protection. 68

What is striking here is how focused this treaty is on the details and practicalities of Muslims living among Christians, and its concern that Muslims have social as well as military supremacy over Christians. By contrast, ʿUmar’s treaty with Jerusalem focuses on the terms of the Byzantine army’s surrender of the city, and it attends to only a few details regarding the security of Christians living in and around Jerusalem. The comparison certainly suggests that the Pact of ʿUmar does not date to the time of ʿUmar but depicts a situation of a later time, when Muslims and Christians lived in close proximity to each other. Accordingly, Tritton takes a sceptical view of the treaty, noting that “it is not usual for a conquered people to decide the terms on which they shall be admitted to alliance with the victors.” He further observes how “it is strange that the conquered Christians should forbid themselves all knowledge of the Koran, and yet quote it to the caliph, ‘to pay tribute out of hand and be humbled’ [Q 9:29].” 69 He also notes how unusual it is for a treaty of this kind not to be concluded with a specific town or city. He thereby concludes that “no one knew what the covenant of ʿUmar was; A.S. Tritton, The Caliph and their Non-Muslim Subjects (London: Frank Cass and Co., 1930 [1970]), 5–6. 69 Tritton, 8. 68

1. INTRODUCTION

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and that any collection of peace terms might be glorified with his name. It would seem that it was an exercise in the schools of law to draw up pattern treaties.” 70 As this section of the chapter is concerned with the legal situation of Christians in Palestine prior to the coming of the Fāṭimids, we need to ask how Islamic law was developing between the fall of Jerusalem to ʿUmar in 16/637 and the fall of Jerusalem to the Fāṭimids in 359/970. Indeed, this is the period in which the Sunnī madhhabs (schools of law) were still forming, and so one needs to be cautious of Tritton’s critique. He is surely right that the Pact of ʿUmar was in its final form a template treaty to which the name of ʿUmar was later (and erroneously) attached. Yet we should not assume that this template was systematically used in Palestine by the Umayyads or even by the early ʿAbbāsids, nor that it was then widespread in use across Muslim lands. LevyRubin has surveyed various versions of the Pact and concluded that “by about 900 the text was well known, and that there were already several versions of it that were going around.” She says, though, that “in the initial stages of the process this text did not reflect a consensus concerning the status of the dhimmīs but in fact represented only one of several existing approaches to the issues in question.” 71 Levy-Rubin argues that during the second/eighth and third/ninth centuries, the regulations concerning dhimmīs were not set but rather “the subject of lively debate.” Furthermore, she suggests that this debate began “most probably at the time of [the Umayyad caliph] ʿUmar II b. ʿAbd alʿAzīz, and culminated around the turn of the eighth century and the beginning of the ninth,” particularly under the caliphate of alMutawakkil. 72

Tritton, 12. Antoine Fattal agreed with Tritton on this, though he attributed the treaty to the Umayyad caliph ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (d.720), who, Fattal argued, took a harsher approach toward dhimmīs than had his predecessors. See Antoine Fattal, Le statut légal des nonmusulmans en pays d’Islam (Beirut: L’Institut de Lettres Orientales, 1958), 66-68. 71 Levy-Rubin, 60. 72 Levy-Rubin, 62, 100. 70

42 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN If we are to accept Levy-Rubin’s findings, Christians living in Palestine under the Umayyads and the early ʿAbbāsids, then, did not necessarily chafe under all of the restrictions the Pact of ʿUmar prescribed. Indeed, one may reasonably read the conditions in the Pact as reactions to situations in which Christians were not showing Muslims the honor Muslims believed themselves due, and were displaying symbols and leading processions that angered Muslims who believed Christianity should not have such a public profile. This is particularly likely in a city like Jerusalem, where the annual ceremonies and processions commemorating the death and resurrection of Jesus during the Passion Week drew large crowds of pilgrims as well as bystanders; where the Christian population still outnumbered its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants; and where two highly symbolic buildings (the Holy Sepulchre and the Dome of the Rock) stood in close proximity to one another. Levy-Rubin has noted, for example, from Saʿīd ibn al-Biṭrīq’s Taʾrīkh how in the early third/ninth century, Jerusalem’s patriarch Thomas argued with Muslim authorities over whether the Christians had rebuilt a collapsed dome in the Holy Sepulchre according to its previous measurements or whether the dome was now larger than that of the Dome of the Rock. 73 One can hear echoes of this kind of argument in the Pact’s insistence that Christians not make their houses higher than those of the Muslims. Before turning to this study’s method and description of sources, we have one final matter to consider that will be important when we later come to examine Fāṭimid fiqh and policy toward Christians. This has to do with the role that ḥadīths from the caliphs ʿUmar and ʿAlī played in influencing both Sunnī and Shīʿa jurisprudence about dhimmīs. Anver Emon has observed that “as a Companion he [ʿUmar] embodied in his words and actions a normative content that was relevant for later jurists as they studied and developed the law in subsequent centuries.” 74 Emon proceeds to review some of these traditions, notably one in which See Saʿīd ibn al-Biṭrīq, Taʾrikh, 55–6 in Levy-Rubin, 218. Anver M. Emon, Religious Pluralism and Islamic Law: Dhimmīs and Others in the Empire of Law (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012), 104.

73 74

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ʿUmar was not prepared to tolerate the existence of Arab Christians in the Arabian Peninsula, holding that they were not ahl al-kitāb, and thus expelled the Christian tribe of the Banū Najrān from the region. Emon claims that this action reflected a “universalizing ethos of Islam,” which required that Islam be unchallenged in supremacy in its birthplace. Yet in another tradition, ʿUmar allowed a different Arab Christian tribe, the Banū Taghlib, to stay in the Peninsula. Emon says this was a tactical decision having to do with the “imperial enterprise of governance,” for the tribe was strong and threatened to join with the Byzantine enemy if they were not given favorable conditions as dhimmīs. This dual policy, then, reveals a tension in ʿUmar’s approach, one that tried to find a middle ground between the universalist principle of Islam and the political needs of a nascent empire. 75 As Emon’s study is focused on Sunnī sources, he has less to say about ʿAlī. However, he does cite traditions from ʿAlī in the work of the Ḥanafī jurist Ibn Nujaym (d. 971/1563) that portray a standard commitment toward the protection of the lives and property of dhimmīs so long as they pay the jizya. Emon writes that this tradition “has been interpreted to suggest that once the non-Muslim paid the jizya, [he] entered the contract of protection” and that “his life and property were as inviolable (maʿṣūm) as a Muslim’s life and property.” 76 On the other hand, Ibn Nujaym also related that ʿAlī stipulated that dhimmīs were obligated to pay damages for personal injury, much as a Muslim would, and that, in the case of the Banū Taghlib cited above, Muslim men could not marry their women, given that Muslims did not know whether the tribe had embraced Christianity before or after its corruption. 77 As with ʿUmar, then, ʿAlī’s position

Emon, 67–8. Emon quotes Friedmann as saying that ʿUmar’s compromise was that the Banū Taghlib were not permitted to baptize their children. See Yohanan Friedmann, “Classification of Unbelievers in Sunni Muslim Law and Tradition,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 22 (1998): 170–1. 76 Emon, 90. 77 Emon, 68, 240. 75

44 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN appears to be nuanced, though the ban on marrying dhimmī women appears especially harsh, given that the Qurʾan gives Muslim men permission to marry among the “chaste women of those who were given the Book before you” (5:5). Levy-Rubin also cites traditions of ʿAlī taking exclusivist positions, such as not allowing dhimmīs to live in the miṣr of Kūfa (that is, a city built for Muslims). 78 We shall examine the traditions of ʿAlī concerning dhimmīs in more detail in the following chapters.

METHOD, SOURCES, AND PURPOSE

This book aims to make a number of contributions to the field. First, it seeks to shine a light on Ismāʿīlī (and more specifically Fāṭimid) fiqh, which, compared with Sunnī legal reasoning about dhimmīs, is still under-studied, and it does so in conversation with Freidenreich’s ground-breaking research on Shīʿite juristic reasoning regarding non-Muslims. Second, it explores the relationship between the texts that make up fiqh and the actual application of that reasoning, which is often inconsistent and dependent on other historical factors, yet important for understanding just how significant that legal reasoning was for the people living in those societies. In other words, it considers whether and how Fāṭimid legal reasoning translated into caliphal policies toward Christian subjects, particularly those subjects living within range of Sunnī incursions and rebellions. Finally, it seeks to understand how both Ismāʿīlī fiqh and the Fāṭimid application of that law actually impacted Palestinian Melkite Christians living under Fāṭimid rule. Since Palestine was directly connected to the Fāṭimid caliphate in Cairo, the work also includes discussion of the Christian communities in Egypt and their interactions with the caliphs there; and it acknowledges the Sunnī-Shīʿite tensions that existed both prior to and during the Fāṭimid caliphate in Egypt, the only period in Egypt’s history when it was governed by a Shīʿite caliphate. Accordingly, this book begins with an examination of Shīʿite traditions and fiqh as it concerns both views of and relations with Sunnīs as well as with Jews and Christians. We will first consider 78

Levy-Rubin, 68.

1. INTRODUCTION

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in chapter 2 the Nahj al-Balāgha (The Peak of Eloquence), a work attributed to ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, though it was probably developed after his death. We will examine the question of this attribution in detail in that chapter. While not an exclusively Ismāʿīlī work, the work was nonetheless available to later Shīʿite legists, and thus it is important to understand what the Nahj has to say in order to understand the contribution of later legal thinkers, especially those Imāmīs who determined that the People of the Book were no better than polytheists. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, we will ask whether the ḥukm (the juristic categorization) that Imāmīs employed regarding non-Muslims was also drawn in Fāṭimid fiqh, or whether there are significant divergences in thought. We will seek to answer this by examining in chapter 3 the work of the most important Ismāʿīlī jurist, the Fāṭimid scholar al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān (d. 363/974). Freidenreich has thus far considered only briefly the work of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, but this study will more systematically examine al-Qāḍī alNuʿmān’s Daʿāʾim al-Islām (Pillars of Islam) on the questions of how the shīʿat ʿAlī ought to relate to the umma and how Muslims should treat non-Muslims. To fully appreciate the experience of Christians living under Fāṭimid rule, however, it is not enough to examine fiqh only. Indeed, legists at times wrote fiqh to promote practices that were not then being followed. A second important question for this work is, then, whether and how Fāṭimid legal reasoning translated into caliphal policies toward Christian subjects, particularly those subjects living within range of Sunnī incursions and rebellions. In chapter 4, we will consult the most important Muslim chronicle of the Fāṭimid period, the Ittiʿāẓ of al-Maqrīzī (d. 845/1442), a Sunnī Mamlūk Egyptian who nevertheless took a deep interest in the Fāṭimids and who drew on earlier histories now lost. In the study and writing of history, though, it is important to consult various points of view, and in this case both Muslim and Christian ones. Accordingly, in chapter 5, we will examine the work of the Melkite historian Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd alAnṭākī, whose Kitāb al-dhayl was intended to be a sequel to the history of the earlier Melkite historian Saʿīd ibn al-Biṭrīq, and which chronicles the experience of Melkites under Fāṭimid rule

46 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN from 326/938 to 425/1034. The chapter will also briefly consider a Melkite manuscript from St. Catherine’s monastery at Mount Sinai. In the conclusion, we will re-examine the incidents examined above, concerning al-Ḥākim’s destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and al-Mustanṣir’s forcing of Jerusalem’s Christians to rebuild part of the city wall, in light of what we have learned over the course of this study. We will consider to what extent we can discern in these accounts how Fāṭimid opposition to the Sunnī ʿAbbāsid state influenced how the Fāṭimid caliphs related to and treated their Christian subjects. Finally, we will reflect on the ways this study impacts our understanding of how religious identity forms in a multi-confessional environment. It is important to acknowledge here the limits in this study’s scope. The spotlight we put on Sunnī, Shīʿa, and Melkite Christian populations admittedly neglects a couple segments of Palestine’s population, notably that of other Christian sects and that of the Jews. Jerusalem in particular was home not only to Melkites but to other Christian sects, notably the Jacobites and other Miaphysite (“one nature”) populations, such as the Armenians. 79 Miaphysites held that Christ had only one nature and not two, as the Melkites (Chalcedonians) believed. The theological and communal rupture occurred following the Council of Chalcedon in 451 C.E., which articulated the doctrine of Christ having two natures (one divine and one human). Severus, a sixth-century monk and the patriarch of Antioch, rejected Chalcedon, asking how it is was that Christ could die in two natures. Yet Severus was also critical of those who tried to deny the true humanity of Christ. He held that out of these two natures came the one nature of Christ. Though Severus would be forced to flee to Alexandria, monks who were loyal to him began establishing non-Chalcedonian communities, and in the years 530–1, Severus began admitting the ordinations of a new Miaphysite hierarchy. For more on this, see William Hugh Clifford Frend, The Rise of Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), 837–40; and Henry Chadwick, The Early Church (London: Penguin, 1993), 200–10. For a more in-depth look at the development of early Miaphysite communal identities, see Irina Tamarkina, “Memories of Authority and Community in Miaphysite and Chalcedonian Narratives of the Fifth and Sixth Centuries” (PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2015). Sidney Griffith has also composed helpful 79

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Moreover, as this book will not focus exclusively on Palestine but consider events in Cairo as well, the Copts feature as an important Christian community in the Fāṭimid caliphate. The rationale for focusing on Melkites is that they were the dominant Christian population in Palestine, and the Melkites were the Christian community most directly connected with the Byzantine empire, which as we will see, played an important role in Fāṭimid caliphal relations with Christian dhimmīs. This said, we will at times touch on the Jacobite and Coptic experiences of Fāṭimid rule as they are relevant to this work. In addition to the Miaphysites, this study also neglects another important constituency of Palestine: the Jews. This is intentional, given the limit of this study’s scope and its focus on Muslim-Christian relations. Yet it is important to affirm that Islamic legal discussion over dhimmīs includes Jews along with Christians, and so our study of early Shīʿite and Fāṭimid fiqh will by its nature apply to both groups. The book will also seek to include mention of Jews when it is relevant to our discussion of Palestinian Christian experience of Fāṭimid policies. This said, we will not attempt to undertake a detailed examination of Palestinian Judaism during the Fāṭimid era, as other scholars (notably Moshe Gil and Marina Rustow and, to a lesser degree, Uriel Simonsohn) have already done this, especially through their examinations of the Cairo Geniza archive. It will be enough to draw on their insights as it informs the work of this project. Finally, while the study at hand sets out to do a focused comparison of al-Maqrīzī’s and Yaḥyā’s work (the most important Muslim and Christian histories, resepectively, on the Fāṭimid caliphate), there are other historical sources that one could consult. The first is ʿImād al-Dīn Idrīs’s ʿUyūn al-akhbār (The Sources of History), a history of the Fāṭimids written by an Ismāʿīlī in the ninth/fifteenth century during the Mamlūk period but who as a Ṭayyibī in Yemen was a successor to the Fāṭimids summaries of the medieval Miaphysite communities of Jacobites, Copts, and Armenians living in the Middle East; for these, see Sidney Griffith, The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque: Christians and Muslims in the World of Islam (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 134–7.

48 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN and thus sympathetic to the tradition. He would have had internal access to documents not available to al-Maqrīzī. 80 Looking beyond caliphal histories, one can also find a collection of Fāṭimid decrees from its chancery, a study that may shed further light on the experiences of Christian dhimmīs living under Fāṭimid rule not available in the histories dedicated to the Fāṭimid caliphate. 81 Also of interest is al-Shābushtī’s Kitāb al-diyārāt (Book of Monasteries), a work composed by the librarian for the Fāṭimid caliph al-ʿAzīz near the end of the fourth/tenth century that describes the various Christian monasteries scattered across Fāṭimid lands. 82 As far as Melkite sources are concerned, one could also mention the work of Sulaymān al-Ghazzī, a bishop of Gaza, who died sometime during the first few decades of the fifth/eleventh century. The work includes Sulaymān’s Dīwān, a book of Arabic poetry that reflects on the position of Palestinian Christians under Islamic rule, as well as six short prose treatises that Sulaymān wrote that defend Orthodox Christian faith. 83 All of these are texts which would be profitable to consult for future research and would shed further light on the topic at hand.

See ʿImād al-Dīn Idrīs, ʿUyūn al-akhbār wa-funūn al-athār fī faḍāʾil alaʾimma al-athār (Beirut: Dār al-Andalus, 1984). 81 See Fāṭimid Decrees: Original Documents from the Fāṭimid Chancery, ed. Samuel Miklos Stern (London: Faber and Faber, 1964). 82 See Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad al-Shabushtī, Kitāb al-diyārāt (Baghdad: Maktabat al-Muthannā, 1966). 83 See Sulaymān al-Ghazzī, I trattati teologici di Sulaymān Ibn Ḥasan alĠazzī, ed. Paolo La Spisa (Leuven: Peeters, 2013). 80

CHAPTER 2. SECTARIANISM AND DHIMMĪS IN THE NAHJ AL-BALĀGHA In the previous chapter, we looked briefly at Sunnī citations of traditions attributed to ʿAlī, but in this chapter, we will examine in detail ʿAlī’s sayings on dhimmīs in the Nahj al-Balāgha (Peak of Eloquence), collected by al-Sharīf al-Raḍī. In the following chapter, we will then look at traditions attributed to ʿAlī and other Imams regarding dhimmīs in al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s Daʿāʾim al-Islām. Both of these books date from the fourth/tenth century and so largely precede the Fāṭimid occupation of Palestine (as the consolidation of Fāṭimid rule in Palestine was delayed several decades by rebellions stirred by alliances between the Qarmaṭīs and various Bedouin and Turkish commanders). 1 Studied together, the Nahj al-Balāgha and the Daʿāʾim al-Islām will be helpful in considering what traditions would have been circulating particularly among the Fāṭimid elite at the time caliphs like al-Ḥākim and al-Mustanṣir were ruling Egypt and Palestine in the fifth/eleventh century. The Nahj al-Balāgha is a compilation of sermons and speeches that Shīʿites generally attribute to ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, but that claim has not gone unchallenged. Moktar Djebli observes that the Shāfiʿī scholar Ibn Abī al-Ḥadīd (d. 656/1258) in his commentary on the Nahj seems to have been the first to raise the See chapter 6 in Gil, A History of Palestine, for a detailed study of the fighting and rebellions that occurred in Palestine during the closing decades of the fourth/tenth century.

1

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50 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN question of whether these addresses in the Nahj were indeed by ʿAlī or not. Ibn Abī al-Ḥadīd concluded that they were, reasoning that the Nahj has a uniform literary style and therefore must come from a single source. He also argued that al-Sharīf al-Raḍī (d. 406/1016), the Imāmī scholar in Baghdad whom Shīʿites hold to have compiled the anthology, did not possess the elegance of style evidenced in ʿAlī’s speeches in the Nahj, thereby implying that alRaḍī could not have composed them himself. 2 Djebli, for his part, argues for ʿAlī’s authorship on the basis that various sermons of ʿAlī throughout the anthology appear in earlier transmission, such as the one that ʿAlī delivered at Kūfa in 36/656 and which was cited by Ibn Muzāḥim al-Minqarī (d. 212/827) in his Waqʿat Ṣiffīn (Battle of Siffin). Djebli also mentions a speech that ʿAlī gave following his election to the caliphate that was cited by al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 255/868) in his Kitāb albayān wa-l-tabyīn (Book of Explanation and Demonstration). 3 Throughout his article, Djebli cites isnāds going back to ʿAlī or to contemporaries of ʿAlī as proof that the sermons are authentic. Further, he maintains that the surname al-Murtaḍā, which appears on the frontispiece of the manuscript, is an epithet of ʿAlī, meaning “the one accepted by God.” He posits this, rather than interpreting the word as a reference to the brother of al-Raḍī, alSharīf al-Murtaḍā (d. 436/1044), as suggested by the scholar Baron de Slane. 4 Moktar Djebli, “Encore à propos de l’authenticité du ʿNahj al-Balagha’!” Studia Islamica, 75 (1992), 34. For Ibn Abī al-Ḥadīd’s commentary, see Sharḥ nahj al-balāgha (Cairo, 1965-67), X, 127-9; see: I, 206. Sharīf alRaḍī was a colorful figure, having challenged the ʿAbbāsid caliph alQādir around the year 400/1009–10, when he praised the Fāṭimids, affirmed their ʿAlid lineage, and hinted that he might emigrate to Egypt. His signature to the Baghdad Manifesto, a document that al-Qādir intended to stop the rising tide of Fāṭimid power, is all the more puzzling, unless the signature was forged, or al-Raḍī was forced to sign it. See Jiwa, “The Baghdad Manifesto (402/1011): A Re-Examination of FatimidAbbasid Rivalry” in Farhad Daftary and Shainool Jiwa, eds, The Fatimid Caliphate: Diversity of Traditions, 40–3. 3 Djebli, 44, 51. 4 Djebli, 36. See also EI 2 s.v. Nahdj al-Balāgha (M. Djebli). 2

2. SECTARIANISM AND DHIMMĪS IN THE NAHJ AL-BALĀGHA 51 By contrast, Wadad Kadi takes a skeptical view of the claim that all of the sermons and speeches claimed for ʿAlī in the Nahj al-Balāgha come from him. In particular, she has undertaken a close study of the ʿahd of ʿAlī, a kind of ‘guide for princes’, that appears in both the Nahj al-Balāgha and in al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s Daʿāʾim al-Islām (the latter of which we shall look at in the next chapter). Kadi draws attention to al-Raḍī’s claim in the Nahj that ʿAlī addressed the ʿahd to his new governor in Egypt, Mālik b. alḤārith al-Ashtar al-Nakhaʿī, an event that occurred in the year 38/658. 5 Kadi thinks that this is highly improbable, pointing out that other Muslim historians of this event do not mention an ʿahd, and that al-Ṭabarī even says that when ʿAlī appointed al-Ashtar, ʿAlī declined to give his appointee advice because he was satisfied with al-Ashtar’s ability to govern. 6 She also sees evidence of tampering with the text: specifically, that it has been ‘Islamicized’ in order to make it appear that ʿAlī wrote the speeches and sermons attributed to him. She observes that it has numerous quotations from the Qurʾan and Hadith that the ʿahd in the Daʿāʾim lacks, and that it omits questions present in the Daʿāʾim that would have been anachronistic to ʿAlī’s time, such as questions about whether to delay the land tax (kharāj) after a bad harvest; about the functions and rights of the kuttāb, a secretarial class; and the need for the imām to adjudicate differing judicial opinions, all of which were relevant to a later time. One may object that the ‘omission’ of such questions is actually evidence that the ʿahd does indeed come from ʿAlī. Yet Kadi anticipates this objection, arguing that the author of the Nahj “committed one basic slip” by leaving mention of the institution of the wizāra in the text, “mistaking the word wuzarāʾ as a technical term in the context for the same word with its mere lexical meaning.” 7 She See Wadad Kadi, “An Early Fāṭimid Political Document” Studia Islamica 48 (1978), 74. For the Arabic text, see Nahj al-Balāgha, ed. Yaḥyā Murād (Cairo, 2007), via kotobarabia.com. For an English translation, see ʿAlī ibn Abī Tālib, Nahj al-Balāgha, trans. Sayed Ali Reza (Elmhurst. New York: Tahrike Tarsile, 1996), 534. 6 Wadad Kadi, “An Early Fāṭimid Political Document,” 78–9. See Taʾrīkh al-Ṭabarī, s.l., 3393, vol 5, 95. 7 Wadad Kadi, “An Early Fāṭimid Political Document,” 85. 5

52 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN also argues that other testaments in the Nahj attributed to ʿAlī are, when compared with the sophistication of political ideas in the Nahj’s ʿahd, “very confused in organization and presentation.” She concludes that the ʿahd in the Nahj is “too comprehensive, wellorganized and well-presented to belong to that early period in the history of Arabic political thought and Arabic technical prose.” 8 While Kadi makes some compelling points, it seems doubtful whether it is possible to determine just how many and exactly which speeches attributed to ʿAlī in the Nahj indeed came from him. Moreover, it is not our purpose to try to settle the question of ʿAlī’s authorship so much as to inquire as to what impact the Nahj had on Shīʿite (and specifically Fāṭimid) thinking about dhimmīs. What is important for this study is what the Fāṭimids believed ʿAlī said, regardless of whether he said it or not. For this reason, and for the ease of usage, the sermons will be presented here as having come from ʿAlī, even though there is good reason to suspect that some at least did not. A more fruitful line of inquiry may come from both Kadi’s and Djebli’s observations that various sermons of ʿAlī’s appear in other texts, some of which are earlier than the Nahj. From her comparative study of the ʿahd in the Nahj and the Daʿāʾim al-Islām, Kadi concludes that “there are two main prominent textual lines of the ʿahd which differ widely,” one being a North African one that appeared in the first half of the fourth/tenth century (finding its way into the Daʿāʾim), and an eastern, Iraqi one, which appeared in the last two decades of the fourth/tenth century in the Nahj. 9 In other words, Kadi maintains that the Daʿāʾim’s ʿahd precedes the Nahj’s ʿahd by roughly 50 years. What is important to notice here is that multiple strands of traditions attributed to ʿAlī were circulating across fourth/tenth-century Shīʿite communities, both Imāmī and Ismāʿīlī, and that the Nahj does not stand alone, but was composed in a context in which sermons and speeches attributed to ʿAlī were finding their way into various collections.

8 9

Wadad Kadi, “An Early Fāṭimid Political Document,” 86. Wadad Kadi, “An Early Fāṭimid Political Document,” 76.

2. SECTARIANISM AND DHIMMĪS IN THE NAHJ AL-BALĀGHA 53 Also, it is important to note that, even if we accept that the Daʿāʾim preceded the Nahj, we should not assume that the Fāṭimids were unfamiliar with the Nahj. Indeed, according to Kadi, the Fāṭimid chancery official and Shāfiʿī judge Abū ʿAbdallāh al-Quḍāʿī (d. 454/1062), who served under the caliphs al-Ẓāhir (d. 427/1036) and al-Mustanṣir (d. 487/1094) and was judge over their Sunnī subjects and served as an emissary to the Byzantine court, quotes almost verbatim from the ʿahd as it appears in the Nahj in his Dustūr maʿālim al-ḥikam wa-maʾthūr makārim al-shiyam min kalām amīr al-muʾminīn ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib (Wise sayings and noble deeds of the Commander of the Faithful ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib). 10 Given this evidence, we can assume that the Nahj is relevant to our study of dhimmīs under the Fāṭimids as containing traditions that would have influenced their thinking about Christians and Jews, even though it was not specifically an Ismāʿīlī collection. Finally, before turning to the text itself, it is important here to reflect on the role of these traditions in Shīʿite identity formation, particularly in light of the previous chapter’s presentation of the ideas of Shahab Ahmed concerning Muslims’ engagement with the Pre-Text, Text, and Con-Text. Does the Nahj qualify as Text or as Con-Text as conceived by Ahmed, and what difference does this make for our understanding of the role it played in the formation of Shīʿī identity? 11 Given ʿAlī’s central role in passing down the Prophetic charisma to the line of Imams, of which ʿAlī was the first, it is tempting to give the Nahj the status of Text, especially if we think of the ‘Text’ as oral traditions Wadad Kadi, “An Early Fāṭimid Political Document,” 75. Kadi consulted a manuscript at Yale, Landberg 471, ff. 29a–29b. For more on the biography of Abū ʿAbdallāh al-Quḍāʿī, see al-Qāḍī al-Quḍāʿī, Light in the Heavens: Sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, ed. and trans. Tahera Qutbuddin (New York: NYU Press, 2016), xix–xxii; and William Rowans, A Treasury of Virtues: Sayings, Sermons, and Teachings of Ali, with the One Hundred Proverbs, attributed to al-Jahiz (New York: NYU Press, 2016), xxvi–xxx. See also EI3 s.v. Fāṭimids (Heinz Halm). 11 I do not think we can call the Nahj Pre-Text, for the Reality behind the Text is the Charisma of the Prophet as Muḥammad passed it to ʿAlī, who then in turn passed it down the line of the Imams. 10

54 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN attributed to ʿAlī that were common to various branches of Shīʿites and circulating in both the mashriq and the maghrib. These traditions were crucial in the development of Shīʿite identity, for as various Shīʿite communities sought to distinguish themselves from their Sunnī neighbors, they appealed to these traditions rather than to the Hadith corpuses that were also developing among Sunnīs at the time. Yet there is an argument to be made for the Nahj being Con-Text, for it is a selection and compilation of traditions ascribed to ʿAlī as arranged by al-Sharīf al-Raḍī in Baghdad. It was, then, a certain (one might almost say local) collection which, while it would over time achieve wide recognition among Shīʿites, nonetheless became most important to the Imāmīs. Whether the Nahj should be considered Text or Con-Text is important because it affects how we understand the divisions that separated Sunnī from Shīʿa in the fourth/tenth century. If the traditions of ʿAlī are Text for Shīʿites, on what basis might Sunnīs and Shīʿa find unity? To be sure, the Qurʾan is a locus for unity, but the Qurʾan does not directly address the issue of Prophetic succession, despite the contention of Shīʿites that it does so indirectly. An important verse for Shīʿites on this account is Sūrat al-Aḥzāb 33:33, which addresses the People of the House (ahl albayt), a title that the prominent fourth/tenth-century Imāmī exegete al-Qummī (for example) argued applied to ʿAlī and his progeny and not to the wives of the Prophet. 12 This, though, was Al-Qummī was a highly respected contemporary of the eleventh Twelver Imam, al-Ḥasan al-ʿAskarī (d. 260/874) and was one of the most important Imāmī exegetes of the Qur’an. In his tafsīr, he pointed out that the pronouns surrounding the phrase ahl al-bayt are masculine rather than feminine (i.e. ‘ankum rather than ‘ankunna as well as yuṭahharakum rather than yuṭahharakunna), and he argued that if the Qur’an intended to address the Prophet’s wives, would it not have used feminine endings? He then accused those commentators of lying who say that this verse applies to the wives of the Prophet, and he concluded that exegetes need to separate this sentence mentioning the ahl al-bayt from the general context of the passage, being an address to the Prophet’s wives. See ‘Alī b. Ibrāhīm al-Qummī, Tafsīr ed., al-Sayyid Ṭayyib al-Mūsāwī al-Jazā’irī (Qum, Iran: Mu’assasat Dār al-Kitāb, 1983), 2:193–4. For a biographical

12

2. SECTARIANISM AND DHIMMĪS IN THE NAHJ AL-BALĀGHA 55 not a reading generally shared by Sunnīs, thus complicating the effort to make the Qurʾan an effective locus for unity. If, on the other hand, we read the Nahj as Con-Text, that is, as just one of many ‘storehouses of meaning’ that Muslims draw from the Text, there appears to be more scope for toleration (though not resolution) of the sectarian division. We will return to this matter in our study of the Daʿāʾim al-Islām in the next chapter.

SECTARIANISM IN THE NAHJ

Before we inquire into what the Nahj relates regarding dhimmīs, let us first ask what the Nahj has to say about sectarianism in Islam. The goal here is not to be exhaustive, locating every reference to sectarianism in the text, but rather to identity the different targets of sectarian tension and hostility and the key arguments against each. First, ʿAlī is strongly critical of the first three caliphs who preceded him: Abū Bakr, ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, and ʿUthmān. Right near the beginning of the compilation, in his sermon known as the al-Shiqshiqiyya, 13 he accuses first Abū Bakr and then ʿUmar of the “plundering of my inheritance,” and he says that “if God had not pledged with the learned … that they should not acquiesce in the gluttony of the oppressor and the hunger of the oppressed, I would have cast the rope [of the Caliphate] on its ghārib [upper back].” 14 What he seems to mean is that, if it were not for the fact that so many people pressed him to assume the caliphate, and for the fact that as a learned man he was duty bound not to go along with the kind of oppression he summary of al-Qummī, see Meir M. Bar-Asher, Scripture and Exegesis in Early Imāmī Shiism (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 33-8; and for a briefer treatment, see Feras Hamza, Sajjad Rizvi, and Farhana Mayer, eds., An Anthology of Qur’anic Commentaries (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008), 24–5. 13 The Arabic term shiqshiqa may be translated as “the foam on a camel’s mouth,” and is a title that refers to a dialogue at the end of the sermon, when ʿAlī is interrupted, loses his train of thought, and when encouraged by Ibn ʿAbbās to resume his sermon, says that his thought was “like the foam of a camel which gushed out but subsided.” See Nahj, 21 (Arabic), 107 (English). 14 Yaḥyā Murād equates ghārib with kāhil, or the upper part of the back. See Nahj, 20 (Arabic), 106 (English).

56 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN had witnessed at the hands of previous caliphs, he would have refused the caliphate, so that people would see how little he cared for this world. Later in the Nahj, ʿAlī says that after ʿUmar’s death, when it was ʿAlī’s right to become caliph, his opponents were greedy, and instead elected ʿUthmān as caliph. 15 He also rebukes ʿUthmān as one who monopolized wealth to the exclusion of other Muslims, 16 although ʿAlī also says that while he is himself “the most rightful of all” to rule the Muslims, he did not oppose ʿUthmān’s caliphate as long as there was no injustice in it.” 17 Near the end of the Nahj, ʿAlī asks how it is that the caliphate could be given to members of the Companions of the Prophet (ṣaḥāba), notably Abū Bakr and then ʿUmar, and yet not be given to one who was not only among the ṣaḥāba but also the Relations of the Prophet (qarāba), meaning, of course, himself. 18 In the Nahj, ʿAlī takes aim not only at the caliphs who preceded him but also at the Muslims who fought ʿAlī after he proclaimed his caliphate. He refers to a fulāna (a certain unspecified woman, most probably ʿᾹʾisha, the Prophet’s wife) as having dealt with him unjustly. Yet ʿAlī swears that he will still accord her respect, though she will face a reckoning with God for her deeds. 19 Along with ʿĀʾisha, ʿAlī singles out Ṭalḥa and al-

Nahj, 223–4 (Arabic), 341–2 (English). Nahj, 45 (Arabic), 158 (English). 17 Nahj, 77 (Arabic), 201 (English). Later in the Nahj, when Muʿāwiya charges ʿAlī with being jealous of his predecessors, ʿAlī counters, asking Muʿāwiya who was more hostile toward ʿUthmān, the implication being that ʿAlī showed him more honor than Muʿāwiya did; and he accuses Muʿāwiya of not helping ʿUthmān when he needed it. See Nahj, 362, 384 (Arabic), 489–90, 509 (English). 18 Nahj, 473 (Arabic), 609 (English). 19 Nahj, 196 (Arabic), 316 (English). ʿAlī faced the first challenge to his caliphate near Baṣra at the Battle of the Camel in the year 36/656, where he fought and defeated the army of ʿᾹʾisha and her allies, Ṭalḥa and alZubayr, the latter of whom were killed. ʿAlī reportedly ordered that prisoners of war, including ʿĀʾisha, not be killed or enslaved, and he reportedly sent ʿĀʾisha back to Medina with strict instructions that she stay out of politics. See Fred Donner, Muhammad and the Believers: At the 15 16

2. SECTARIANISM AND DHIMMĪS IN THE NAHJ AL-BALĀGHA 57 Zubayr as being ʿĀʾisha’s “rebellious companions” who have “broken allegiance to me, and roused people against me.” 20 He charges each of them with wanting the caliphate for himself, and he says that, if their rebellion succeeds, he predicts that they will proceed to kill each other. 21 He also repeatedly denounces the people of Baṣra, who supported “the army of a woman” (ʿĀʾisha again) against ʿAlī and his troops, and he charges them with a faith that is hypocrisy. 22 In a passage that al-Sharīf al-Raḍī says anticipates the ʿAbbāsid-era sacking of Baṣra by the Zanj slaves, ʿAlī pronounces woe on the city, saying that Baṣrans are “the people from among whom if one is killed, he is not mourned.” 23 In addition to his opponents at the Battle of the Camel, ʿAlī repeatedly warns his men and exhorts them to fight Muʿāwiya, the governor of Syria, and ʿAlī’s chief foe challenging him for the caliphate. 24 After the Battle of Ṣiffīn, Muʿāwiya succeeded in pressing ʿAlī against his will to agree to an arbitration, and ʿAlī laments this usurpation driven by greed, accusing Muʿāwiya and his men of trying to “extinguish the light of God from his lamp and to plug his spring at its fountainhead.” 25 ʿAlī clarifies that Origins of Islam (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard UP, 2010), 158–9; and EI3 s.v. Battle of the Camel (Najam I. Haider). 20 Nahj, 174–5 (Arabic), 293–4 (English). 21 Nahj, 184 (Arabic), 305–6 (English). 22 Nahj, 26 (Arabic), 129 (English). See also Nahj, 27 (Arabic), 135 (English). 23 Nahj, 167 (Arabic), 280–1 (English). Sharīf al-Raḍī seems to be referring to the Zanj rebellion, in which allegedly black slaves from East Africa revolted against the ʿAbbāsids in Baṣra under the leader ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad al-Zanjī in 255/869. Ghada Hashem Talhami, though, has cast doubt on the African origin of the revolt, arguing that many of those involved were Bedouins and from Baḥrayn, and that the revolt was not a slave rebellion as such. See Ghada Hashem Talhami, “The Zanj Rebellion Reconsidered,” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 10.3 (1977), 460. See also EI3 s.v. ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-Zanjī (Alexandre Popovic). 24 Nahj, 59, 61, 65 (Arabic), 180–2, 186 (English). 25 Nahj, 207–8 (Arabic), 327 (English). The Battle of Ṣiffīn occurred in 37/657. Unlike his previous victory over ʿĀʾīsha at the Battle of the

58 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN Muʿāwiya’s greatest fault is not that he is cunning, for ʿAlī thinks that he himself is more cunning than Muʿāwiya, but rather that Muʿāwiya is deceptive, and that God will judge him on the Last Day for this deceit. 26 Further, ʿAlī says that Muʿāwiya is a man who has no vision to show him the right way. 27 He condemns Muʿāwiya for seeking a life of ease and luxury, charging that Satan has taken control of him, and he warns Muʿāwiya that he will not be satisfied with the world’s goods but that he will eventually be separated from them. 28 He also warns the Banū Umayya, to whom Muʿāwiya belongs and from whom he draws his support, that God will avenge the blood they shed, and he prophesies that their enemies will prevail. 29 He predicts that the Umayyads will split into many factions, and that the trials of the people will increase because they have abandoned the truth. Yet if they had followed him, ʿAlī says that he would have made them follow the way of the Messenger. 30 ʿAlī also has harsh words for the Khārijites, the group of Muslims who abandoned the party (shīʿa) of ʿAlī after he agreed to an arbitration with Muʿāwiya. ʿAlī acknowledges the truth of the Khārijite slogan “there is no judgement but God’s” (lā ḥukma illā li-llāh), but he argues that what they mean by that is false, for all governance requires a human being, and there is no escape from having a ruler, either good or bad. 31 Further, he challenges them, saying that they originally agreed to the arbitration, even welcoming Muʿāwiya’s men as brothers (ikhwān) and as people who accepted Islam (ahl daʿwa); while ʿAlī had perceived

Camel, ʿAlī was unable to destroy Muʿāwiya’s army at Ṣiffīn and instead agreed to an arbitration at the request of Muʿāwiya. This decision led ultimately to Muʿāwiya’s victory over ʿAlī. See Donner, 160–2; EI2 s.v. Ṣiffīn (Michael Lecker). 26 Nahj, 296 (Arabic), 411 (English). 27 Nahj, 341 (Arabic), 466 (English). 28 Nahj, 343–4, 399 (Arabic), 469, 531 (English). 29 Nahj, 134 (Arabic), 248–9 (English). 30 Nahj, 218–9 (Arabic), 337 (English). 31 Nahj, 55 (Arabic), 175 (English).

2. SECTARIANISM AND DHIMMĪS IN THE NAHJ AL-BALĀGHA 59 Muʿāwiya’s hidden enmity and had not wanted the arbitration. 32 He explains to the Khārijites that he could not turn away from the Qurʾan when it was appealed to, but that in the arbitration people misinterpreted it, and he accuses the Khārijites of being untrustworthy. 33 ʿAlī refuses to accept the Khārijites’ unbelief (kufr), and warns them that they will suffer the oppression of universal shame and a sharp sword. 34 He also calls them “evil people” (shirār al-nās) and cautions that whoever is isolated from the people of Islam is vulnerable to Satan, just as sheep are vulnerable to wolves when isolated from the flock. ʿAlī then commands that whoever calls out this slogan (al-shiʿār), presumably that of the Khārijites, must be killed. 35 Yet he also tells his followers elsewhere in the Nahj not to fight the Khārijites, for “he who looks for truth but errs is not like the one who seeks after what is false and attains it.” 36 Finally, ʿAlī directs his ire at those who claimed to support him against his enemies but who in the face of battle deserted him. He accuses his army at Kūfa for failing to fight for him against Muʿāwiya, shaming them with the admonishment that “your ṣāḥib [ʿAlī] obeys God and you all disobey him, while the ṣāḥib of the people of al-Shām [Muʿāwiya] disobeys God and they obey him.” 37 He expresses his disappointment at his army’s abandoning their military posts, and consequently, at the men’s failure to conquer Muʿāwiya’s forces at Ṣiffīn. 38 He reminds them Nahj, 161 (Arabic), 270 (English). The arbitration to which ʿAlī agreed was most likely conducted through two different meetings, the first following the battle at Ṣiffīn in 37/657 and the second a year later in 38/658. As indicated in the Nahj, ʿAlī reportedly did not want the arbitration, but the readers of the Qur’an (qurrā’) in ʿAlī’s army were the ones who pressed him to agree to it. In the end ʿAlī was unable to reconcile with the Khārijites and killed many of them at the Battle of Nahrawān in 38/658. See Donner, 161–4; EI2 s.v. taḥkīm (Moktar Djebli). 33 Nahj, 164 (Arabic), 278 (English). 34 Nahj, 65 (Arabic), 187 (English). 35 Nahj, 166 (Arabic), 280 (English). 36 Nahj, 66 (Arabic), 190 (English). 37 Nahj, 125 (Arabic), 240 (English). 38 Nahj, 137 (Arabic), 251 (English). 32

60 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN that even if they flee the sword of this world (sayf al-ʿājila), they will not remain safe from the sword of the Last Day (sayf alākhira). Running away will incur the wrath of God. 39 He also says that they, as the successors of Islam, enjoy distributed grants and thus are not unsupported like Muʿāwiya’s men, and yet they do not follow ʿAlī as Muʿāwiya’s men follow him. 40 Ultimately, ʿAlī expresses longing regarding these men that God might “cause a separation between me and you and connect me with one who has a better right to be with me than you do.” 41

DHIMMĪS AND UNBELIEVERS IN THE NAHJ

There is in fact far less about dhimmīs in the Nahj than there is about ʿAlī’s enemies, so there will be no need to be selective in this section. The first theme to identify in the Nahj is what one might term the mutual rights and responsibilities of the ruler and the ruled. Early in the Nahj, ʿAlī delivers a sermon at the Battle of Ṣiffīn in which he states that the ruled cannot be sound unless the rulers are sound, while the rulers cannot be sound unless the ruled are sound. 42 This concept undergirds ʿAlī’s ʿahd, where he counsels Mālik ibn al-Ḥārith al-Ashtar al-Nakhaʿī, the new governor of Egypt, to be merciful to all of his subjects regardless of religion, for, he says, they are either brother to you from the point of view of religion or your equal from the point of view of creation. 43 He advises the new governor to treat all classes with respect, specifically the armies of God (junūd Allāh), the governmental secretaries (kuttāb al-ʿāmma wa-l-khāṣṣa), the judges (quḍāt), the police (ʿummāl al-inṣāf wa-l-rifq), traders and builders (al-tujjār wa-ahl al-ṣināʿāt), and “the lowest class of those in destitution and poverty” (al-ṭabaqat al-suflā min dhawī al-ḥāja wa-l-maskana). He also includes as their own class the “people of the poll tax and of the land tax from the protected peoples (ahl Nahj, 163 (Arabic), 272 (English). Nahj, 180–1 (Arabic), 354–5 (English). 41 Nahj, 156 (Arabic), 265 (English). 42 Nahj, 309 (Arabic), 433 (English). The roots ṣ-l-ḥ are used here, thereby implying both righteous and practically suitable behaviour. 43 Nahj, 403 (Arabic), 535 (English). 39 40

2. SECTARIANISM AND DHIMMĪS IN THE NAHJ AL-BALĀGHA 61 al-jizya wa-l-kharāj min al-dhimma). 44 He says that if these people complain about the heaviness of the tax due to hardship caused by disease, drought, or floods, that “you should reduce [the tax] such that you hope their business will improve,” and he advises Mālik that he should not begrudge this remission, since it is an investment that will bring returns to him in the form of the prosperity of the land. 45 Rulers, then, must treat their subjects equitably and moderately, which, as ʿAlī instructs Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr, means that the powerful should not hope for injustice in their favor, and the weak should not give up hope of obtaining justice for themselves. 46 ʿAlī also instructs an officer that, when he deals with the people, he ought to mix severity with gentleness, choosing whichever approach as appropriate to the occasion. 47 This principle of moderation applies not only to Muslims but to non-Muslims as well. ʿAlī tells one of his officers to treat his city’s leading Magian Persian notables (dahāqīn) moderately, in between severity and indulgence. 48 Here we have an example of what were probably Zoroastrians being included in this general principle of moderate treatment. Yet alongside these general principles of showing equity and moderation toward dhimmīs, ʿAlī offers his followers strong cautionary advice against associating with unbelievers. In the categories of Islamic law, dhimmīs are not necessarily the same as unbelievers. Dhimmīs, who were primarily People of the Book (though this status was later extended to Zoroastrians, Hindus, and others), enjoyed a protected status not necessarily given to unbelievers. We should be wary of putting kuffār and dhimmīs in the same category and using the terms interchangeably. Yet there is good reason to elide the terms in the Nahj. As we will see in the Nahj, 407–17 (Arabic), 537–43 (English). As observed above by Wadad Kadi, at the time ʿAlī was living, none of these classes existed as portrayed. However, the text is nonetheless relevant as inspiration for Fāṭimid treatment of dhimmīs. 45 Nahj, 412–13 (Arabic), 541 (English). 46 Nahj, 357 (Arabic), 486 (English). 47 Nahj, 397 (Arabic), 529 (English). 48 Nahj, 350 (Arabic), 480 (English). 44

62 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN next chapter, Freidenreich has argued that Imāmī Shīʿites placed kitābīs in the same category as mushrikūn rather than adhering to the Sunnī view that gave Jews and Christians an elevated status between Muslims and mushrikūn. Also, Freidenreich has observed that the Qurʾan itself at times labels People of the Book, and especially Jews, as kuffār, as in Surāt al-Baqara 2:171, where the Qurʾan speaks of those People of the Book who reject faith (kafarū). 49 Thus, it is not unreasonable in our reading of the Nahj to blend the categories of dhimmīs and kuffār, keeping in mind that Muslims did embrace a range of opinions as to what constituted dhimmīs and what constituted unbelievers. 50 What, then, does the Nahj have to say about unbelievers? In the last letter of the Nahj, ʿAlī writes, “Whoever complains about a need to a believer (muʾmin), it as though he complained about Freidenreich writes that “polemic in Al-baqarah … is consistently directed not against idolaters but rather against the People of the Book. The repetition of familiar anti-idolatry rhetoric in this context suggests that Jews and Christians too follow in Satan’s footsteps (v. 168), impute statements to God without knowledge (v. 169), and are unbelievers who prefer the teachings of their ancestors to those of God (vv. 170–71). The unbelief of Jews past and present is further detailed in Sūrat al-nisāʾ (“Women”), which reiterates, ‘It was because of the wrongdoing of the Jews that We forbade them good foods which had been permitted to them’ (4.160). Consumption of good food distinguishes those who walk on the divinely ordained path from those who oppose them.” See David Freidenreich, Foreigners and Their Food: Constructing Otherness in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Law (Berkeley: University of California, 2011), 136– 7. Gerald Hawting has also argued that the Qurʾan developed in a monotheistic context, and that the Qurʾan’s mushrikūn should be understood to be People of the Book. See Gerald Hawting, The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam: From Polemic to History (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999) 18. 50 It might be further objected that kuffār and mushrikūn are not the same. Yet mushrikūn are in fact the worst kind of unbelievers, for they associate God with that with which he should not be associated. For more on the classification of unbelievers in Islamic law, particularly among Sunnīs, see Yohanan Friedmann, Tolerance and Coercion in Islam: Interfaith Relations in the Muslim Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003), 54– 86. 49

2. SECTARIANISM AND DHIMMĪS IN THE NAHJ AL-BALĀGHA 63 it to God, but whoever complains about it to an unbeliever (kāfir), it is as though he complained about God.” 51 To confide in an unbeliever one’s troubles, then, is an offense against God himself. Elsewhere, in sermon 197, ʿAlī declares the following: This Islam is the religion of God that he chose for himself, prepared for himself, and singled out as the best of his creations. He established its pillars on his love. He has humbled [other] religions by the strengthening [of Islam], and has brought low [these] religious communities (milal) through the raising [of Islam]. He has made its enemies contemptible through the nobility [of Islam], and has isolated its opponents by the aiding [of Islam]. He has smashed the pillars of error with the columns [of Islam]. He has given drink to the thirsty from the cisterns [of Islam], and filled the cisterns through those who draw its water. He has made [Islam] such that there is no split in its bond (ʿurwa), no break in its circle (ḥalqa) [of community], no cracks in its foundation, no decay of its pillars, no uprooting of its plant, no end to its time, no erasure of its laws, no clipping of its branches, no constricting of its ways, no difficulty in its ease, no darkness in its brightness, no curvature in its rising, no warping in its branch, no trouble in its way, no extinguishing of its lamps, and no bitterness in its sweetness. 52

The close proximity of the statements, that God has brought low other religions by honoring Islam, and that the bond (ʿurwa) that holds Islam together cannot split is intriguing. It suggests a possible connection between the two, that is, that a marker of Islam’s supremacy vis-à-vis other religions is that it is not divided (or perhaps, rather, should not be divided) into factions. What is clear is that with ʿurwa, Muslims may brook no division within the community. ʿUrwa is a Qur’anic word, and it appears in Sūrat al-Baqara 2:256, where the Qur’an declares that there should be no compulsion in religion (lā ikrāha fī-l-dīn). It then goes on to say that “truth stands out from error, and that whoever rejects evil 51 52

Nahj, 492 (Arabic), 666 (English). Nahj, 291 (Arabic), 408 (English).

64 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN and believes in God has grasped the most trustworthy bond (ʿurwa) that never breaks.” In his commentary on this verse, alQummī (whom we have referenced above) wrote that ʿurwa here has to do with walāya, and that the bond (ḥabl) that never breaks is with the amīr al-muʾminīn and the people who follow him. 53 AlQummī, writing at a time roughly contemporary with the Nahj, is linking ʿurwa not only with God but with the Muslim community and with the leaders of that community, understood by Shīʿites to be the Imams. The connection between God’s favor on the people of Islam and the unity of the community is even stronger in another passage, in sermon 191. Truly you have shaken your hands loose of the bond (ḥabl) of obedience and have breached the fortress of God appointed to you by [observing] the laws of the ignorant (jāhiliyya). Truly God, may he be praised, bestowed his favor on this community (umma) by knitting them together with the bond (ḥabl) of this affection, in whose shade they proceed and seek shelter. This is a grace whose value not one created being knows, for it is more valuable than any price and greater than anything of significance. You know that you have become like the Bedouin after the hijra (the Prophet’s emigration to Medina) and after mutual protection and affection (muwālā) [become separate] parties. You have not clung to anything of Islam except its name, and you know nothing of faith except its [superficial] traces. You say, “The Fire, and [yet] no shame,” as if you wished to have Islam turned over on its face, insulting its honor and breaking its covenant (mīthāq) which God gave you as a sacred trust on his earth and as a security (amān) among his created beings. Truly if you take refuge in anything else but [Islam], the unbelievers (ahl al-kufr) will fight you. Then neither Gabriel nor Michael nor the muhājirūn nor the anṣār will aid you, but

For al-Qummī’s commentary on 2:256, see https://www.altafsir.com/Tafasir.asp?tMadhNo=4&tTafsirNo=38&tSora No=2&tAyahNo=256&tDisplay=yes&UserProfile=0&LanguageId=1 53

2. SECTARIANISM AND DHIMMĪS IN THE NAHJ AL-BALĀGHA 65 there will only be the clashing of swords, until God settles the matter between you. 54

Here we have a clear example of ʿAlī warning that the consequence for disunity among Muslims will be that neither God nor his angels nor the most honored of Muslims will aid his people in times of warfare with unbelievers (ahl al-kufr). He compares the Muslims who have divided into parties with the Bedouin after the hijra, implying that they are without excuse, having been given the option of demonstrating their loyalty (as did those believers who followed the Prophet to Medina) but have chosen instead to insult the honor of Islam and break its covenant. Also of interest here is the Nahj’s use of ḥabl, for as we have seen, al-Qummī associated ʿurwa with ḥabl. Both share the concept of “bond,” though ḥabl may also mean “rope.” Like ʿurwa, ḥabl is a Qurʾanic word, appearing (among various places) in Sūrat Āl ʿImrān 3:103, which commands believers to “hold fast all together by the rope or bond (ḥabl) of God, and be not divided among yourselves (tafarraqū).” The Qurʾan, then, directly relates ḥabl to the unity of the Muslim umma, a connection which ʿAlī’s sermon appears to mirror. One may find yet another facet to this connection between sectarianism and warfare against unbelievers when ʿAlī counsels Muslims to seek unity in the face of hostility from unbelievers. We have already encountered ʿAlī’s bitterness toward Abū Bakr and ʿUmar for stealing the caliphate from him, but such sentiment had its limits. In one passage, we find ʿAlī counseling ʿUmar not to go to the front of the war against the Rūm (Byzantines), but to send to the front a warrior (rajul miḥrab) so that if that man were killed, the Muslims would still have a refuge to whom they could return. 55 Some sermons later, we again find ʿAlī presented as advising ʿUmar not to fight the Persians, for, he says, the position of the ruler is like that of a thread of beads (niẓām min kharaz), and that if that thread is broken, the beads break up and disperse. 56 ʿAlī seems to be putting the umma first here, despite Nahj, 275–6 (Arabic), 392 (English). Nahj, 173 (Arabic), 290–1 (English). 56 Nahj, 182 (Arabic), 302 (English). 54 55

66 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN the fact that he did not believe that ʿUmar was rightfully caliph and would most certainly have been glad to be caliph in his place. On the other hand, ʿAlī castigates Muslims for failing to protect dhimmīs. ʿAlī expresses his horror upon learning that every member of the army of Banū Ghāmid, a tribe allied with Muʿāwiya, raped and stole from both Muslim and dhimmī women in the city of al-Anbār after it was taken from ʿAlī’s men in battle. 57 Elsewhere in the Nahj, ʿAlī condemns Maṣqala ibn Hubayra, a governor of a city in Iran, for failing to pay for the Banū Nājiya, Christians who had joined with the Khārijites in rebelling and who consequently had been enslaved by ʿAlī, and furthermore, for fleeing to Muʿāwiya to avoid having to explain his failure to pay for them. 58 Here we have examples of sectarianism in Islam (Muʿāwiya’s war with ʿAlī and the Khārijite rebellion) involving dhimmīs either as victims of that warfare, or as participants who then suffer because of the allegiances they make. While in the latter case, ʿAlī is angry that he is not being paid for the worth of the slaves sold to Maṣqala, thus expressing a sense of entitlement, he does nonetheless show a sense of responsibility for the dhimmīs as people who have certain rights. One sees a similar dynamic at work in how the Nahj approaches the inviolability of dhimmī property. In a letter to his collectors of the land tax (kharāj), ʿAlī advises them to deal justly with the people, and then adds an important qualification. He tells them to not touch the property of anyone, whether he be one who prays ṣalāh (that is, a Muslim), or is one who has signed a treaty (muʿāhad), unless they find a horse or weapon used to attack the people of Islam, “for truly it is not appropriate for the Muslims to leave these [things] in the hands of the enemies of Islam, that they might have power over it.” 59 In other words,

Nahj, 41 (Arabic), 153 (English). Al-Anbār, a city in Iraq, had a significant Christian population, being the seat of both a Jacobite and Nestorian (Church of the East) bishop, as well as an important Jewish center. See EI2 s.v. al-Anbār (M. Streck). 58 Nahj, 57–8 (Arabic), 177 (English). See the footnote on page 178 in the English translation from Sayid Ali Reza for more context. 59 Nahj, 401 (Arabic), 533 (English). 57

2. SECTARIANISM AND DHIMMĪS IN THE NAHJ AL-BALĀGHA 67 dhimmīs should be guaranteed protection of their property, so long as they do not present a danger to the security of Muslims. Yet if Muslims did perceive the property of unbelievers to present a danger, it could be confiscated by Muslims. This is the case of the Jewish town of Fadak, located near Medina, which the Prophet acquired by treaty when a local Jewish alliance tried but failed to contain his increasing power. 60 Interestingly, Fadak became a point of contention between ʿAlī and his opponents after Fāṭima’s claim on the city was denied by Abū Bakr and ʿUmar. 61 In another letter in the Nahj, ʿAlī writes to his governor of Baṣra, ʿUthmān ibn Ḥunayf al-Anṣārī, and says that he should emulate ʿAlī and his family’s poverty, saying that “all we had in our possession under the heavens was Fadak,” but that a group of people coveted it (shaḥḥat ʿalayhā) while the other group, presumably that of ʿAlī, relinquished it (sakhkhat ʿanhā). 62 Muḥammad’s tense relationship with the Jews of the Ḥijāz, including Fadak, finds new expression in the particular hostility that ʿAlī demonstrates towards Jews in the Nahj. When Marwān ibn al-Ḥakam, the cousin of the third caliph ʿUthmān, who had betrayed ʿAlī by joining ʿĀʾisha’s forces at the Battle of the Camel, is captured by ʿAlī’s forces and then approaches ʿAlī at Baṣra to swear his allegiance again, ʿAlī compares Marwān with a Jew. “I do not need his allegiance (bayʿa), for his is [like] the palm of the hand of a Jew. If he were to swear me allegiance with his hand, The treaty stated that the inhabitants of Fadak should give up half of their lands and produce to Muḥammad. See EI2 s.v. Fadak (Laura Veccia Vaglieri). 61 Upon her father’s death, Fāṭima approached Abū Bakr, asking him for Fadak, and Abū Bakr denied the request, saying that Fadak was the property of all Muslims, and not of Fāṭima’s alone. From this tradition came the rule that the Prophet could not bequeath his properties. Shīʿite tradition, though, held that the angel Gabriel had commanded the Prophet to give Fadak to Fāṭima, and that Abū Bakr later repented of his refusal of Fadak to Fāṭima. See Moshe Gil, “The Earliest Waqf Foundations,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 57.2 (April 1998), 130, 138–40; see also Encyclopaedia Islamica, s.v. Fāṭima (Faramarz Haj Manouchehri). 62 Nahj, 392 (Arabic), 514–5 (English). 60

68 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN he would act treacherously and shamefully.” 63 One finds antiJewish sentiment again near the end of the Nahj, when ʿAlī is asked to explain the prophetic saying “Alter your grayness of hair [by dyeing it] and do not imitate the Jews” (Ghayyirū al-shayb walā tashabbahū bi-l-yahūd). ʿAlī says that when the Prophet said this, religion was confined to a few, but now that its sphere has expanded and become established, the Muslims may do as they choose. 64 The implication may be that Muslims need to present a face of youthfulness and vigor and not allow the Jews to see their age, especially when Muslims are in the minority and face a powerful Jewish enemy. 65 Alternatively, ʿAlī may straightforwardly be warning Muslims not to abandon Arab customs to imitate the Jews, and that believers do not need to worry about maintaining their distinct identity once they are in the majority. 66 In addition to the above, we find another tense encounter at the end of the Nahj, when some Jews approach ʿAlī to say that “you had scarcely buried your Prophet when you began to differ over him.” ʿAlī responds that Muslims do not differ

Nahj, 76 (Arabic), 200 (English). Importantly, Muʿāwiya after ʿAlī’s death gave Fadak to Marwān as his personal estate, which did nothing to endear him to the shīʿat ʿAlī. See Gil, “The Earliest Waqf Foundations,” 139; see also EI2 s.v. Marwān Ibn al-Ḥakam (Clifford Edmund Bosworth). 64 Nahj, 446 (Arabic), 572–3 (English). 65 This is the view of the translator Sayed Ali Reza. 66 That Muslims might imitate Jews has precedent in Shīʿite tradition, and thus it is not surprising that the Nahj addresses this matter. Steven Wasserstrom has observed that the party of ʿAlī “was partially typologized upon Judaic paradigms,” as Shīʿites, like the Jews before them, expected the coming of a messiah, known in Arabic as the Mahdī. Moreover, Wasserstrom argues that Jews directly influenced proto-Shīʿite circles in Kūfa. He notes the presence of Isrāʾīliyyāt traditions in early Imāmī ones, such as the tradition that models ʿAlī’s relationship with Muḥammad after Moses’s relationship with Aaron. Such imitation had its limits, though, as evidenced by the negative view the Nahj takes of Jews. Apparently too close an imitation of Jews was undesirable. For more on this, see Steven M. Wasserstrom, Between Muslim and Jews: The Problem of Symbiosis under Early Islam (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 54–8, 124. 63

2. SECTARIANISM AND DHIMMĪS IN THE NAHJ AL-BALĀGHA 69 over Muḥammad, but rather “we disagreed about him” (meaning, about the succession), and he goes on to criticize the Jews, quoting the Qurʾan, that they had only just crossed the Red Sea when they came across “a people devoted to idols of theirs, and said to Moses ‘Make for us a god just as they have gods’.” 67 To briefly summarize our findings, then, the Nahj affirms the principle that all subjects of a ruler must be treated justly, on the basis that just treatment will benefit the ruler as well as the ruled. The people should not be overtaxed, for their prosperity adds to the well-being of the ruler. Moreover, the ruler has the responsibility to protect the lives and property of dhimmīs, even when it is other Muslims who are attacking them. Yet dhimmīs should not be treated too leniently, for unbelievers cannot be trusted, especially with information and weapons important to the security of the Muslim community. If faced with war with unbelievers, Muslims ought to put aside their differences and present a united front, especially as it concerns the leadership of the umma. One must be wary of Jews in particular, as they are people who cannot be trusted, should not be imitated, and who are in fact idolaters. Curiously, the Nahj does not single out Christians in the same manner, though when one considers how long the Nahj is, and how much attention it gives to the enemies of ʿAlī, these traditions about Jews are relatively brief and do not seem to constitute a significant concern for the compiler of them. Why there is not much about Jews and Christians in the Nahj may be because there was already significant Muslim juristic discussion concerning dhimmīs in existence prior to the Nahj’s compilation, as we will see in the next chapter.

See Nahj, 646 (English). Unfortunately, Yaḥyā Murād did not include this tradition in his Arabic edition of the Nahj. The Qurʾanic quote comes from al-Aʿrāf 7:138. 67

CHAPTER 3. SECTARIANISM AND DHIMMĪS IN THE DAʿĀʾIM AL-ISLĀM Let us turn now to the Daʿāʾim al-Islām (Pillars of Islam), the legal work that undergirded the Fāṭimid caliphate. 1 Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān (d. 363/974), also known as al-Nuʿmān ibn Muḥammad, was an Ismāʿīlī missionary and Fāṭimid judge who wrote his Daʿāʾim with the intention that it serve as the foundation for the legal system of the Fāṭimid empire. Indeed, the Fāṭimid caliph al-Muʿizz li-Dīn Allāh (d. 365/975) reportedly commissioned al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān to write the Daʿāʾim, and then edited the volume himself once alQāḍī al-Nuʿmān had finished his work. This is remarkable, in part because, according to some scholars, al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān may have begun his training as a Mālikī jurist, as his father came from a line of Mālikī jurists in Qayrawān and only later in life embraced Ismāʿīlism. 2 If this is so, such training would have been For the Arabic text, see al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, Daʿā’im al-Islām, Taḥqīq Āṣaf b. ʿAlī Aṣghar Fyzee, Ṭabʿa al-thālitha, Kitāb 1 and 2. Al-Qāhira: Dār alMaʿārif, 1969 and 1960. For an English translation, see al-Qāḍī alNuʿmān, The Pillars of Islam, ed. and trans. Asaf A. A. Fyzee and revised and annotated by Ismail Poonawala, v.1 and 2. (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002, 2004). 2 Farhad Daftary, The Ismā’īlīs: Their History and Doctrines, 168. Daftary attributes this information to the Shāfiʿī scholar Ibn Khallikān. An alternative view is that al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān was brought up an Ismāʿīlī by his father pretending to be Mālikī. For more on this, see Agostino Cilardo, The Early History of Ismaili Jurisprudence: Law under the Fatimids. A Critical 1

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72 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN undoubtedly useful when it came time for the Fāṭimids to formulate a legal tradition (a point we will consider at length later in this chapter), which then had to compete with the Sunnī madhhabs that were well established by the late fourth/tenth century. 3 The Daʿāʾim, then, is at some level a work of propaganda that seeks to legitimate the Shīʿa imamate (and thus the caliphate of the Fāṭimids) in the face of Sunnī juristic competition. 4 As a work of fiqh, the Daʿāʾim differs markedly from the Nahj, for it is not a book of sermons but is rather organized by subject. Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān divided the Daʿāʾim into two main parts, one on ʿibādāt (the duties owed to God), and the other on muʿāmalāt (laws relating to human interaction). The book of ʿibādāt is organized as follows: 1) īmān (faith) and islām (submission), 2) walāya (the authority of the imām), 3) ṭahāra (ritual purity), 4) ṣalāt (ritual prayer), 5) janāʾiz (funerals), 6) zakāt (alms tax), 7) ṣawm (fasting) and iʿtikāf (devotion), 8) ḥajj (pilgrimage), and 9) jihād (struggle and warfare). 5 Seven of these nine are pillars in Ismāʿīlī thought and practice, while two (īmān and janāʾiz) are not. 6 Of these, the chapters on walāya and on jihād contain the greatest amount of information on sectarianism in Islam and on edition of the Arabic text and English translation of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s Minhāj al-farāʾiḍ (London: I.B. Tauris, 2012), 15–19. See also the introduction by Poonawala in al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, The Pillars of Islam, xxvii– xxviii. 3 For a discussion of how and when the Sunnī madhhabs formed, see Christopher Melchert, The Formation of the Sunni Schools of Law, 9th–10th Centuries C.E. (Leiden: Brill, 1997). 4 While the Daʿāʾim is al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s principal and most important legal work, it is not the only one. Cilardo has identified four smaller legal treatises on inheritance that he believes al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān wrote prior to the Daʿāʾim. These are, in order of composition, the Minhāj al-farāʾiḍ, the Kitāb al-iqtiṣār, the Kitāb al-yanbūʿ, and the Mukhtaṣar al-āthār. See Cilardo, The Early History of Ismaili Jurisprudence, 25–42. 5 On the seven pillars of Ismāʿīlī Islam, see Shainool Jiwa, The Fatimids 1. The Rise of a Muslim Empire (London: I.B. Tauris, 2018), 87–8. 6 Modern scholars have observed how the number seven governs the whole philosophy of the Ismāʿīlī Sevener Shīʿīs. For more on this, see EI2 s.v. Sabaʿa (Annamarie Schimmel) and Ismāʿīliyya (Wilferd Madelung).

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approaches to the dhimmīs. The chapter on walāya is the most important, for as al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān says near the beginning of it, walāya was the last of all the divine commands to be revealed (ākhir al-farāʾiḍ) on the Day of Ghadīr Khumm, before Surāt alMāʾida 5:3 was revealed: “This day I have perfected for you your religion, and completed for you My favor, and have chosen for you Islam as [your] religion.” 7 This said, we will also consider relevant mention of sectarianism and of dhimmīs in al-Qāḍī alNuʿmān’s book of muʿāmalāt, particularly from his chapters on marriage (nikāḥ) and business (buyūʿ). Before examining sectarian sentiments in the Daʿāʾim, let us first briefly examine what Wadad Kadi has to say about the Daʿāʾim. As will be recalled, Kadi conducted a detailed study of the ʿahd of ʿAlī in both the Daʿāʾim and the Nahj. She concludes that the ʿahd most likely did not originate with ʿAlī. To build her argument, she first observes that the addressee of the ʿahd is a man of humble origins but who has gained power and needs to be reminded of his origins lest death should soon come upon him. She also observes how the ʿahd’s emphasis on the centralization of power in the ruler gives preference to the dawla (state) over the daʿwa (the activities of the Ismāʿīlī missionaries to convert Muslims to Ismāʿīlī Islam). Working from clues in the text, Kadi then proposes that the ʿahd was composed by the founder of the Fāṭimid state, ʿAbdallāh al-Mahdī, in order to undermine the power of his rival dāʿī Abū ʿAbdallāh al-Shīʿī. She specifies that al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s predecessor, al-Qāḍī Aflaḥ ibn Hārūn alMallūsī, was most likely the author of the ʿahd on the Mahdī’s behalf, near the end of the third/ninth century. 8 Kadi’s argument is important because it reminds us that the Daʿāʾim is not completely original to al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān. Rather, Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, v.1, 15 (Arabic); 20 (English). According to Shīʿite tradition, Muḥammad on his return to Medina from his final pilgrimage to Mecca stopped at the pool of Ghadīr Khumm to acknowledge ʿAlī as his successor with the statement: “For whomever I am their mawlā (lord), ʿAlī is their mawlā’.” Sunnīs, though, do not recognize this tradition, as works like Ibn Hishām’s recension of Ibn Isḥaq’s sīra do not contain it. See Dakake, 35–6. 8 See Wadad Kadi, “An Early Fāṭimid Political Document,” 95–108. 7

74 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN he was working with traditions that would have been familiar to other Shīʿa, including Sharīf al-Raḍī, the compiler of the Nahj. 9 As we shall see, this is the case even in his book of walāya, which is his most original contribution to what was by then a standard way of constructing books of fiqh. 10 Moreover, we should also consider the impact of whatever Mālikī training he might have had when he set out to create the corpus of legal literature that became the Daʿāʾim al-Islām. In numerous places throughout the Daʿāʾim, al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān gives rulings that match those of the Mālikī madhhab. For example, in his chapter on ṣalāt, he prescribes that Muslims must bow in prayer with their palms outstretched (mabsūṭūn) and the ends of their fingers next to their ears, a prescription that matches the Mālikī form of prostration in prayer (sajda). 11 Later in the same chapter, al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān argues that prayer in the forenoon (ṣalāt al-ḍuḥā) was an innovation of the Anṣār, and that Muḥammad prohibited this practice, a ruling that is accepted by the Mālikīs but not by the other Sunnī schools of law. 12 One can find examples of this in other chapters as well, but the important point to note here is that the sectarian (and indeed polemical) nature of al-Qāḍī alNuʿmān’s text does not mean that every legal ruling that he

This is not to say that al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān consulted Sharīf al-Raḍī’s collection (an impossibility since Sharīf al-Raḍī was born in 359/970, while al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān died in 363/973), but rather that both drew on traditions that were circulating among Shīʿites both in the Mashriq and the Maghrib. 10 A.A. Fyzee writes that “it is in the chapter on walāya that Nuʿmān’s most original contribution lies,” and that although “walāya is the very crux of the Shīʿī doctrine and its very raison d’etre, its proper formulation for the justification of the Fāṭimid caliphate, surrounded by the hostile Sunnī populations of North Africa, had to wait for Nuʿmān.” See Fyzee in his introduction to his translation of the Daʿāʾim, v.1, xxxi–xxxii. 11 Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, v.1, 165–6 (Arabic), 205 (English). See Poonawala’s note 203 in the English translation for discussion of the various Sunnī positions on this point of practice. 12 Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, v.1, 217 (Arabic), 265 (English). For more on this, see Poonawala’s note 445 in the English translation. 9

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advises differs from that of the Sunnīs; rather, what is important to him is how the ruling is arrived at, as we will see shortly. 13 Let us also revisit here our ongoing reflection on the contribution Shahab Ahmed makes to our understanding of Fāṭimid identity, this time through the lens of the Daʿāʾim. While it is debatable as to whether the Nahj served as a Text or ConText for Shīʿites, the Daʿāʾim as a whole should be viewed as a work of Con-Text. As a work of fiqh, the Daʿāʾim is part of a genre of literature that seeks to work out through human reason the details of the divine sharīʿa as offered in the Text. It was also a local work and thus did not command the loyalty of all Muslims, not even of those Sunnis who lived in Egypt at the time but who followed their own schools of law. While it was the foremost work of Fāṭimid jurisprudence, the Daʿāʾim served a function similar in purpose to the fiqh of its rival Sunnī madhhabs (of which more will be said later in this chapter), and thus it served as a guide for one madhhab among several. This is significant, for in drafting a work of fiqh for his madhhab, al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān mimicked a pattern more akin to the Fāṭimids’ Sunnī opponents than was consistent with the Shīʿite view that the Prophet’s charisma was present in the imam-caliph. To use the vocabulary of Hamid Dabashi, the Fāṭimid caliph al-Muʿizz attempted to ‘routinize’ Fāṭimid governance by commissioning al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān to write the Daʿāʾim, and in doing so, the Fāṭimids accepted the existence of the plurality of the umma, though not the authority of the rival ʿAbbāsids. We will reflect further on this point in the following chapter, when we consider the role of the law in relation to the prerogatives of the caliph.

SECTARIANISM IN THE DAʿĀʾIM

The Daʿāʾim has an expressly political purpose, and al-Qāḍī alNuʿmān’s chapter on walāya, the second in his book on ʿibādāt Agostino Cilardo writes that al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān reworks both Sunnī and Imāmī legal systems, and that “ultimately, the Ismaili law is not comparable either to the Sunni system or to the Imāmī system, but it is one of the three major legal Shiʿi systems, beside the Imāmī and Zaydī systems.” See Cilardo, The Early History of Ismaili Jurisprudence, 15. 13

76 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN (the duties owed to God), is especially revealing of this purpose. As do other Shīʿa, al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān thinks of walāya as a position of authority that belongs solely to ʿAlī and his descendants, the Imams. Near the beginning of the chapter, he quotes a ḥadīth in which Muḥammad charges those who have faith in God and in him to accept the walāya of ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, for, he says, “loyalty to him is loyalty to me” (fa-inna walāʾahu walāʾunī). 14 Accordingly, the chapter is full of traditions that mark ʿAlī and the Imams as being uniquely pre-eminent and praiseworthy. For example, al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān claims that, apart from the Prophet, ʿAlī, Fāṭima, and their progeny (the Imams) are the only descendants of Ishmael who did not worship idols, a fulfilment of Abraham’s prayer in Sūrat Ibrāhīm 14:35 that God would keep him and his sons away from worshiping idols. 15 For their part, the Imams are those to whom Sūrat al-Nisāʾ 4:54 alludes as the envied ones; they are according to Sūrat al-Zukhruf 43:44, the people of the reminder; they are, as Sūrat al-Nisāʾ 4:59 affirms, those in authority; and they are in the true sense the ʿulamāʾ, indeed, the highest ranking of the ʿulamāʾ. 16 As we found in the Nahj, al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān also subordinates the first two caliphs Abū Bakr and ʿUmar to the authority of ʿAlī and the Imams. In his chapter on walāya, he relates a tradition in which God orders all of the Prophet’s companions except ʿAlī to close up doors they had created to give them access to Muḥammad in his mosque in Medina. He does this, despite ʿUmar’s pleading with him to leave him the ability in order that he might see the Prophet with his own eyes, that is, through an opening in the wall. Muḥammad, though, refuses ʿUmar’s request, and is emphatic that it is God, not he, who has ordered this. He says that God has ordered him to “choose this dwelling as a place to be kept pure,” adding that no-one but himself, ʿAlī, Ḥasan, and Ḥusayn may contract marriage there, just as Moses allowed only Aaron and his two sons to have

Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, v.1, 15 (Arabic), 20 (English). Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, v.1, 34 (Arabic), 44 (English). 16 Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, v.1, 21–4 (Arabic), 30–3 (English). 14 15

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intercourse in his house when in a state of purity. 17 Al-Qāḍī alNuʿmān, then, claims a privileged position for ʿAlī’s progeny that the rest of the Companions (notably Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, and ʿUthmān) do not share. At another point in his chapter, al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān argues that both the generals Usāma ibn Zayd and ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ were better entitled to the leadership of the Muslim community than were Abū Bakr and ʿUmar, since Usāma and ʿAmr “were given precedence [by Muḥammad] over them in prayer.” 18 By this, al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān does not intend to say that Usāma or ʿAmr should have been caliphs in place of ʿAbū Bakr or ʿUmar, but rather implies that appointments to lead the prayers do not entitle a man to lead the caliphate. 19 We also see al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān relating traditions in his chapter on jihād that disparage ʿUmar for failing to lead with integrity regarding the distribution of resources within the Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, v.1, 17 (Arabic); 22–3 (English). The reference to Moses allowing Aaron and his two sons to have intercourse in his house does not appear to be Qurʾanic. The only verse that even mentions the family of Aaron comes from Sūrat al-Baqara 2:248, when in the context of Israel’s protesting the kingship of Ṭālūt (Saul), the Qur’an states that a sign of Saul’s kingship is that the ark (tābūt) will come to them as a remnant of what was left by the family of Moses and the family of Aaron. The reference in the Daʿāʾim may come from a ḥadīth, but Ismāʿīlīs produced few works of ḥadīths, since the imām was expected to provide the necessary guidance and instruction to the community. See Farhad Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines, 222. 18 Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, v.1, 41 (Arabic); 54 (English). 19 Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s reference to Muḥammad asking men other than Abū Bakr and ʿUmar to lead the prayer has parallels in ḥadīths. A tradition attributed to ʿĀʾisha relates that as he was dying, Muḥammad ordered ʿAbdallāh b. Zamʿa to lead the prayer, but ʿAbdallāh asked ʿUmar to lead the prayer instead. When Muḥammad heard ʿUmar praying, he expressed his displeasure and indicated that he wanted Abū Bakr to lead it instead. When ʿĀʾisha protested, the Prophet insisted, asking twice more, or a total of three times, after which ʿĀʾisha consented and Abū Bakr was called. The import of this tradition was that Muḥammad wanted Abū Bakr, and none other, to succeed him to the caliphate. For more on this, see Wilferd Madelung, The Succession to Muhammad (Cambridge UP, 1997), 24–6. 17

78 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN Muslim community. He recounts ḥadīths in which ʿAlī is especially angered by ʿUmar’s practices of unfair distribution of booty taken from non-Muslims who had been conquered by ʿUmar’s armies. When two companions of the Prophet, Ṭalḥa and al-Zubayr, approach ʿAlī to ask for more than their fair share of the booty, citing ʿUmar’s previous practice, ʿAlī rebukes them by saying that even he is no better than the “hired labourer” and he points to his servant to make the point. 20 An even more egregious action is ʿUmar’s insistence on taking possession of the fifth of the booty even after ʿAlī pleads with him to give that fifth to the ahl al-bayt, to whom it was rightfully due. 21 Again, when the Prophet asks for one of his companions to kill a Muslim who accused the Prophet of not doing justice in his distribution of booty, neither Abū Bakr nor ʿUmar would do so, ʿUmar excusing himself on the basis that the man was praying when ʿUmar approached him. By contrast, ʿAlī agrees to do so, though in the end he cannot find the man. 22 In the Daʿāʾim, ʿUmar’s failure to maintain equitable shares of booty in the community is not his only character fault. Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān records several traditions that portray ʿUmar as an incapable and ignorant judge. In one such report, ʿUmar warns his people not to “be excessive in what is given to women in charity,” and to follow the example of the Prophet in not giving more than twelve ounces of silver to a woman for charity. A woman standing near the back of the assembly then challenges ʿUmar by quoting Sūrat al-Nisāʾ 4:20, which says that “if you have given unto one of them a sum of money, take nothing from it,” whereupon ʿUmar is silent, having no reply. Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān then asks how it is that the people could appoint a person who is so ignorant, a man who could be refuted by a woman who was not among the most learned. 23 He goes on to relate another story, in which ʿUmar wanted to punish a woman who gave birth within six months of marriage. ʿAlī stops him, stating that the child belongs to her husband, and as proof of this, he quotes two Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, v.1, 392 (Arabic); 475 (English). Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, v.1, 394–5 (Arabic); 478 (English). 22 Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, v.1, 397 (Arabic); 481 (English). 23 Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, v.1, 85 (Arabic); 104–5 (English). 20 21

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Qurʾanic verses that would appear to support the ruling that a minimum period of pregnancy is six months. 24 Immediately after this, al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān cites another tradition in which ʿAlī prevents ʿUmar from stoning a woman for adultery, challenging ʿUmar that he has no right over the child in the womb. Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān writes that, had a “comparable error been made by the head of police, the people would have protested to the one who appointed him until he had dismissed him.” 25 Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s disdain for ʿUmar’s jurisprudence is instructive because it is part of his wider campaign to portray Sunnī jurisprudence as being grossly deficient when compared with the rulings of the Imams. Shortly after criticizing ʿUmar, alQāḍī al-Nuʿmān cites the prophetic ḥadīth that the aṣḥāb are like the nujūm (stars), and whomever one chooses to follow, he will be rightly guided. He then corrects this tradition to say that it is only the Imams who deserve such a statement, for the aṣḥāb all differed among themselves and killed each other. How, he asks, can one follow a group at variance with itself? He then goes on to quote rulings by the eponyms of three of the Sunnī law schools (Abū Ḥanīfa, Mālik ibn Anas, and al-Shāfiʿī), in which they demonstrated a ready willingness to retract their opinions if they came across one that was better than the one they had at the time. Accordingly, al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān avers that not one of these scholars held a view and maintained it to his death, and yet the “ignorant masses still persist in adhering blindly to them.” 26 He These are Sūrat al-Aḥqāf 46:15, which says that “the bearing of him and the weaning of him is thirty months,” and Sūrat al-Baqara 2:233, which says that “mothers will nurse their children for two whole years.” From this, ʿAlī calculates that a child may be born six months after conception. 25 Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, v.1, 86 (Arabic); 106 (English). 26 Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, v.1, 86–8 (Arabic); 107–9 (English). This is an argument that he develops at length in his Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib (Disagreement concerning the foundations of the schools of law), where he argues that the tools of Sunnī jurists (consensus, analogy, preference, and inference) are nothing more than opinion (raʾy) and lead to contradictions and disagreements that ought to be avoided by all Muslims. Only the rulings of the Imams, based on the Qurʾan and Hadith, 24

80 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN goes even further to say that, if God has perfected His religion, one does not need to judge via analogy (as Abū Ḥanīfa does), and that indeed Iblīs (Satan) was the first to reason so, since he reasoned that fire was nobler than clay and that this entitled him not to bow before Adam when God commanded him to do so. 27 What al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān is doing, then, in the Daʿāʾim is to argue that just as ʿAlī corrected the judicial malpractice of ʿUmar, so must the rightful Imams (and those judges appointed by them, such as himself) correct the erroneous methods and opinions of Sunnī jurists who cannot agree with one another.

DHIMMĪS IN THE DAʿĀʾIM

Let us turn now to our study of what the Daʿāʾim has to say about dhimmīs. Of special interest to us will be al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s chapter on jihād, since it is here that jurists typically describe how dhimmīs should be treated, detailing especially the manner and nature of the jizya (poll tax) to be collected from them. Yet this is not the only place where discussions involving Christians and Jews appear in the Daʿāʾim. Indeed, one can find references to them in both books of ʿibādāt and muʿāmalāt, and there are a few points that emerge from the study of these passages that are worth considering. First, it is clear that the Daʿāʾim places dhimmīs in a category that is legally inferior to Muslims. This is not at all surprising, and is in keeping with Sunnī fiqh on dhimmīs, as we will see near the end of this chapter. Yet an important question to consider is why this is the case. For example, in his chapter on business (buyūʿ), al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān quotes Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq as saying that it is not right and proper for a believer to act in partnership with a dhimmī, or to give him capital or even his sincere affection (mawadda). 28 are reliable. For a translation of this text, see al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, Disagreements of the Jurists, ed. and trans. Devin Stewart (New York: New York University Press, 2015). 27 Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, v.1, 91 (Arabic); 112 (English). See Sūrat al-Aʿrāf 7:11–12 for the Qur’anic description of Satan’s refusal to bow before Adam. 28 Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, v.2, 84–5 (Arabic); 69 (English).

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Is this because dhimmīs are not trustworthy and may betray a Muslim partner, if given the opportunity? Alternatively, is the concern simply that Muslims (rather than dhimmīs) ought to be the ones with financial power, and that Muslims need to maintain the social supremacy of Islam? Is it for both reasons? Early in the chapter, al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān relates a tradition that Muḥammad accepted jizya from dhimmīs so long as they did not practice usury (ribā), but that if a dhimmī was found guilty of this, he forfeited his protection (dhimma). Therefore, ʿAlī declares, dhimmīs should be excluded from financial transactions with Muslims. 29 This might suggest that al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s main concern is that dhimmīs are not trustworthy. On the other hand, at the end of the chapter, where al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān discusses pre-emption (shufʿa), whereby a partner may buy out the other’s share that is for sale, he again quotes Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, who ruled that a Muslim may preempt but a dhimmī may not, unless the pre-emption is between two dhimmīs and does not involve a Muslim. 30 Since pre-emption itself is not legally wrong (a Muslim may do it, after all), one has reason to conclude that the concern here is that Muslims maintain financial control and not cede it to dhimmīs. Another area of law that demonstrates this supremacy of Islam over dhimmīs is al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s chapter on inheritance (al-farāʾiḍ), where he cites the ruling from the Imam Jaʿfar alṢādiq that “the Muslim inherits from the unbeliever (al-kāfir), but the kāfir does not inherit from the Muslim.” He bases this decision on the saying of the Prophet that these two communities do not inherit mutually (lā yatawārathu). Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān reflects on the sixth form of the verb waritha, noting its mutuality, and concludes that the Prophet and Imams have unambiguously prohibited unbelievers from inheriting from a Muslim. 31 While it is true that this passage in the Daʿāʾim does not explicitly refer to dhimmīs, there is good reason to assume that it intends, or at least, includes them. Agostino Cilardo has compared the Daʿāʾim’s ruling concerning inheritance with its equivalent ruling in Minhāj Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, v.2, 35 (Arabic); 25 (English). Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, v.2, 86, 90 (Arabic); 71, 74 (English). 31 Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, v.2, 383–4 (Arabic); 380–1 (English). 29 30

82 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN al-farāʾiḍ, another of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s legal works, and he finds that the Minhāj specifies that while a Muslim may inherit from a Christian, a Christian cannot inherit from a Muslim. 32 The Minhāj also includes the caveat that both Christian and Muslim heirs may inherit from a Christian, provided that pre-eminence is given to Islam. Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān gives the example of a Christian man who upon dying leaves a Christian son and a Muslim brother. Even though sons have a stronger right to inheritance than do brothers, the estate is divided equally between the two, as the son has pre-eminence due to his kinship, and the brother due to the pre-eminence of Islam. 33 The social supremacy of Islam is not al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s only concern, though. Dhimmīs in the Daʿāʾim are not merely inferior to Muslims but are also greatly compromised in their ritual purity. Contact with a dhimmī may cause a Muslim to become ritually impure. 34 In his chapter on ritual purity (ṭahāra), in a section where al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān discusses the purity of water to be used for ablutions, he cites Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq instructing Muslims not to eat the food of Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians (Majūs), though he did permit to them food from ritually impure Muslims. 35 Moreover, later in the chapter, he mentions that the Imams advise that Muslims may not pray in clothes made by polytheists (mushrikūn) unless the mushrikūn have not worn them and the clothes are thus still pure, without any impurity (najāsa)

Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s rulings in the Daʿāʾim and the Minhāj prohibiting a kāfir and a Christian, respectively, from inheriting from a Muslim, suggest an elision of the terms, for which I argued in the Nahj as well concerning unbelievers and dhimmīs in the previous chapter. 33 See Cilardo, The Early History of Ismaili Jurisprudence, 119–23, for his translation, and pages 60–3 for his discussion of the passage. For al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s discussion in his Daʿāʾim of the rules of inheritance for children and siblings when all are assumed to be Muslim, see v2., 363– 70 (Arabic); 360–8 (English). 34 As we will see in the following chapters, however, this concern for ritual purity did not necessarily translate into caliphal aversion to dhimmīs in their courts. 35 Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, v.1, 113 (Arabic); 139 (English). 32

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on them. 36 While one could argue that al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān does not specifically mention dhimmīs in this passage, and thus may not be referring to Jews or Christians, in his following chapter on ṣalāt, he quotes a prophetic ḥadīth that prohibits Muslims from praying in clothes worn by Jews, Majūs, and Christians, thereby appearing to clarify what was left unclear in the previous chapter. 37 Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s prohibition on Muslims eating the food of, or wearing the clothes of, Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians is important, especially in light of the research of David Freidenreich, which we will discuss at greater length at the end of this chapter. How, though, does the Daʿāʾim’s allegiance to ʿAlī to the exclusion of ʿUmar and other caliphs relate to al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s thinking about dhimmīs? One finds hints of his thinking in his chapter on jihād, where he inserts the oath or treaty (ʿahd) of ʿAlī, a kind of ‘guide for princes’. 38 Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān stipulates that it is the imām (and he only) who must make a final decision on controversial judicial matters, 39 who is permitted to make treaties and contracts with mushrikūn, 40 and to whom is due the fifth of the booty that is collected from those enemies who have surrendered to the Muslims. 41 Moreover, the ahl al-bayt also have a special claim on some property of the dhimmīs. As we saw with the Nahj, al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān cites a tradition that the Prophet gave the city of Fadak (a Jewish town) to Fāṭima, and he goes on Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, v.1, 117–8 (Arabic); 145–6 (English). Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, v.1, 179 (Arabic); 221 (English). As previously stated, dhimmīs and mushrikūn appear to be in the same juridical category, as are kāfir. 38 Shainool Jiwa has argued that “the ahd in the Daʿāʾim makes almost no mention of different communities, whether Shiʿi or Sunni, Muslim or non-Muslim; its guidance regarding the governance of people casts a cloak of protection over all subjects.” While this is correct, if one widens the scope to consider unbelievers outside the dār al-Islām, it is possible to glean information from the ʿahd that is particular to non-Muslim communities. See Jiwa, The Fatimids, 90–1. 39 Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, v.1, 369 (Arabic); 447 (English). 40 Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, v.1, 387 (Arabic); 468 (English). 41 Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, v.1, 394 (Arabic); 477 (English). 36 37

84 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN to accuse subsequent Umayyad and ʿAbbāsid caliphs of wrongfully attempting to steal the city from her descendants. 42 Dhimmīs must report to the imām and no other. There is one point, however, at which al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān does make a direct statement in which he links his Sunnī enemies with dhimmīs. In his chapter on walāya, he quotes a prophetic ḥadīth that the one who bears malice toward the ahl al-bayt will be raised on the Day of Resurrection as a Jew. When Jābir b. ʿAbdallāh al-Anṣārī, a companion of the Prophet, asks if such a man might be spared this if he pronounces the shahāda, Muḥammad affirms that his blood will not be shed but that he will still be deemed a Jew. 43 The passage is clearly not complimentary. Given the context of his time, during which the Fāṭimids challenged the ʿAbbāsid claim to the caliphate, one can surmise that al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān was through this tradition linking his Sunnī ʿAbbāsid enemies with Jews. Here we have a tradition warning that Muslims who oppose the walāya of the ahl al-bayt will face judgment and are in fact no better than Jews. This is important, given the later decision of the Fāṭimid caliph al-Ḥākim to dress dhimmīs in black, as well as his order to destroy the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Yet al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān also includes in his chapter on jihād a tradition that we have already encountered in the Nahj, though with more detail. During his struggle with Muʿāwiya, ʿAlī heard reports of a unit of Muʿāwiya’s horsemen attacking the town of al-Anbār on the Euphrates and then raping and stealing earrings and anklets from a Muslim woman and a dhimmī woman in her care. ʿAlī declares that, if the Muslim who did such deeds “were to perish sorrowfully, I would not hold this to be blameworthy but rather him deserving of that.” 44 ʿAlī, then, would apparently be satisfied with the death of a Muslim who wrongfully violated a dhimmī. It is possible that the reason for this pronouncement was the violation of the Muslim woman and not of the dhimmī, but the tradition arguably suggests a commitment on the part of Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, v.1, 393 (Arabic); 475–6 (English). Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, v.1, 75 (Arabic); 94 (English). 44 Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, v.1, 398 (Arabic); 483 (English). 42 43

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ʿAlī to protect the persons and property of dhimmīs, given that the Muslim and her dhimmī servant were mentioned together.

SUNNĪS, IMĀMĪS, AND ISMĀʿĪLĪS ON DHIMMĪS: A COMPARATIVE REFLECTION

This chapter has sought thus far to identify some of the key characteristics and concerns in Shīʿite (and particularly Fāṭimid Ismāʿīlī) thought as they concern both Sunnīs and dhimmīs. What is missing in this study is, of course, a perspective on Sunnī fiqh on dhimmīs. Since, as we noted in the introductory chapter, studying Sunnī fiqh is outside the scope of this project, we will briefly outline some of the major findings of Yohanan Friedmann on the subject. We will not attempt to review his work exhaustively, but rather identity key principles that will be useful in reflecting on the Nahj al-Balāgha and the Daʿāʾim al-Islām. 45 Friedmann has argued that the most important principle in the Qurʾan, the Hadith, and fiqh is the statement “Islam is to have supremacy and nothing is to have supremacy over it” (al-Islām yaʿlū wa-lā yuʿlā ʿalayhi). 46 This means that in all areas of Sunnī jurisprudence, dhimmīs do not enjoy the same privileges that Muslims do. For example, Muslim men may marry dhimmī women, but dhimmī men may not marry Muslim women. Likewise, Friedmann says, “non-Muslims’ testimony is not admissible against Muslims, but the testimony of Muslims is valid against Friedmann’s Tolerance and Coercion in Islam is the most important single modern monograph available on Sunnī fiqh concerning dhimmīs. This said, other scholars that have written on this topic include Anver Emon, Religious Pluralism and Islamic Law: Dhimmīs and Others in the Empire of Law, especially in the first part of his book “After Tolerance: The Dhimmī Rules and the Rule of Law”; and Wael B. Hallaq, Sharīʿa: Theory, Practice, Transformations. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009, in his chapters on family law and succession, property and ownership, offenses, and jihād. For an easily accessible primary source, see Imran Ahsan Khan Nyazee’s translation of Ibn Rushd’s Bidāyat al-Mujtahid wa-Nibāyat alMuqtaṣid (The Distinguished Jurist’s Primer) vol 1–2. Reading: Garnet, 1994. Ibn Rushd’s chapter on jihād and his discussion of rules concerning the levying of the jizya is of particular interest. 46 Yohanan Friedmann, Tolerance and Coercion in Islam, 35. 45

86 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN members of all religions.” 47 On the issue of how much blood money (diya) a Muslim owes for killing a non-Muslim, three of the four Sunnī law schools do not permit full payment, with Mālikīs and Ḥanbalīs saying that only half of the money should be paid, while al-Shāfiʿī stipulated that it should be only one-third of what a Muslim’s diya should be. Only the Ḥanafīs are willing to permit full payment of the money. 48 Friedmann also refers to the stipulations present in the Pact of ʿUmar that give Muslims a higher social standing than that of dhimmīs. 49 An interesting and important distinction that some Sunnī jurists made in their classification was that Jews and Christians who were of the Banū Isrāʾīl stock were more entitled in Islamic law than those who were not. The Banū Isrāʾīl, while in name being the people of Israel, could be either Jews or Christians in Islamic legal thinking, as they, according to Friedmann, “received their revelation through Moses and Jesus.” 50 By contrast, those Jews and Christians of Arab descent who were not of the original Banū Isrāʾīl stock must have converted to Judaism or Christianity at a later date. For many Sunnīs, this was of no real legal consequence. Friedmann writes that the “prevalent view [among Sunnīs] affirms that differences in ethnicity or in the first time of conversion should not have any effect on the standing of nonMuslims in Islamic law.” 51 Abū Ḥanīfa, Mālik ibn Anas, and Ibn Ḥanbal all held this view. Yet al-Shāfiʿī (d. 204/820) did not. He taught that women who joined the People of the Book from other nations were not permissible for Muslims to marry, and thus did not have equal standing with kitābīs. This was because dhimmī status, in his view, belonged only to those whose ancestors were Jews and Christians before the coming of Islam, that is, the Banū Isrāʾīl. 52 Al-Shāfiʿī was also uncompromising in regard to Arab Christians who lived Friedmann, Tolerance, 35. Friedmann, Tolerance, 47–53. 49 Friedmann, Tolerance, 37. 50 Friedmann, Tolerance, 60. 51 Friedmann, Tolerance, 61. 52 Friedmann, Tolerance, 66. 47 48

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on the Arabian peninsula. According to Friedmann, al-Shāfiʿī judged that jizya-paying Arab Christians may retain their religion (as they were not Arab polytheists), but he forbade Muslim men from marrying their women or eating meat slaughtered by them. 53 Friedmann mentions that the Shāfiʿī jurist al-Māwardī later justified this position on the basis of a tradition that ʿUmar would not permit marriage to Christian Arab women because it was unclear whether they had embraced Christianity before or after its corruption. ʿUmar, Friedmann observes, was not unique in this opinion; the Ḥanbalī jurists Ibn Qudāma (d. 620/1223) and Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328) reported traditions in which ʿAlī forbade Muslim men from marrying women from the Arab Christian tribe of the Banū Taghlib for the same reason. 54 For Shāfiʿī jurists, then, Arab Christians retained a lower position compared with their coreligionists who were non-Arab. Al-Shāfiʿī’s discrimination against Arab Christians, relative to non-Arab Christians, may have something to do with the different legal positions he gave Christians before and after the revelation of the Qurʾan. In his Kitāb al-Umm, where he writes on “the ramifications of taking the jizya from the People of the Idols (al-awthān),” he distinguishes between those People of the Book who were established in their religion before the Prophet received his revelation, and those People of the Book who converted to Judaism or Christianity after the time of the Prophet. He writes that if there is any question as to whether People of the Book living under Muslim rule descended from Christians and Jews who converted to their religion after the time of the Prophet, that the imām should still take the jizya from them, thereby assuming that they had converted before the Prophet. On the other hand, if he discovers “that [you and] your fathers did not learn this religion until after the time of the messenger of God … I will not take [the jizya] from you from among what I receive, and I will break word with you all, and either you must submit to Islam or

Friedmann, Tolerance, 67. Friedmann, Tolerance, 65. Ibn Qudāma is also known by some scholars as Ibn Mufliḥ. 53 54

88 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN you will be killed.” 55 What al-Shāfiʿī seems to be saying here is that unless Jews and Christians were established in their religions before the coming of Islam, they must not be accorded the position of the People of the Book, and that as polytheists who are not Jews or Christians, they must be forced to convert to Islam or be killed. While a more careful study is needed, it may be that al-Shāfiʿī was not inclined to grant that Arab Christians could have converted to Christianity before the coming of the Prophet, and so was intent on denying them the status of dhimmīs. While Friedmann explores several areas of law in his work, it is his chapter on Sunnī fiqh on marriage between Muslims and non-Muslims that reflects most deeply on how the principle of Islamic supremacy manifested itself in Sunnī jurisprudence. Reflecting on the rule that Muslim men may marry non-Muslim women but that Muslim women are forbidden to marry Muslim men, Friedmann writes, “A marriage of a Muslim woman to a nonMuslim man would result in an unacceptable incongruity between the superiority which the woman should enjoy by virtue of being Muslim, and her unavoidable wifely subservience to her infidel husband.” 56 Friedmann goes on to cite the legal principle of compatibility (kafāʾa) in which a woman should not marry a man lower in station than herself, noting that this applies to both religious and social standing. For Ibn Ḥanbal, this hierarchy of standing applied even to the Christian seeking to marry a Zoroastrian. He judged that a Christian man should be permitted to marry a Zoroastrian woman, but that a Zoroastrian man should not be permitted to marry a Christian woman. 57 Friedmann also observes that Mālik ibn Anas and Ibn Ḥanbal prohibited marriage and concubinage between Muslims and Zoroastrians, as they did not deem them to be People of the Book. 58 Having briefly examined some of the principal findings of Friedmann on Sunnī fiqh, let us now review David Freidenreich’s findings on Imāmī Shīʿi fiqh. In the first chapter, we briefly noted Al-Shāfiʿī, Kitāb al-Umm, vol. 4 (Cairo: Dār al-Shaʿb, 1973), 184–5. Friedmann, Tolerance, 161–2. 57 Friedmann, Tolerance, 174. 58 Friedmann, Tolerance, 185. 55 56

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Freidenreich’s argument that Imāmī Shīʿite jurists in the early fifth/eleventh century began to prohibit Muslims from eating with Jews and Christians in part to demonstrate how morally lax Sunnīs had become, in comparison with their more rigorous Shīʿī counterparts. More specifically, Freidenreich observes that they denigrated the Sunnī reading of Sūrat al-Māʾida 5:5 (in which Sunnīs straightforwardly understood the verse to permit Muslims to eat with kitābīs) and preferred the more elitist and exclusivist interpretation of the verse stipulating that Muslims may only eat “grains and the like,” that is, food prepared by kitābīs that does not require ritual slaughter. 59 Instead, Imāmī jurists emphasized Sūrat al-Anʿām 6:121, which warns Muslims not to eat that over which the name of God has not been mentioned. 60 Jurists’ concern, then, was that kitābīs could not invoke God’s name properly as required during the slaughter of an animal. Further, Freidenreich finds that the Imāmī contention that Jews and Christians are intrinsically unclean was a viewpoint that developed over time. During the third/ninth and fourth/tenth centuries, Imāmīs were concerned mainly with the actions of kitābīs. It was only later, during the fifth/eleventh century, and especially due to the jurisprudence of al-Murtaḍā (the elder brother of al-Sharīf al-Raḍī), that jurists deemed their beliefs and thus their very beings to be impure. 61 This, then, is a significantly different focus for fiqh on dhimmīs, one centered not on the supremacy of Islam over the other religions (though Shīʿa do not deny this supremacy), but rather dedicated to demonstrating how Sunnīs have gone wrong, and using rulings on dhimmīs to buttress their own claims to lead the community of Islam.

CONCLUSION

Having reviewed recent scholarship on both Sunnī and Imāmī fiqh, let us now compare this with what we have learned from the Nahj al-Balāgha and the Daʿāʾim al-Islam. As will be recalled, the Nahj is not explicitly Ismāʿīlī, and given that it was compiled in Freidenreich, “The Implications of Unbelief,” 57. Freidenreich, “The Implications of Unbelief,” 60. 61 Freidenreich, “The Implications of Unbelief,” 75–7. 59 60

90 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN Iraq by al-Sharīf al-Raḍī, could arguably be deemed Imāmī, though in fact it was studied by both Imāmīs and Ismāʿīlīs. A brief comparison of the Nahj with the Daʿāʾim will help us to understand, then, what was distinctive about Fāṭimid fiqh, especially if placed alongside the scholarship of Freidenreich on Imāmī fiqh. What is immediately apparent in such a comparison is that, as we have already stated, traditions are not exclusive to either work. For example, we find both the Nahj and the Daʿāʾim relating how ʿAlī is horrified by the rape of Muslim and dhimmī women in Anbār by his enemies working in the employ of Muʿāwiya. Yet the two works share much more than this. Indeed, despite the fact that they are of different literary genres (the Nahj is composed of sermons and speeches while the Daʿāʾim is a work of jurisprudence), they share common critiques and positions. Both of them take aim at the caliphs who preceded ʿAlī, as well as the enemies that ʿAlī faced after his assumption of the caliphate. Both hold Sunnī jurists to blame for the disagreements they have among themselves. Finally, both balance the instruction to ensure fair (and moderate) treatment of dhimmīs with a stated mistrust of them, especially of the Jews. Yet what the two share in common, they differ over in emphasis. In the Daʿāʾim, ʿUmar is targeted as being especially unfair and incapable of good governance. He is not the only character who receives the scorn of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān. In his chapter on jihād, al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān quotes ʿAlī as saying that he has been commanded to fight the nākithūn (ʿĀʾisha at the Battle of the Camel), the qāsiṭūn (Muʿāwiya at the Battle of Ṣiffīn), and the māriqūn (the Khārijites following their defection from ʿAlī), all of whom represent the various enemies ʿAlī faced during his caliphate. 62 Later, in his chapter on nikāḥ, al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān relates a tradition of Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq speaking derisively of the Banū Umayya, saying that God has removed virility from them while giving sexual desire (shabaq) to the men of the shīʿat ʿAlī. 63 Yet ʿĀʾisha, Muʿāwiya, and other traditional opponents of ʿAlī receive comparatively much less attention than does ʿUmar in the 62 63

Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, v.1, 396 (Arabic); 480 (English). Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, v.2, 190–1 (Arabic); 176 (English).

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Daʿāʾim, and far less attention than they receive in traditions in the Nahj. This difference is arguably due to al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s wish to emphasize ʿUmar’s faulty jurisprudence. Highlighting ʿUmar’s failure as a judge appears to serve al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s purpose in challenging the reliance of Sunnī madhhabs on analogy as a method of jurisprudence, one of the four sources of law that Sunnīs agreed upon by the third/tenth century. In the Daʿāʾim, ʿUmar becomes a symbol for the failure of Sunnī jurists, while ʿAlī stands in as the credible judge from whose line the Imams have come. By contrast, the Nahj does not appear to have had that purpose, serving mainly as sermons and speeches to inspire devotion and loyalty to the progeny of ʿAlī among Shīʿites living under Sunnī ʿAbbāsid rule. Shīʿites rejected not only ʿUmar’s jurisprudence but also his sunna as well. Avraham Hakim has observed that Sunnīs considered ʿUmar to be a source of sunna, at times clashing with and even superseding the Prophet’s sunna. An example of this might be ʿUmar’s censure and prohibition of the practice of mutʿa, which granted legal concessions in the performance of ḥajj (effectively, the combination of the lesser pilgrimage, ʿumra, with ḥajj itself) and of marriage (also called “temporary marriage”). These were practices that had been permitted in traditions by the Prophet and which (with interpretation) were allowed in the Qurʾan itself in Sūrat al-Baqara 2:196 and in Sūrat al-Nisāʾ 4:24. The Shīʿite scholars al-Faḍl b. Shādhān (d. 260/873–4) and Abū al-Qāsim ʿAlī b. Aḥmad al-Kūfī (d. 350/961), though, rejected ʿUmar as a founder of sunna, deeming ʿUmar’s claim to be innovation (bidaʿ), and the Imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (d. 148/765) accused ʿUmar of arrogantly considering himself to be a new prophet and his rulings as new revelations from God. He also charged that ʿUmar had abolished mutʿa for personal reasons, after seeing his sister ʿAfrāʾ nursing the child of a man who had married her according to mutʿa practice but then left her, a charge not corroborated in other sources, according to Hakim. For Shīʿites then, ʿUmar not only gave faulty rulings that ought to be

92 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN ignored or refuted, but he actively and wrongfully tried to replace the sunna of the Prophet with his own. 64 Let us finish with what is perhaps the most significant part of this reflection. In the previous chapter, we asked whether the ḥukm (the juristic categorization) that Imāmīs employed regarding non-Muslims was also drawn in Fāṭimid fiqh, or if we see some significant divergences in thought. Given that Freidenreich’s research on Imāmī fiqh identifies ritual purity as the key question for jurists, and that they came to identify Jews and Christians as being impure because of their belief (rather than just of their actions), al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s discussion of ritual purity in his chapters on ṭahāra and ṣalāt are especially relevant. Jaʿfar alṢādiq’s decision to permit Muslims to eat food with ritually impure Muslims but not with Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians, and his quotation of the prophetic ḥadīth that prohibits Muslims from praying in clothes worn by members of these three religions suggest general agreement between the Imāmī and Ismāʿīlī (or at least Fāṭimid) jurists on the question of the status of dhimmīs in Shīʿite law. Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s decision to put Jews and Christians in the same category as Zoroastrians arguably mirrors Freidenreich’s argument that Imāmīs placed kitābīs in the same category as mushrikūn rather than adhering to the Sunnī view that gave Jews and Christians an elevated status between Muslims and mushrikūn. How this diminished status in law translated into the policy of the caliphate of the Fāṭimids is a different question, though, and one that we will now take up in the next chapter.

See Avraham Hakim, “Conflicting Images of Lawgivers: The Caliph and the Prophet,” in Herbert Berg, ed., Method and Theory in the Study of Islamic Origins (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 159–77.

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CHAPTER 4. GOVERNING THE DHIMMĪS IN PALESTINE AND EGYPT: FĀṬIMID PERSPECTIVES In turning from our examination of Fāṭimid fiqh to Fāṭimid history, we must first admit some significant limitations. The history of Muslim-Christian relations in the medieval Middle East is difficult to write accurately, primarily due to problems with the sources. Christian Sahner has observed that not only were many Arabic Muslim sources in the first few centuries of Islam written down long after the events they purport to describe, but also that “these sources take little interest in the affairs of non-Muslims.” He observes that “not only were Muslim authors relatively unconcerned about the affairs of the subject population (whom they viewed as religiously and socially backward, by and large), but they were also committed to telling a story of Muslim triumph that discounted the importance of these communities in their shared cosmos.” He emphasizes that, even though in the first several centuries of Islam, the majority of the population in places like Egypt, Palestine, and Syria was still Christian, “the mainstream [Muslim] sources provide a portrait of a homogeneous Muslim society that later writers wished to imagine,” and that they do not accurately portray these places and people as they actually were. 1 Muslims were not knowledge1 Christian Sahner, Christian Martyrs under Islam: Religious Violence and the Making of the Muslim World (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2018), 12–13.

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94 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN able about non-Muslims, then, because they did not deem them to be important, or at least not as important as were Muslims, whose standing their fiqh made superior. This insight seems especially apt when we consider the work of Taqī al-Dīn Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī al-Maqrīzī (d. 845/1442), whose Ittiʿāẓ al-ḥunafāʾ bi-akhbār al-aʾimma al-Fāṭimiyyīn al-khulafāʾ (Lessons for the true believers in the history of the Fāṭimid imams and caliphs) is the most important Muslim source we have for the history of the Fāṭimid caliphate. 2 Even though Sahner was writing about a time earlier than that of the Fāṭimid caliphate, his critiques still apply. Al-Maqrīzī was writing roughly four centuries after the events that he describes, long after Cairo had ceased to be the capital of the Fāṭimids and was instead ruled by Sunnī Mamlūks. While Egypt, Palestine, and Syria were likely majority Christian in their population during the Fāṭimid period, it is doubtful that this was still the case by the time of al-Maqrīzī. 3 Jack Tannous has posited that “Muslims remained a demographic minority in most parts of the formerly Roman Middle East at least Paul Walker has written that “there are now hardly any real histories of the Fatimids, separate and by themselves, either medieval or modern. Of those known to have been written long ago, which might have become important sources had they survived, nearly all are no longer extant. One exception is, however, especially noteworthy. That is the ninth/fifteenthcentury Mamluk historian al-Maqrīzī’s Ittiʿāẓ …” The fact that we have so little extant from the Fāṭimid period reflects the extent to which the Ayyūbids succeeded in erasing the Fāṭimid legacy after the caliphate’s demise in 567/1171. See Walker, Exploring an Islamic Empire: Fatimid History and Its Sources (London: I.B. Tauris, 2002), 12. 3 Thomas Carlson has observed from the writings of al-Muqaddasī and Ibn Ḥawqal, writing in the late fourth/tenth century, that “only the largest villages [in Palestine] would have had a Muslim architectural presence,” thereby suggesting that the countryside at least was still largely Christian at the time. By contrast, Muslim geographers in the Mamlūk period made a point of describing certain areas such as northern Syria as “Christian,” thereby implying that they stood out from what had otherwise become a largely Muslim region. See Thomas A. Carlson, “Contours of Conversion: The Geography of Islamization in Syria, 600– 1500.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 135:4 (October–December 2015), 791–816 (especially 800 and 809). 2

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until the Mamluk period (AD 1250–1517/AH 648–922), when harsh discriminatory measures, large-scale state-sponsored violence targeting Christians, and the widespread destruction of churches led to conversions that may have made Muslims a majority population.” 4 The environment in which al-Maqrīzī was working, then, and the sources with which he was working, would not have prioritized the discussion of dhimmīs living under Fāṭimid rule. Moreover, the Ittiʿāẓ sets out to provide a historical narrative on the Fāṭimid imām-caliphs, and therefore the affairs of Christians living in Palestine was not a prime focus of attention. This being the case, al-Maqrīzī does not completely ignore dhimmīs, and we can learn something from his work as to how the Fāṭimid caliphs viewed Christians living in their lands. Moreover, in this chapter, we will examine more closely links between sectarian strife in Islam and caliphal relations with dhimmīs (and in particular, Christians living in Palestine), and we will also consider whether the jurisprudence of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān affected caliphal policies toward dhimmīs. More concretely, do we see evidence of hatred toward ʿUmar in the policies of the caliphs, as witnessed in the Daʿāʾim’s depiction of ʿUmar as unjust and incapable of ruling? Do we see caliphal jealousy of Sunnī governance of dhimmīs, as reflected in al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s rejection of Sunnī jurisprudence (and therefore governance) as being grossly deficient? Do we witness caliphal concern over the social standing or financial power of dhimmīs, as detailed, for example in the Daʿāʾim’s warning not to take dhimmīs as business partners? Conversely, do we find the caliphs showing concern for the protection of the persons and property of dhimmīs, as guaranteed in the ʿahd of ʿAlī?

THE AMĀN OF AL-MUʿIZZ

Let us begin with the amān, or the political guarantee of security, that the Fāṭimid caliph al-Muʿizz (r. 341–65 / 953–75) gave the city of Fusṭāṭ shortly after his general Jawhar secured control over Egypt for the Fāṭimids in 358/969. After negotiating a surrender Jack Tannous, The Making of the Medieval Middle East: Religion, Society, and Simple Believers (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018), 340. 4

96 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN with the Ikhshīdid wazīr Abū al-Faḍl Jaʿfar b. al-Faḍl b. Jaʿfar b. Muḥammad b. Mūsā b. al-Ḥasan b. al-Furāt, Jawhar guaranteed the Fāṭimids’ new Sunnī subjects freedom to continue practicing Islam according to their schools of law. 5 The amān is rather lengthy, but as our concern here is primarily with dhimmīs, the most relevant section of the text reads as follows: You shall continue in your school of law (madhhab). You shall be permitted to perform your obligations according to the scholarship of the school (ʿilm), and to gather for [that purpose] in your congregational and other mosques, and to remain steadfast in the beliefs of the worthy ancestors from the Companions of the Prophet … and those who came after them, the jurists of the cities who have pronounced judgements according to their madhhabs and fatwās, and to perform the call to prayer, fasting in the month of Ramaḍān, the breaking of the fast and the celebration of its nights, the [payment of] the alms tax, [the performance of the] pilgrimage, and [the undertaking of] jihād according to the command of God and His Book and in accordance with the instruction of His Prophet … in his sunna, and the treatment of dhimmīs according to previous custom. I guarantee you God’s complete and universal safety, eternal and continuous, inclusive and perfect, renewed and confirmed through the days and recurring through the years, for yourselves, your property, your families, your livestock, your estates and your quarters, and whatever you possess, be it modest or significant. 6

Yaacov Lev cautions that this amān did not grant ‘religious freedom’ to Sunnīs, which “was not a principle especially cherished during the Middle Ages.” The Fāṭimids did privilege Ismāʿīlī law and thought over Sunnī principles. See Yaacov Lev, The Administration of Justice in Medieval Egypt (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2020), 120. 6 See Taqī al-Dīn Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ al-ḥunafāʾ bi-akhbār alaʾimma al-Fāṭimiyyīn al-khulafāʾ (Lessons for the true believers in the history of the Fāṭimid imams and caliphs), vol. 1 (Al-Qāhira: al-Lajna Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-Islāmī, 1967), 105–6. I have used the English translation of Jiwa, Towards a Shiʿi Mediterranean Empire, 71, though I have made some modifications of my own. 5

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While the amān is intended primarily for Fusṭāṭ’s Sunnī inhabitants, it should not be missed that it seems to also include and cover protection given to dhimmīs. 7 The amān appears to be an example of the kind of protection recommended in the ʿahd of ʿAlī, as witnessed especially in the Nahj. It constitutes the promise of a conquering ruler (rather than the proselytizing work of a dāʿī), and as such follows the best practices of the “guide for princes” that the ʿahd recommends. The amān’s concern for the continued maintenance of property, and the protection offered to all of the Sunnī madhhabs as well as to dhimmīs, resembles the ʿahd’s stipulation that all classes be supported and allowed to prosper through good governance. The ʿahd, then, was arguably not merely a juristic ideal present in the law book of the Fāṭimid state, but its principles found their way into the written policies of the Fāṭimid state. Having briefly examined what al-Muʿizz’s amān has to say about dhimmīs, let us turn now to al-Maqrīzī’s biographies of the caliphs that ruled Palestine during the end of the fourth/tenth century and for much of the fifth/eleventh, beginning with alʿAzīz bi-llāh, son of al-Muʿizz.

AL-ʿAZĪZ BI-LLĀH (R. 365–386 / 975–996)

Among the Fāṭimid caliphs, al-ʿAzīz developed a particular reputation for favoring Jews and Christians over Muslims when it came to his governmental appointments. 8 Near the end of his One could read the amān as being directed solely at Sunnīs, and that it mentions dhimmīs only in passing. The more inclusive interpretation is reasonable, though, given that ʿAlī’s ʿahd in the Nahj (as we have seen) counsels the ruler to be responsive to the complaints of dhimmīs and to treat them generously, as they would people of other classes. 8 Paul Walker has written that al-ʿAzīz was “notably open to the participation of Jews and Christians in his government,” and that this “was taken by some as a fault.” See Walker, Caliph of Cairo, 24. Samir Khalil Samir has written that for the Christians, the Fāṭimid period “was probably the best in their history under Arab rule.” While this is a sweeping statement, it nonetheless highlights the tolerance of caliphs like al-ʿAzīz and their willingness to appoint Christians to, and retain them in, high offices. See Samir Khalil Samir, “The Role of Christians in 7

98 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN caliphal chronological entry on al-ʿAzīz, al-Maqrīzī reports disapproving comments by the historian Ibn al-Athīr (d. 630/1233) that al-ʿAzīz “was proud” of the Christians and Jews, that he “empowered” them through appointing people like the Christian ʿIsā b. Nasṭūrus to office and the Jew Ibrāhīm b. al-Qazār over alShām (what is today Syria and Palestine), and that he consequently “made the Muslims suffer.” 9 A page later, al-Maqrīzī quotes the poetry of a certain al-Ḥasan b. Bishr al-Dimashqī who during al-ʿAzīz’s reign, excoriated the caliph for appointing the Jew Yaʿqūb b. Killis to the post of wazīr, and the Christian Faḍl b. Ṣāliḥ as commander (qāʾid) of the army, which he led in Fāṭimid campaigns in Syria. Al-Dimashqī ends his diatribe against these men with an especially provocative line, declaring in Christian trinitarian language that “Yaʿqūb the wazīr is Father, al-ʿAzīz is Son, and the Holy Spirit is Faḍl,” thereby mocking Christianity while also faulting al-ʿAzīz for favoring dhimmīs over Muslims. 10 It should be noted, though, that al-Maqrīzī appears to be skeptical of these claims. He points out, for example, that al-ʿAzīz “took 300,000 dinars away from [the Christian] ʿIsā b. Nasṭūrus and even more from the Jew [Ibrāhīm b. al-Qazār].” 11 He also observes how al-ʿAzīz arrested both Yaʿqūb and Faḍl, confiscated 100,000 dinars from Yaʿqūb (a month’s wage for the wazīr), and then held the men for two months before finally deciding to release them. 12 Clearly, al-Maqrīzī was skeptical that the caliph was biased in favor of the Christians and Jews to the detriment of the Muslims, preferring instead a more nuanced view of al-ʿAzīz. The editor of al-Maqrīzī’s history also points out that Yaʿqūb b. Killis was a Jew from Baghdad who converted to Islam before he ever became the wazīr for al-ʿAzīz’s father al-Muʿizz. In theory,

the Fatimid Government Services of Egypt to the Reign of al-Ḥāfiẓ,” Medieval Encounters 2.3 (1996): 177–92. 9 Al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ 1: 297. 10 Al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ 1: 298. 11 Al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ 1: 297. 12 Al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ 1: 262.

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then, his appointment should have not been controversial for Muslims. 13 The matter of al-ʿAzīz’s appointments, though, is not the only point to consider when examining al-ʿAzīz’s treatment of dhimmīs. Al-Maqrīzī’s text portrays near-continuous fighting in al-Shām during the caliphate of al-ʿAzīz. For example, near the beginning of his section on al-ʿAzīz, al-Maqrīzī identifies an opponent of the Fāṭimids named Aftakīn (or Alptakin, as he is more commonly known) who allied with the Qarāmiṭa, and who went on to take Damascus, Ramla, and Jaffa, then attacked Sidon and Tyre, finally taking up residence in Acco (Acre), along Palestine’s seacoast. AlʿAzīz sent a general named Jawhar from Egypt to counter Aftakīn, who then retreated inland from Acre to Tiberias, located on the coast of the Sea of Galilee. Jawhar then pursued him, first retaking Ramla, and then headed to Tiberias. Aftakīn fell back, abandoning Tiberias for Damascus, and Jawhar followed him there and surrounded him. Eventually, though, the tide of war flowed in the opposite direction, and near the southern Palestinian coastal city of ʿAsqalān (Ashkelon), Aftakīn defeated Jawhar, who then returned to Egypt to report on his lack of success. 14 This tug-of-war is a common subject of concern that runs throughout al-Maqrīzī’s text. Such information is valuable to us because it demonstrates how many of Palestine’s cities were deeply affected and indeed ravaged by the wars fought by al-ʿAzīz to secure the Fāṭimid borderland of al-Shām, battles that surely impacted these cities’ residents, Muslim and Christian alike. Yet this example also sheds light on our central concern at hand: what al-Maqrīzī has to say about how the Fāṭimids treated the Christians (and Jews) living under Fāṭimid rule. Shortly after Jawhar’s defeat and his humiliating return to Cairo to report his failure to al-ʿAzīz, al-Maqrīzī says that al-ʿAzīz became extremely angry with Jawhar and discharged him from the wizāra, appointing, rather, Yaʿqūb b. Killis as his wazīr. Al-ʿAzīz then proceeded to lead an army against Aftakīn, repelling him from Ramla, and then capturing and imprisoning him. Yet, curiously, 13 14

Al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ 1: 268. Al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ 1: 238–41.

100 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN right before al-Maqrīzī describes this new front against Aftakīn, he mentions that “al-ʿAzīz forbade in this year—and that was the year (3)67 [977]—the Christians (Naṣārā) from observing what they did during [the holiday festival of] baptism (al-Ghiṭās): from gathering together and descending into the water [and] from playing musical instruments (malāhī).” 15 Al-Maqrīzī does not specify which Christians were prohibited from observing and participating in the festival. He likely had in mind the Christians living along the Nile River in Egypt, but it is not unreasonable to assume that the order applied to all Christians in the Fāṭimid domain, including those in Syria and Palestine as well as to those living in Egypt. The placement of this event in the text is important for a couple of reasons. First, the Fāṭimid caliph issued a highly restrictive measure on Christians during what appears to have been a political and military nadir when tensions over what was transpiring in Palestine were running high. Moreover, al-ʿAzīz’s anger with Jawhar arguably stems from what, as we have seen, was the wider fear engendered by the ʿAbbāsid threat. In his study of these events, Moshe Gil has noted that Aftakīn was enthusiastically received by Sunnīs in Damascus, and that he introduced the ʿAbbāsid daʿwa there in 364/975. 16 It would seem then that al-ʿAzīz took out some of his anger on Christian dhimmīs during a particularly difficult moment of political vulnerability. The text appears to bear out in a historical event what we have argued from previous chapters: that sectarianism within Islam indeed impacts Muslim relations with Christians (and Jews), and in this case, negatively. Another example of this dynamic appears later in the text, when in the year 381/991, on the Feast of the Cross (ʿĪd al-Ṣalīb), “al-ʿAzīz forbade the going out [of Christians] to the [tribe of the] Al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ 1: 242. The holiday festival al-Ghiṭās is known as the feast day of Theophany, the Orthodox feast day that remembers the baptism of Jesus by John. The feast itself is celebrated on January 6th, according to the Julian calendar. My thanks go to Alexander Treiger for this information. 16 See Gil, 344. 15

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Banū Wāʾil, and he [al-ʿAzīz] seized the roads and pathways [leading to them], for what was hated (munkarāt) and dissolute (fasūq) had become visible, exceeding description.” 17 While the connection to military fortunes is not nearly as clear in this case (as it is not inserted directly into a narrative about the battles in which the Fāṭimids were engaged), a conclusion similar to the one we have just made may be drawn. An ally of al-ʿAzīz based in Damascus by the name of Minjūtakīn had during the previous year failed to capture the city of Aleppo from the Ḥamdānids, eventually withdrawing from the battle. Immediately following al-ʿAzīz’s action restricting Christian dhimmīs during the Feast of the Cross, al-Maqrīzī reports that al-ʿAzīz sent to Minjūtakīn and his army 100,000 dīnārs, what was then a very large amount of money. Later, during the following year (382/992), news arrived of Minjūtakīn’s victories in Syria, in which he captured the cities of Ḥimṣ, Ḥamāh, and Shayzar and had surrounded and besieged Aleppo. Immediately after this announcement, al-Maqrīzī recounts the story of a Christian who approached al-ʿAzīz and slandered him. Al-ʿAzīz’s response, though, was generous, for “it was said that he [the Christian] was famished, so he [al-ʿAzīz] set aside [for the man] 20 dīnārs each month.” 18 Incidentally, later that year, al-Maqrīzī notes that al-ʿAzīz permitted the celebration

Al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ 1: 272. The Feast of the Cross is September 14th on the Julian calendar and Thout 17th on the Coptic calendar, and is thought to have been initiated by Helen, mother of the emperor Constantine, to help reinforce the Byzantine Christian presence in Jerusalem. Copts in Egypt appear to have celebrated the festival as well, but not in Fusṭāṭ, preferring instead to go out to the Banū Wāʾil, a Christian tribe that served as guides in the trade between the Ḥijāz and Syria, and who were allied with Byzantium. Huda Lutfi notes that both the festival and practice of going out to the Banū Wāʾil were later banned altogether under al-Ḥākim, perhaps because of its association with the Byzantines. See Huda Lutfi, “Coptic Festivals of the Nile: aberrations of the past?,” in Thomas Philipp and Ulrich Haarmann, eds., The Mamluks in Egyptian Politics and Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 280– 81. 18 Al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ 1: 275. 17

102 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN of the Feast of the Cross as people were accustomed to it. 19 From this, and from the previous narrative, it would appear that as alʿAzīz experienced military success, he was inclined to treat dhimmīs more generously, while military failures led him to treat them more harshly. 20 One may reasonably counter that the examples given above are merely coincidental. Indeed, it is true that the text in general reads in an apparently disconnected fashion, as al-Maqrīzī apparently privileged chronology over other considerations. Walker has pointed out that in writing his history of the Fāṭimids, al-Maqrīzī wanted “to capture as much of what had happened as he could locate, both the grand and the less grand, even bits of the mundane, little events from the realm of the strange and curious that his sources had thought interesting enough to report.” 21 Yet this insight does not necessarily mean that there is no connection to be found or made between the events that alMaqrīzī records. On the contrary, the Fāṭimid caliphs did not make decisions in a vacuum, and it is reasonable to look in the surrounding text for clues as to why the caliph took the measures that he did.

AL-ḤĀKIM BI-AMR ALLĀH (R. 386–411 / 996–1021)

In the first chapter, we considered some of the most significant measures that the caliph al-Ḥākim took against dhimmīs (and particularly Christians), beginning with al-Maqrīzī’s account of alḤākim’s infamous order to destroy the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the year 400/1009. We also noted al-Ḥākim’s decree in 395/1004 that Jews and Christians in his realm must wear the Al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ 1: 276. It should be noted that al-ʿAzīz did not always have Sunnī enemies on his mind; he fought other regional powers, such as the Shīʿite Ḥamdānids, and, of course, the Byzantines. His final years witnessed a protracted struggle with the Byzantines, especially over the city of Aleppo, that only came to an end through a truce that al-ʿAzīz negotiated with the emperor Basil II in 385/995. See al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ 1: 277–88. See also Yaacov Lev, “The Fatimids and Byzantium, 10th–12th Centuries,” Graeco-Arabica 6 (1995), 201. 21 See Walker, Caliph of Cairo, 46. 19 20

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color black, a color that associated dhimmīs with the hated ʿAbbāsid foe, a striking example of how Sunnī-Shīʿa tensions surfaced in Muslim-Christian relations. Thirdly, we considered the argument of Jennifer Pruitt that al-Ḥākim’s intention in pursuing repressive policies against Christians in Fāṭimid lands was to win the trust and admiration of Sunnīs in the Fāṭimid caliphate who resented the prominence of Christians, especially in a place like Jerusalem which boasted large churches and, notably, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. One should add that al-Ḥākim did not stop with the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre; al-Maqrīzī records that for several years thereafter, al-Ḥākim ordered the widespread demolition of churches across his realm, and then allotting the land as fiefs or grants to those he wished to favor. 22 The caliph does not seem to have reversed this policy until late in his reign, when he began restoring churches and permitting those Christians who had been forcibly converted to Islam to revert to Christianity. 23 As scholarship on the reign of al-Ḥākim is (relative to other Fāṭimid caliphs) advanced, it will not be our purpose here to repeat what has already been said by scholars like Paul Walker, but rather to consider how al-Ḥākim’s policies compared with those of the other caliphs, and to more securely establish a link between al-Ḥākim’s concern about his Sunnī ʿAbbāsid rival and his own treatment of dhimmīs in Fāṭimid lands. Toward this end, we need to ask what kind of policy al-Ḥākim pursued against the ʿAbbāsids, and consider whether this might help shine any light on the events we have described above. In contrast to his father al-ʿAzīz, who waged a military campaign in Palestine as part of an offensive driving eastward toward Baghdad, al-Ḥākim appears to have concentrated on promoting the Fāṭimid daʿwa in ʿAbbāsid lands, that is, choosing to use persuasion rather than force. Indeed, al-Ḥākim’s most notable success against the ʿAbbāsids occurred a year after his command to destroy the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Al-Maqrīzī (among other historians) records that Al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ 2:94–5. See Walker, Caliph of Cairo, 209–14 for a more detailed discussion of al-Ḥākim’s evolving policy toward dhimmīs.

22 23

104 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN in 401/1010, Qirwāsh b. al-Muqallad b. al-Musayyab, the ʿUqaylid ruler of north Mesopotamia, switched his allegiance from the ʿAbbāsids to the Fāṭimids in a Friday sermon in his capital city of Mosul. Following this, the cities of al-Anbār, alMadāʾin, al-Kūfa, and others also professed their loyalty to alḤākim. 24 As Walker has observed, this “amounted to a noose around Baghdad, which lies at the center of the territory included.” Walker writes that “the Abbasid caliph could not but be alarmed; his position had, seemingly overnight, become perilous.” 25 The advantages of such a strategy are obvious. Rather than mounting a costly military campaign across the deserts of Syria toward Baghdad, al-Ḥākim hoped to undermine the ʿAbbāsid caliphate from within by recruiting the governors of ʿAbbāsid cities and realms into his circle. It appears that al-Ḥākim was adept at using the carrot to achieve what he desired. The problem was that such gains could be easily reversed, for as al-Maqrīzī mentions in his text, Qirwāsh returned his allegiance to the ʿAbbāsids after only a month of professing his loyalty to alḤākim. 26 Moreover, such defections (however brief) could provoke the ʿAbbāsids to retaliate. Walker, who has consulted multiple sources on the matter, notes that Qirwāsh’s short-lived allegiance to the Fāṭimids induced the ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Qādir to issue the famous Baghdad Manifesto. 27 This alleged that the Fāṭimid claim to be descended from ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib was false, and that the Fāṭimid caliphs were rather imposters, related to the false prophet Dayṣān b. Saʿīd al-Khurramī. 28 Al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ 2:88. Walker, Caliph of Cairo, 219. 26 Al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ 2:88. 27 Walker, Caliph of Cairo, 224. See also Jiwa, “The Baghdad Manifesto (402/1011): A Re-Examination of Fatimid-Abbasid Rivalry” in Farhad Daftary and Shainool Jiwa, eds, The Fatimid Caliphate: Diversity of Traditions, 22–79. 28 The name Dayṣān b. Saʿīd al-Khurramī seems to have derived from that of Bar Dayṣān, a Christian from Edessa who died in the early third century C.E. and who was deemed heretical within a century of his death. Muslim sources have very little to say about this false prophet Dayṣān, 24 25

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This insight into al-Ḥākim’s strategy, that he sought to undermine the ʿAbbāsids through persuasion rather than force, can arguably do much to help us understand his policies toward dhimmīs. Rather than assuming al-Ḥākim to have been a madman, it is perhaps better to see him as a pragmatist, willing to use whatever means he could (and not simply force) to achieve his ends. Recall Pruitt’s argument that al-Ḥākim, in pursuing the repressive policies he did against dhimmīs in Egypt and al-Shām, was trying to appease Sunnīs within his realm. Did al-Ḥākim fear that Sunnīs under his rule might turn on him just as Qirwāsh was willing to rebel against the ʿAbbāsids? This seems likely, for as Pruitt observed, Abū Rakwa had already set a precedent with his attempted rebellion in 395/1005. While revolt by disgruntled Sunnīs would be a potential problem for all the Fāṭimid caliphs (and not just al-Ḥākim), al-Ḥākim’s pragmatic decision-making may do much to explain why his policies could be so extreme (first destroying churches but then later giving the order to repair them) and could switch so rapidly when he perceived another course might reap better rewards. If we assume that al-Ḥākim was most concerned with the security of his reign, his decision to stop repressing dhimmīs late in his reign may be because doing so was not achieving the results among Sunnīs in Egypt and al-Shām for which he had hoped. There is another matter to consider, which relates to our prior proposal that al-Ḥākim had the Mosque of ʿUmar in his sights when he ordered the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Al-Maqrīzī observes that in the same year that alḤākim instituted the policy that dhimmīs wear the hated color of the ʿAbbāsids, he also prohibited his subjects from eating mulūkhiyya, a green herb used in stews in Egypt, because “it was much loved by Muʿāwiya b. Abī Sufyān”; and the caliph also forbade the eating of jirjir (a water-cress) because it was associated with ʿĀʾisha. 29 As observed in previous chapters, both citing simply his zandaqa (dualism, skepticism, and a lack of respect for scripture). See Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines, 101–2; see also EI 3 s.v. Dayṣanīs (Patricia Crone). 29 Al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ 2:53. See also Walker, Caliph of Cairo, 200.

106 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN Muʿāwiya and ʿĀʾisha were opponents of ʿAlī. Al-Ḥākim, then, was not reticent to attack any cultural artifact or memory that might honor the enemies of ʿAlī. Given such an attitude, al-Ḥākim must have been irked by the Mosque of ʿUmar in Jerusalem. Destroying the Church of the Holy Sepulchre would have presented him with an opportunity to erase ʿUmar’s memory from Jerusalem while doing so under the guise of persecuting Christians (though it does not explain why he ordered the destruction of other churches in his realm as well). Unfortunately for al-Ḥākim, the name of ʿUmar would survive, when Ṣalāḥ alDīn rebuilt the mosque after he expelled the Crusaders from Jerusalem in 583/1187.

AL-ẒĀHIR LI-IʿZĀZ DĪN ALLĀH (R. 411–427 / 1021–1036)

In contrast to his father’s tumultuous reign, and more specifically, the extremes to which al-Ḥākim went in his treatment of dhimmīs, al-Ẓāhir appears to have treated Christians and Jews much more even-handedly. Al-Maqrīzī even goes so far as to portray the caliph as a kind of protector and benefactor of the Christians. For example, in the year 415/1025 (a year that receives an inordinate amount of attention and space in al-Maqrīzī’s entry on al-Ẓāhir’s caliphate), the caliph went to his grandfather al-ʿAzīz’s palace in Cairo on Layl al-Ghiṭās to watch the Christian festival of baptism, presumably along the Nile River. 30 This indicates that al-ʿAzīz may have had a similar practice; recall how on one occasion, he prohibited the Christians from observing this holiday. Yet in this case, al-Ẓāhir appears to have approved of the practice, for alMaqrīzī says that as he observed the festival, he “gave thanks.” Moreover, when it was requested among the nās (presumably Muslims) that Muslims not mix with the Christians when they went into the water at night, al-Ẓāhir ordered his commander (qāʾid) to light long-lasting torches to light up the area at night. 31 He then guarded Christians participating in the baptisms. This he Layl al-Ghiṭṭās means the “eve of [the feast of] Baptism,” which was the vigil on the eve of feast of Theophany. 31 This is remarkable, given al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s concern that Muslims not lose their ritual purity by coming into contact with a dhimmī. 30

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did, even though (as al-Maqrīzī reports) the caliph’s three-yearold daughter died that same night, a tragedy that would have given him reason not to attend to the affairs of dhimmīs. 32 This decision by al-Ẓāhir to protect Christian dhimmīs is perhaps all the more significant, for it followed fighting earlier that year in Syria and Palestine by a rebel named Ḥassān ibn alMufarrij ibn Daghfal ibn Jarrāḥ, the Jarrāḥid Bedouin leader in Palestine. Al-Maqrīzī portrays Ḥassān as a rather vicious character, at one time putting the inhabitants of Ramla in Palestine to the sword and setting it on fire until it was leveled to the ground. 33 Moreover, al-Maqrīzī reports that Ḥassān had been allegedly provoked by a Christian named Ibn Bidwās in the Fāṭimid administration to try to bring down the Fāṭimid state, and that during the war, he corresponded with the Byzantine emperor Basil II, apparently in an effort to secure allies against the caliph. Moreover, al-Maqrīzī describes how at his arrest Ibn Bidwās was found to be uncircumcised (this being evidence that he was a Christian), and al-Maqrīzī remarks how incredible it was that he could have reached such a high position in the Fāṭimid government. 34 Yet, remarkably, al-Ẓāhir did not respond by persecuting Christians (other than Ibn Bidwās!) but rather protecting them, as we have just seen. While we are primarily interested in how the Fāṭimid conflict with the ʿAbbāsids impacted dhimmīs, we must remember that Fāṭimid relations with Byzantium was also an important piece in the puzzle of caliphal relations with dhimmīs, and especially with Christian Melkite dhimmīs of Palestine. We have already witnessed al-Ḥākim’s destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, a church long associated with Byzantine

Al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ 2:163. Al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ 2:154, 6. Al-Maqrīzī contrasts the treachery and brutality of Ḥassān with the constancy and nobility of the qāḍī of Damascus, Fakhr al-Dawla, a direct descendant of ʿAlī b. ʿAbī Ṭālib, who refuses to pay an exorbitant tax demanded by Ḥassān. 34 See al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ 2:152 and 158 for, respectively, mention of Ḥassān’s correspondence with the Byzantines, and for the Christian identity of Ibn Bidwās. 32 33

108 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN patronage. 35 By contrast, al-Ẓāhir advanced a very different policy toward the church, for in 418/1028, he re-opened the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on the condition that the Byzantine emperor Romanos III Argyros permit the re-opening of a mosque in Constantinople, supplying it with lamps and a muezzin, and ensuring that the sermon (khuṭba) acknowledge al-Ẓāhir in the lands of the Byzantines. 36 Al-Maqrīzī then writes that “Christian kings” (assuredly a reference to Byzantium and its allies) carried to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre money and other supplies for its restoration. Moreover, he notes that many of those who converted to Islam in the days of al-Ḥākim returned to the religion of the Christians, an indication that al-Ẓāhir disapproved of the policies of his father as they concerned dhimmīs and did not wish to force Christians to become (or remain as) Muslims. Despite the generous attitude al-Ẓāhir demonstrated toward dhimmīs, the caliph did have his limits. Al-Maqrīzī recounts how in 415/1025, a Christian by the name of Abū Zakariyyā who had converted to Islam, who then copied ḥadīths, read the Qurʾan, and went on ḥajj, apostatized and returned to Christianity, an act for which he was promptly decapitated. Shortly after this, a kitābī known as Aḥmad b. Ṭāṭwā arrived in Cairo, claiming that he had encountered in al-Kūfa (the missing and presumably dead) alḤākim bi-Amr Allāh, and declaring that the people should “stop doing what they were doing.” For this, he was likewise decapitated, probably because al-Ẓāhir perceived him to be

This said, it is important to note that al-Ḥākim was cognizant of the importance of good relations with Byzantium, and, prior to destroying the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, sent in 392/1002 the patriarch Aristos of Jerusalem to Constantinople on a diplomatic mission. See the following chapter for more on Aristos’s appointment. 36 Al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ 2:176. This mosque in Constantinople was not new. In 377/987, al-ʿAzīz agreed with the Byzantines that as part of a new treaty between the empires that the emperor would (among other conditions) permit the Friday sermon at a mosque in Constantinople to acknowledge the Fāṭimids. Al-Ẓāhir appears to have negotiated the reopening of this mosque rather than commissioning new construction. See Lev, “The Fatimids and Byzantium, 10th–12th Centuries,” 202, 206. 35

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instigating a rebellion in the name of al-Ḥākim. 37 In any case, it is clear that al-Ẓāhir would neither tolerate apostasy from Islam nor even unwelcome criticism from kitābīs. It is admittedly difficult, in any of these incidents as they are related by al-Maqrīzī, to find a connection between how al-Ẓāhir treated the Christian dhimmīs under his care, and the ongoing Fāṭimid rivalry with the ʿAbbāsid Sunnīs that so marked the fifth/eleventh century. Al-Maqrīzī does observe, though, that in 416/1026, al-Ẓāhir commanded that Mālikīs in particular but others as well be removed from the fuqahāʾ, and he instructed his dāʿīs that those in the madhhab of the āl al-bayt memorize as a work of fiqh al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s Daʿāʾim al-Islām (an order that incidentally reflects the enduring influence of this work on the Fāṭimid government) as well as the book of the wazīr Yaʿqūb b. Killis. 38 This would seem to reflect an effort on al-Ẓāhir’s part to privilege Ismāʿīlī teaching over the instruction of Sunnī ʿulamāʾ in Egypt and elsewhere throughout the Fāṭimid caliphate. Unfortunately, al-Maqrīzī does not offer any context to this decision of al-Ẓāhir’s, as it stands as the only item of interest in his chronicle of this particular year, so we cannot be sure how actively al-Ẓāhir was repressing Sunnīs in Fāṭimid lands. What cannot be doubted, though, is that al-Ẓāhir was committed to the overthrow of the ʿAbbāsids. Early in his section on al-Ẓāhir, al-Maqrīzī mentions that the caliph “became severe” in what he did concerning the caliphate of al-Qādir bi-llāh, 39 and near the end of his section on al-Ẓāhir, al-Maqrīzī recounts how when Turks seized Baghdad in 425/1035, al-Ẓāhir sent his dāʿīs there, where they spread his daʿwa among the people of Baghdad. 40 Nowhere in the text does al-Maqrīzī indicate that alẒāhir tried to make peace with the ʿAbbāsids. By contrast, and as already observed, he signed truces with the Byzantines, and further, exchanged gifts with them, as he did with the emperor

Al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ 2:136. Al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ 2:175. 39 Al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ 2:138. 40 Al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ 2:181. 37 38

110 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN Michael in 427/1036, the same year that al-Ẓāhir died from dropsy. 41

AL-MUSTANṢIR BI-LLĀH (R. 427–487 / 1036–1094)

As it concerns Fāṭimid might vis-à-vis the ʿAbbāsids in Baghdad, al-Mustanṣir both reached the pinnacle of Fāṭimid ambition and suffered the most catastrophic losses of any Fāṭimid caliph. In the year 450/1058, the general al-Basāsīrī, who acknowledged alMustanṣir as caliph, captured Baghdad and exiled the ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Qāʾim. This was the moment that the Fāṭimid caliphate had long desired, and it is worth quoting al-Maqrīzī to better appreciate the high drama of this event: He (al-Basāsīrī) preached in the Mosque of Manṣūr, [pledging loyalty] to al-Mustanṣir bi-llāh al-Fāṭimī and he stopped the sermon to the Banū al-ʿAbbās. [Then] he constructed a bridge and his army crossed over it, and when there was a second gathering, he (al-Basāsīrī) preached in the Ruṣāfa Mosque [pledging his loyalty] to al-Mustanṣir. Fighting between him and the people of Baghdad [ended] in the defeat of the chief and wazīr of al-Qāʾim and [his] army, and the killing of a group of notables. Robbery occurred in the land, and the allies of al-Basāsīrī entered the land and arrived at the Bāb al-Nūbī al-Sharīf. And al-Qāʾim rode in his black clothing and on his shoulder was the burda (a type of garment), in his hands the sword, over his head the banner [of the ʿAbbāsids], and around him a group of the Banū al-ʿAbbās, and a tent with pointed swords. … And the leader [al-Qāʾim] perceived the calamity … and he requested of him [that is, Quraysh, an ally of al-Basāsīrī] security (amān) for the caliphate of al-Qāʾim. 42

The elation that this victory brought the Fāṭimids cannot be overstated. Once al-Basāsīrī and his ally Quraysh worked out who would be responsible for various captured officials in al-Qāʾim’s retinue, al-Basāsīrī began sending his booty of war to Cairo, including such personal items as al-Qāʾim’s handkerchief (mandīl) and cloak. Then came perhaps the most important moment of all. 41 42

Al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ 2:182. Al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ 2:252–3.

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And on the day of the Feast of Sacrifice (yawm ʿīd al-naḥr), alBasāsīrī rode to the mosque and over his head were the banners of al-Mustanṣir. And the people enjoyed the bounty of great charity and giving of wealth. And he [al-Basāsīrī] broke the pulpit (minbar) of the Great Mosque in Baghdad and said: “This pulpit is ill-omened, from which hatred of the family of Muḥammad (upon them be peace) was announced.” And he built another pulpit and preached in it in the name of al-Mustanṣir. 43

Al-Maqrīzī then goes on to say there was great elation in Cairo, with al-Mustanṣir liberally rewarding the singing girl who sang the praises of the Fāṭimids’ victory over the ʿAbbāsids. As fate would have it, though, such elation was short-lived. Al-Maqrīzī explains how a year later, in 451/1059, the Saljūq ruler Tughrilbīk came to the aid of al-Qāʾim, and took the fight to al-Basāsīrī, eventually capturing and killing him and putting his head on a stake in Baghdad. Tughrilbīk then redirected the sermon to acknowledge al-Qāʾim as caliph. And this event, says al-Maqrīzī, was “the end of the happiness of the Fāṭimid state, and indeed al-Shām left its control a little after this through its capture by the Turks.” 44 Al-Maqrīzī goes on to describe in great detail a decade of internal strife within the caliphate, the decay of the caliph’s prestige, and the stripping of the palace treasuries. 45 He also describes the rising threat of Alp Arslan, whose army from Khurāsān captured Aleppo in 461/1069. “A party of Turks” then took al-Shām away from the Fāṭimids, a loss, al-Maqrīzī observes, that was “never recovered.” Also, at that time Mecca switched its allegiance from the Fāṭimids to the Al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ 2:254. Al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ 2:257. 45 Nāṣir al-Dawla ibn Ḥamdān, one of the Ḥamdānids in Syria and a sympathizer with the Saljūqs and ʾAbbāsids, seems to have been behind the looting of the palace treasury in Cairo. Before being assassinated by Turkish allies, Nāṣir al-Dawla was able to secure control of Alexandria and much of the Delta in Egypt, thereby further weaking the Fāṭimid caliphate. See Johannes den Heijer, Yaacov Lev, and Mark N. Swanson, “The Fatimid Empire and its Population,” Medieval Encounters 21 (2015), 326–7. 43 44

112 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN ʿAbbāsids. Al-Maqrīzī says that the rulers of Mecca and Medina appear to have been swayed by gifts from ʿAḍud al-Dawla (Alp Arslan), advancing from Khurāsān, who first offered Mecca 30,000 dīnārs, then, once they switched sides, gave them 20,000 dīnārs each year thereafter. “The khuṭba in Mecca and Medina,” remarks al-Maqrīzī, “lasted 100 years for al-Mustanṣir and his forebearers” before returning to the ʿAbbāsids. 46 In 467/1074, Jerusalem fell to the Turkish commander Atsiz b. Uwaq alKhwārizmī (d. 471/1078), who then acknowledged the ʿAbbāsids in the khuṭba. Atsiz then captured Tiberias and massacred its inhabitants, claiming that they had collaborated with the Fāṭimids. 47 Fāṭimid control of Palestine had effectively come to an end. Given these climactic events in Fāṭimid history, what does al-Maqrīzī have to say about Fāṭimid caliphal relations with dhimmīs? While al-Maqrīzī characteristically does not have much to say about them, there is one incident he records that is remarkable. In 447/1055, four years before al-Basāsīrī’s capture of Baghdad, Tughrilbīk convinced the Byzantine Empress Theodora to allow the khuṭba in the Constantinople mosque (a sermon, it will be recalled, that al-Ẓ āhir had agreed with the Byzantines would acknowledge the Fāṭimids) to honor al-Qāʾim in Baghdad. This so angered al-Mustanṣir that he ordered that the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem be surrounded and what was inside it taken. He then removed the patriarch from the church and imprisoned him in a solitary place (dār mufrada). In addition to this, says al-Maqrīzī, al-Mustanṣir locked up the doors of churches in both Egypt and al-Shām, demanded from monks the jizya for four years, and increased the amount of the jizya on Christians everywhere in his domain. Al-Maqrīzī then adds that a consequent deterioration (fasād) in the relationship between the Fāṭimids and the Byzantines set in, and that Turks began Al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ 2:302–4. Al-Maqrīzī devotes an extraordinary amount of attention to the stripping of the palace treasuries, particularly by a Turkish contingent in Cairo, thereby explaining the impoverishment of the erstwhile wealthy Fāṭimid caliphate. See pages 280–96. 47 See Yaron Friedman, The Shīʿīs in Palestine, 52–3. 46

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gathering in Aleppo and elsewhere to despoil the province of alShām. 48 Of all the various ways in which sectarianism within Islam impacted Palestinian Christians during the Fāṭimid era, this incident stands out as especially dramatic. The severity of alMustanṣir’s actions reveals how important it was to him that he, rather than al-Qāʾim, be acknowledged everywhere as the head of the Islamic community, even in a city that was not Muslim (Constantinople). Al-Mustanṣir was working toward the toppling of his ʿAbbāsid rival, and a setback such as this must, in his mind, not be allowed to occur without taking some action to try and reverse it. Moreover, Tughrilbīk was a growing threat to the Fāṭimids and needed to be stopped. The Saljūq Turkish decision to support the ʿAbbāsids threatened (and indeed undermined) Fāṭimid attempts to overthrow the ʿAbbāsids. Indeed, as we will recall from William of Tyre’s account in chapter one, al-Mustanṣir would soon be on the defensive, as, after al-Qāʾim’s reinstatement as caliph in Baghdad, al-Mustanṣir vainly tried to fortify Jerusalem’s walls against the assault of Saljūq armies gathering under Alp Arslan, Tughrilbīk’s nephew. 49 It also demonstrates how politics and confessional ties (in this case, Constantinople’s relationship with Palestine’s Melkite Christians) could adversely affect those living within the realm of the offended party. Al-Mustanṣir targeted the Church of the Holy Sepulchre because, as we have seen, it was a church that the emperors of Constantinople had long protected and maintained from afar. Al-Mustanṣir likely hoped that the empress would reverse her decision to allow the Constantinople mosque to acknowledge al-Qāʾim once she realized that Jerusalem’s Christians were suffering because of that decision. Instead, what Al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ 2:230. Alp Arslan is most remembered for defeating the Byzantine army at the Battle of Manzikert in 463/1071, which spelled the beginning of the end for the Byzantine empire. For a detailed treatment of this event and its historiography, see Carole Hillenbrand, Turkish Myth and Muslim Symbol: The Battle of Manzikert (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2007). For an overview of Alp Arslan’s reign, and his relationship to Tughrilbīk (also known as Tughril Beg), see EI 3 s.v. Alp Arslan (Alex Mallett).

48 49

114 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN seems to have happened is that Fāṭimid-Byzantine relations soured after al-Mustanṣir’s attempt to pressure the empress into changing her mind. There may indeed be more to Empress Theodora’s actions than what we see in the text. The Byzantines were hardly passive actors on the international stage, and they had ambitions of their own. Four years previously, in 443/1051, the Byzantines took advantage of a Sunnī rebellion in Fāṭimid Ifrīqiya (Tunisia) to invade the land. This so unnerved the rebel al-Muʿizz b. Bādīs that he returned to al-Mustanṣir to reconcile with him, and to burn in a pit the compact that he (al-Muʿizz) had made with the ʿAbbāsids against the Fāṭimids. 50 Empress Theodora, then, may have intentionally permitted the change in khuṭba at the Constantinople mosque in order to stir up trouble between the Fāṭimids and the ʿAbbāsids, hoping perhaps that she might be able to then exploit a division between them as the Byzantines had done in Ifrīqiya. Also, Yaacov Lev has observed that relations between the Fāṭimids and Byzantines had deteriorated quickly following the death of emperor Constantine IX Monomachus, and the Byzantines reneged on a promise to supply the Fāṭimids with much-needed grain, thus “setting the two states on a course for war.” 51 The Empress Theodora, then, was already at odds with alMustanṣir when she decided to permit the Friday sermon in Constantinople to honor the ʿAbbāsids. In any case, her decision would appear to have been a poor one, for it helped neither the Byzantines nor those Christians who shared her confession in Fāṭimid lands. Between the punitive actions of al-Mustanṣir, and the rising prospect of war with the Saljūq armies, Jerusalem’s Christians in the mid-fifth/eleventh century had much to fear.

CONCLUSION

This chapter set out to examine al-Maqrīzī’s accounts of the four Fāṭimid caliphs who ruled Palestine from Cairo during the end of the fourth/tenth century and for much of the fifth/eleventh Al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ 2:230. See Yaacov Lev, “The Fatimids and Byzantium, 10th–12th Centuries,” Graeco-Arabica 7–8 (1999–2000), 274. 50 51

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century, and to consider more closely links between sectarian strife in Islam and caliphal relations with dhimmīs (and in particular, Christians living in Palestine). The chapter has also sought to determine the extent to which al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s jurisprudence on dhimmīs impacted caliphal attitudes toward dhimmīs. Let us not forget that we have evidence that the caliphs were reading and teaching al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s jurisprudence. Consider al-Ẓāhir’s command in 416/1026 that his dāʿīs instruct the people to memorize al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s Daʿāʾim al-Islām as their madhhab’s work of fiqh. What conclusions, then, can we draw from this study? While we may not be able to draw a direct line from the law book to a certain policy or action, we can witness at least the indirect effects of jurisprudence in the various actions of the caliphs. In the Daʿāʾim, we find al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān denouncing ʿUmar and other enemies of ʿAlī; al-Ḥākim clearly targeted the enemies of ʿAlī in his suppression of certain foods associated with them, and, as we have argued, destroyed the Mosque of ʿUmar at the same time that he ordered the demolition of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān was highly critical of Sunnī jurisprudence and, consequently, the Sunnīs’ claim to govern Muslims and dhimmīs wisely; we have seen how Sunnī ʿAbbāsid claims to supremacy over all in Constantinople enraged alMustanṣir, causing him to retaliate against the Empress Theodora. We have observed al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s warning Muslims not to allow dhimmī social standing or financial power of dhimmīs; we find al-Ḥasan b. Bishr al-Dimashqī and others rebuking al-ʿAzīz for appointing a Jew and Christian to the highest posts of the land. Conversely, we find al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān citing ʿAlī’s ʿahd protecting the persons and property of dhimmīs; we have seen how al-Ẓāhir protected the Christians performing baptisms at night during the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord (Layl al-Ghiṭās). It is important here to acknowledge that while the law influenced the caliphs (however indirectly), the imam-caliphs themselves initiated and indeed constituted the law. We noted in the previous chapter that the Fāṭimid caliphs ‘routinized’ the law in commissioning the Daʿāʾim, and indeed the caliphs ensured that the Daʿāʾim was used in the education of the public in Ismāʿīlī

116 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN law, as we glimpsed above in the case of al-Ẓāhir. 52 Yet this does not mean that the caliphs were necessarily beholden to that law in all its particulars. It would be more accurate to say that the law was beholden to the Fāṭimid imam-caliphs. To use Shahab Ahmed’s categories, the caliphs understood themselves to embody the Pre-Text of the Prophet’s charisma, or at least, of having special access to the Truth of the Pre-Text. They thus commanded an extraordinary and in fact unique authority in the long history of Islamic communities. As the spiritual heirs of the Prophet, the caliphs’ command was the law, and thus no madhhab (including the Imāʿīlī one) in the Fāṭimid realm could claim ultimate authority. That the Fāṭimid caliphs continued to allow Sunnī madhhabs to function in Egypt and Palestine reflects in part their pragmatic recognition of religious plurality in Fāṭimids lands, but it also reflects a recognition on the caliphs’ part that what mattered most was the rule of the imam-caliph and not which madhhab dominated the courts. Both of these facts need to be taken into account when we evaluate the attitudes of the Fāṭimid caliphs toward both their Sunnī subjects and toward their dhimmīs. Moreover, al-Maqrīzī shows us that the caliphs’ actions were often reactive, responding to provocations in their struggle with the ʿAbbāsids. It is difficult (and frankly unreasonable) to argue that the caliphs were always pro-actively pursuing policies that came directly from their study of law. Relationships are defined not only by rules meant to govern them but also by the environments in which those relationships take place. Rather than imagining the caliphs as concerning themselves with the intricacies of the law and then constructing their policies Farhard Daftary has written that “the Ismāʿīlī legal code was new and its precepts had to be explained to Ismāʿīlīs as well as other Muslims. This was essentially accomplished in regular public sessions, initiated by al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān himself on Fridays, after the midday prayers when large numbers would gather for the occasion. For these public sessions on law, al-Nuʿmān used his own legal works, especially the Daʿāʾim alIslām. This tradition continued after al-Nuʿmān, with the public sessions held at al-Azhar and other great mosques of Cairo, such as ʿAmr and alḤākim.” See Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines, 214.

52

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accordingly, it is probably more accurate to say that the caliphs pursued most vigorously what they perceived as their right to rule over all peoples (Muslims, Christians, Jews, etc.), and drew on the law to support (as well as to inform) their policies. With the ʿahd of ʿAlī serving as the model for how the Fāṭimids thought they should conduct themselves as rulers, the caliphs (as presented in the work of al-Maqrīzī) governed in such a way as to ensure that Islam remained supreme in the land and that the ahl al-bayt received its due honor. What we have yet to explore is how Christians in Palestine perceived Fāṭimid governance, and for this we turn now to Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd al-Anṭākī’s Kitāb al-dhayl.

CHAPTER 5. GOVERNING THE DHIMMĪS IN PALESTINE AND EGYPT: MELKITE PERSPECTIVES The most important Melkite study on fourth/tenth- and fifth/eleventh-century Fāṭimid Palestine comes from the pen of Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd al-Anṭākī, who wrote his Kitāb taʾrīkh al-dhayl (Sequel History) in the early fifth/eleventh century, as a continuation of the earlier historical work of Saʿīd ibn al-Biṭrīq. He wrote two drafts, finishing the first around the year 397/1006 and then reworking it twice, the latter in 405/1014 after he discovered new sources after moving from Alexandria to Antioch. He was thus contemporary with the caliphates which he was studying, unlike al-Maqrīzī writing several centuries after the events he describes. His narrative continues until the year 425/1034, where his text breaks off, meaning that his history stops near the end of the caliphate of al-Ẓāhir and (unfortunately, for this study) does not address the long reign of al-Mustanṣir. Yaḥyā’s interests were wide-ranging, and he included not only narrative about the Fāṭimid empire and its Melkite subjects but also historical accounts of the politics and intrigues of the contemporary Byzantine empire, as well as descriptions of the toand-fro of war in and around Antioch and Aleppo, the region that had become the battleground between the Byzantines and their Muslim neighbors in Syria at the turn of the fifth/eleventh century. Yaḥyā also described some of the political and military developments in ʿAbbāsid Baghdād and other Iraqi cities. What concerns us though is his narrative as it relates to Fāṭimid Egypt 119

120 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN and Palestine, particularly as it relates to the Melkite Christians living there.

AL-ʿAZĪZ BI-LLĀH (R. 365–386 / 975–996)

In his narrative, Yaḥyā covers some of the same ground that alMaqrīzī does, noting, for example, the constant warfare in Palestine during the reign of al-ʿAzīz, and the consequent difficulty al-ʿAzīz had in bringing Palestine under firm Fāṭimid control. Yet he also includes some details missing in al-Maqrīzī’s account, which are of particular interest to this study. First and foremost, we find evidence of sectarianism influencing al-ʿAzīz’s actions as caliph. Yaḥyā writes that in 369/979, al-ʿAzīz sent one of his officers, Faḍl b. Ṣāliḥ, to fight their enemies in Syria, but that the Turkish commander Alptakīn succeeded in killing Faḍl, whose body was then returned to Egypt. 1 Upon hearing this, alʿAzīz in 370/980 “stopped the qunūt prayer, and it was the prayer Muslims make in the mosque during the month of Ramaḍān after the ʿatma prayer, that being the greatest prayer of all the Sunnī Muslims.” 2 The qunūt was not unique to Sunnīs; it was used by both Sunnīs and Shīʿites either as an invocation to God or a curse against an enemy. How one performed the prayer, though, became a distinguishing sectarian marker. That al-ʿAzīz would prohibit the qunūt after a defeat suffered by one of his generals may indicate that he was angry over the opposition from Sunnīs that the Fāṭimids were facing in Syria and was then seeking to

This apparently was not the same Faḍl b. Ṣāliḥ who served as the army’s commander and who was contemporary with the wazīr Yaʿqūb b. Killis. 2 The best edited Arabic edition of this text, complete with French translation, is by Ignace Kratchkovsky. See Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd al-Anṭākī, Histoire de Yaḥyā Ibn Saʿīd d-Antioche. Patrologia Orientalis 23. Edited by I. Kratchkovsky and A. Vasiliev. Fascicle II (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1932), 404. For an alternative Arabic edition, see Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd al-Anṭākī, Kitāb al-taʾrīkh al-majmūʻ ʻalā al-taḥqīq wa-al-taṣdīq. Edited by L. Cheikho. Vol 1-2. Scriptores Arabici, Series Tertia – Tomus 6. Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium. Paris: Carolus Poussielgue, Bibliopola, 1905–9), 160. 1

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punish Sunnīs living under his rule in Egypt. 3 Interestingly, alMaqrīzī makes no mention of any of this in the first few pages introducing the caliphate of al-ʿAzīz. This may be because alMaqrīzī did not have access to Yaḥyā’s work, or alternatively, because he was deliberately omitting mention of this act by alʿAzīz directed against Sunnīs. 4 Yaḥyā also provides his readers with details about dhimmī relations with al-ʿAzīz that are missing in al-Maqrīzī’s account. He mentions, for example, that in the year 375/985, “Aristos, the maternal uncle of the Sayyida, daughter of al-ʿAzīz bi-llāh, was appointed patriarch of Jerusalem. He remained there for 20 years and died in Constantinople. His brother Arsenius was also made patriarch of Cairo and Fusṭāṭ. Both of them were in a good place [that is, honored in esteem] vis-à-vis al-ʿAzīz bi-llāh, and they advanced in his kingdom.” 5 In his commentary on this passage, Why al-ʿAzīz did this is admittedly uncertain. Imāmīs uphold the qunūt in all obligatory and supererogatory prayers; and accordingly, it seems likely that the Fāṭimids, while being Ismāʿīlī, had no objection to the prayer itself. It is possible that Sunnīs in Fāṭimid lands were using the qunūt to curse the Fāṭimids, though the majority opinion in the Mālikī school (the dominant Sunnī school in North Africa) discouraged the cursing of enemies in the qunūt. Alternatively, al-ʿAzīz may simply have been unhappy with how Sunnīs were performing the prayer. For more on the qunūt and the positions different law schools took regarding the prayer, see Najam Haider, The Origins of the Shīʿa: Identity, Ritual, and Sacred Space in Eighth-Century Kūfa, 95–119; and Haider, “Prayer, Mosque, and Pilgrimage: Mapping Shīʿī Sectarian Identity in 2nd/8th Century Kūfa,” Islamic Law and Society 16.2 (2009), 156; see also EI2 s.v. Ḳunūt (A.J. Wensinck). 4 See al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ 1: 236–38. Other Muslim historians also appear to have omitted mention of al-ʿAzīz stopping the qunūt prayer. For example, see ‘Imād al-Dīn Idrīs’s ‘Uyūn al-akhbār, (Beirut: Dār al-Andalus, 1984), 217–23, which describes al-ʿAzīz’s fighting with Alptakīn. 5 Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd al-Anṭākī (Kratchkovsky, PO 23), 415; (Cheikho), 164– 5. Al-Ḥākim would retain the two patriarchs in their posts, and even send Aristos to the Byzantine court in 392/1002, where he would secure a ten year’s truce, settle, then die four years later. Arsenius became metropolitan of Alexandria in 390/1000. For more on this, see Walker, Caliph of Cairo, 227. 3

122 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN Walker writes that the Sayyida, that is, Sitt al-Mulk, was born in the Maghrib to al-ʿAzīz and was a concubine (umm walad), and it is possible that she could have been Melkite. 6 It appears that alʿAzīz and his family had significant influence over and maintained good relations with the Melkite clergy in Palestine and Egypt. As we learned in al-Maqrīzī’s account, we also find Yaḥyā describing the service of the converted Jew Yaʿqūb b. Killis and the Christian Faḍl b. Ṣāliḥ in the highest levels of the Fāṭimid government. Yaḥyā relates an incident following a drought in the Nile basin in 373/983 when al-ʿAzīz arrested Yaʿqūb and Faḍl, confiscated their belongings and assets, and put them under house arrest for two months. 7 It is not clear why he did this, though the context of the passage suggests that he may have held them responsible for the chaos in the markets that occurred following the drought. He quickly restored them to their positions, however, and when Yaʿqūb later died, al-ʿAzīz gave him great honor. Yaḥyā writes a short biography of the man that is worth recounting in full: The wazīr Yaʿqūb b. Killis died in Egypt, and he was a man of great intellect, an able administrator, of great zeal, and experienced in the management of the kingdom. He was at first a Jew and engaged in business with merchants. Then he converted to Islam in the days of Kāfūr al-Ikhshīdī and entered into his service. He left [it] after his death for the Maghrib and went to [the Fāṭimid caliph] al-Muʿizz li-Dīn Allāh, and upon entering Fusṭāṭ (miṣr), he [al-Muʿizz] put [Yaʿqūb] in charge of its kharāj (land tax). He [Yaʿqūb] continued in this [charge] until al-ʿAzīz entrusted him with the office of wazīr. Al-ʿAzīz rode to his [Yaʿqūb’s] abode after his death, prayed Walker, Caliph of Cairo, 18–19. Even if she was not herself Melkite, Sitt al-Mulk was favorable toward Christian dhimmīs. For example, we know that Sitt al-Mulk tried to intercede with al-ʿAzīz on behalf of ʿĪsā b. Nasṭūrus after al-ʿAzīz dismissed him from his position as wazīr (a position he held after Yaʿqūb b. Killis). See Yaacov Lev, “The Fāṭimid Princess Sitt al-Mulk,” Journal of Semitic Studies 32.2 (Autumn 1987), 320. 7 Yaḥyā ibn Sa‘īd al-Anṭākī (Kratchkovsky, PO 23), 414; (Cheikho), 164. 6

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over him, uncovered his face, and wept greatly over him, and he was deeply saddened by his death. And he [Yaʿqūb] was worthy of that. He [Yaʿqūb] had composed for him [al-ʿAzīz] a book of fiqh and attributed it to him [al-ʿAzīz], and he transmitted what was in it on the authority of al-ʿAzīz and his ancestors the imāms. He had brought it to the ancient mosque in Fusṭāṭ. 8 He admonished the people to rely on it [for instruction], and he ordered the legists to make decisions based on it. This gave rise to much debate among the people, but most of them did not deem it fit to act in accordance with it. As that became clear, [al-ʿAzīz] released them from it [that is, from the obligation to follow Yaʿqūb’s fiqh]. 9

This account is significant because it demonstrates both the opportunity available to dhimmīs (especially if they converted to Islam!) in serving the Fāṭimid caliph, as well as describing the obstacles that they faced. As a Jewish convert to Islam, Yaʿqūb achieved great power and influence under al-ʿAzīz, and while alʿAzīz’s mourning for Yaʿqūb may be a trope, there is no reason to doubt that al-ʿAzīz had great affection for his wazīr. More importantly, it appears that al-ʿAzīz deemed Yaʿqūb’s writings on Islamic law valuable enough to affix his own name to it, perhaps putting it on par with the fiqh of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, before it became clear that most legists would not agree to use it in their work. While Yaḥyā does not explain why this majority rejected Yaʿqūb’s fiqh, it is possible that Yaʿqūb’s Jewish background prejudiced them against it, and al-ʿAzīz did not wish to counter them in this. The incident, then, could suggest that Christian and Jewish officials, even when they converted to Islam and found This is probably referring to the Masjid of ʿAmr b. al-ʿĀṣ in Fusṭāṭ. Under Abū Bakr, ʿAmr b. al-ʿĀṣ (d. 42/663) served as a commander in the initial military forays into Palestine, and under ʿUmar, he commanded the Arab army that took Egypt from the Byzantines and then founded Fusṭāṭ. See Michael Lecker, “The Estates of ʿAmr b. al-ʿĀṣ in Palestine: Notes on a New Negev Arabic Inscription,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 52.1 (1989), 28–9; See also EI2 s.v. ʿAmr b. al-ʿĀṣ (A.J. Wensinck). 9 Yaḥyā ibn Sa‘īd al-Anṭākī (Kratchkovsky, PO 23), 433–4; (Cheikho), 172–3. 8

124 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN favor with the caliph and his family, found it difficult to command the confidence of the Muslim elite. Alternatively, it may simply reflect the jurists’ decision to give Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s corpus of law pride of place, over that of Ibn Killis. Recall, though, from the previous chapter that al-ʿAzīz’s grandson al-Ẓāhir later ordered his dāʿīs to memorize “the book of the wazīr Yaʿqūb b. Killis” alongside that of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s fiqh, demonstrating that the caliphs continued to honor Yaʿqūb’s work, despite jurists’ resistance. Yaḥyā includes one other account relating to dhimmīs in Egypt under al-ʿAzīz that is notable for this study. Al-ʿAzīz appointed a Christian named ʿĪsā b. Nasṭūrus as a supervisor of affairs (al-naẓar fī’l umūr), and then ordered him to construct a fleet to oppose the Byzantine army of Emperor Basil II. Ibn Nasṭūrus did this, and then resolved to dispatch the fleet in the year 386/996. 10 But then a fire broke out and burned sixteen ships. Yaḥyā describes what happened: The populace then accused Byzantine merchants and the people of Amalfi [in southern Italy], those coming with goods to Egypt. The populace and Maghribīs [troops from North Africa who were allocated a quarter in Fusṭāṭ] attacked them and killed 160 of their men. They plundered Dār Mānak, which was in al-Raffāʾīn [quarter] in Fusṭāṭ. And there was in it great wealth belonging to these Byzantines who were living there. The Church of St. Michael was plundered, which was located on the property of Qaṣr al-Shamaʿ. Taken from it was money, cargo, and vessels of gold and silver of great value. The church was left in a bad state (shuʿithat). The Church of the Nestorians was plundered, and the bishop in it by the name of Yūsuf al-Shayzarī was wounded and died of his wounds. [Upon hearing of this] plunder, Ibn Nasṭūrus rode out, and he came down to Fusṭāṭ. He ordered them to stop their troublemaking (al-adhiyya) concerning the Byzantines, and he forbade their resistance. It was proclaimed in the city that each one of the plunderers return what he took, and some of that was returned. Of those Byzantines not killed, he Yaḥyā ibn Sa‘īd al-Anṭākī (Kratchkovsky, PO 23), 442, 447; (Cheikho), 176, 178.

10

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brought forward and paid to each of them what was theirs. He [then] seized 63 of the plunderers, and they were arrested. Al-ʿAzīz ordered the release of one-third of them, the beating of one-third of them, and the killing of one-third of them. He wrote notes, some of which said “You will be beaten,” others “You will be killed,” and others “You will be released,” and they were put under a canvas (izār). Each one of them [the plunderers] came and took a note, and it was done according to [what was written] in it. 11

This account offers us several insights into how dhimmīs fared under the rule of al-ʿAzīz. First, it confirms what al-Maqrīzī tells us regarding how al-ʿAzīz entrusted high governmental offices to Christians, as he did with ʿĪsā b. Nasṭūrus. It also shows how Christians who were not dhimmīs (in this case, Byzantine merchants living in Fāṭimid Egypt but who were subjects of the Byzantine emperor) could make trouble for Christian dhimmīs by burning ships in a fleet (commanded by a Christian dhimmī, no less!) but which was intended to combat the Byzantines. 12 As we have seen, this action then provoked angry Muslims to plunder various churches in and around Cairo and Fusṭāṭ. It also shows how Christian dhimmīs in government could use their authority to clamp down on Muslim violence against Christians, and then receive the backing of the caliph for their actions. Al-ʿAzīz took it upon himself to mete out justice to those Muslims who had plundered the churches. His judgement to release one-third of the men, beat one-third, and kill one-third suggests that al-ʿAzīz did not know who precisely was responsible for the plundering, and so he had the men draw lots as to what their punishment would be. What we find then, is that Christian dhimmīs under Fāṭimid rule had to negotiate not only their relationship with the caliph (through the likes of Ibn Nasṭūrus) but also relations with Byzantine Christians living there and with Muslims who resented the presence of those Byzantines. Yaḥyā ibn Sa‘īd al-Anṭākī (Kratchkovsky, PO 23), 447–8; (Cheikho), 178–9. 12 It should be emphasized that we do not actually know whether these Christians set fire to the fleet, but only that they were accused of doing so. 11

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AL-ḤĀKIM BI-AMR ALLĀH (R. 386–411 / 996–1021)

As in the previous chapter, it will not be the purpose of this section to cover all of the material on al-Ḥākim as it pertains to dhimmīs, since others (notably Paul Walker and Shawqi Talia) have already studied Yaḥyā’s portrayal of the caliph in detail. Yet there are a few issues that Yaḥyā highlights in a way that alMaqrīzī does not, the first being the persistent question as to whether al-Ḥākim was ‘mad’. Given how controversial al-Ḥākim’s reign was, it should come as no surprise that Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd alAnṭākī harbored some strong opinions and views concerning the caliph. Indeed, Yaḥyā was of the opinion that the caliph was mentally diseased, and that it was due to this disorder that the caliph pursued the extreme and contradictory policies that he did. In one particularly memorable passage, Yaḥyā delivered his verdict regarding al-Ḥākim’s strange behaviors (such as refusing to cut his fingernails, wearing black, and wandering the desert like the crazed Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon as depicted in the fourth chapter of the book of Daniel): The reason for his [al-Ḥākim’s] injustice in all these strange contradictory actions … was a brain disease which caused him to have a melancholic temperament and weak mind from his early youth. For it is known among practitioners of medicine that he who has this disease is self-delusional and imagines strange things, and that each one of them does not doubt that he is correct in what he imagines. And one cannot dissuade him and turn him back (from his fancies). There are those among them who think that they are prophets and (others) who imagine that they are God (may he [alone] be exalted!). In some of them, public confusion of words and speech defect reveals his state such that the one who sees him and speaks with him ceases from the first moment to have any doubt [about his condition]. But in one of them, it happens that the incoherence of words is concealed, and these dangerous ideas come to him concealed from the common people, and the image which he presents is of a sane person, and people perceive him to be a man of good merit. But when they carefully observe him, they would realize his sickness. This is the state of al-Ḥākim. The deficiency [of his mind] was obvious to those who had known him for a long time. To those

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who were distant from him, his actions made [his condition] clear. One may discern the truth of this overwhelming malady of his in that during his youth he had convulsions (tashannuj) due to a diseased dry temperament in his brain. It is a disease that occurs to those [suffering] from melancholia. He needed such remedies as sitting in the oil of violet flowers to moisten [his temperament] by it. Also, his insomnia (sahar) and his passion for continuous riding and his persistent love-madness were among [the symptoms] which this ill temperament causes. And when Abū Yaʿqūb Isḥāq b. Ibrāhīm b. Anasṭās, may God have mercy on his soul, served him [as his physician], he encouraged him to drink an alcoholic drink (nabīdh) and listen to songs after he rejected them and prohibited them to the people. [When this was done], his character improved, the temperament of his brain was moistened, and his body became sound. But when Abū Yaʿqūb died, and [al-Ḥākim] went back to abstaining from drinking nabīdh and listening to singing, he returned to his previous state, with a more severe illness, causing him to behave in the manner we have earlier explained. 13

This diagnosis of al-Ḥākim’s condition has become the generally accepted consensus of historians, and the means by which many of the oddities and contradictions in his reign are explained. To be sure, al-Ḥākim’s mental condition was extraordinary, and it is probably the case that this instability affected his decision making at times. Yet even those historians who largely agree with Yaḥyā’s diagnosis caution that not everything al-Ḥākim did should be attributed to his madness. Walker writes that “al-Ḥākim’s condition does not fit nor does it explain more than a tiny portion of his constant activity. He did not cease to run his government nor to monitor the affairs of state, as far as we can tell. If anything, Yaḥyā ibn Sa‘īd al-Anṭākī, Histoire de Yaḥyā Ibn Sa‘īd d-Antioche, Patrologia Orientalis 47. Edited by Ignace Kratchkovsky and translated by F. Micheau, and G. Troupeau. Fascicule 4 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997), 410–13. See also Cheikho, 218–19. For other translations of this important passage, see Shawqi Talia, “The Fatimid Caliph al-Hākim’s treatment of Christians according to the history of Yaḥyā Ibn-Saʿīd alAnṭākī” (Master’s thesis, Catholic University of America, 1980), 31–4, and Paul Walker, The Caliph of Cairo, 249.

13

128 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN he increased his supervision of them, appointing new, and in some ways, more capable men to office.” 14 Shawqi Talia, who concludes at the end of his thesis that “al-Hakim’s cruel and strange behavior was the product of a sick mind” nonetheless also finds him mysterious. He writes, “The enigma of al-Hakim lies in the absence of any discoverable rationale for many of his edicts. To this day he remains a mystery to the student of medieval Islam.” 15 This study thus far has tried to show that there is indeed a rationale that undergirds the seemingly erratic policies of alḤākim. That his policies were inconsistent arguably reflects his changing postures toward Sunnīs at various times during the Fāṭimid caliphate. Rather than simply viewing al-Ḥākim as the ‘mad’ caliph whose reign was unrepresentative of the Fāṭimid caliphate and even of Muslim caliphates in general, we would do better to consider how the shifting tides of the Sunnī-Shīʿa conflict impacted him and his fluctuating policies toward both Sunnīs and dhimmīs. Given that al-Ḥākim was not alone in this (al-ʿAzīz’s halting of the qunūt prayer proves this point), we should be cautious in accepting Yaḥyā’s diagnosis at face value. This said, Yaḥyā’s diagnosis of al-Ḥākim does need to be taken seriously, especially as he was writing with some first-hand knowledge of the caliph and may have been personally familiar with al-Ḥākim’s physician, who was Christian as well. 16 Yaḥyā’s testimony concerning al-Ḥākim is also valuable because of the details he provides about the caliph’s last seven years of his reign, from 403/1013 to 411/1021, after which al-

See Walker, Caliph of Cairo, 250. See Talia, 47, 59–60. 16 That al-Ḥākim would have a Christian for a physician, Abū Yaʿqūb Isḥāq b. Ibrāhīm b. Anasṭās, is noteworthy. By nature of their position, physicians had close proximity and regular access to the caliphs, and alḤākim appears to have trusted Abū Yaʿqūb with his treatment. Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s promotion of ḥadīths warning Muslims to avoid ritually impure dhimmīs (in chapter three) did not stop al-Ḥākim from employing a Christian to care for his health. 14 15

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Ḥākim disappeared. 17 It was during this period that al-Ḥākim reversed many of his policies that were oppressive toward dhimmī Christians and began to make reparations for the harm done earlier in his reign. Yaḥyā records that the first significant policy change that he made was in the year 404/1013. Upon learning that Christians fleeing his lands for Byzantium were spending large amounts of money to bribe guards, he gave them and Jews safe conduct, whereupon many left for Latakia, Antioch, and other Byzantine cities. The question is, of course, why al-Ḥākim treated these Christians as he did. It may be that he wanted Christians to emigrate, and this was a means of speeding that emigration. Yet it is also possible that as he discovered that his attempts to convert Sunnīs to his cause were not working, al-Ḥākim decided that his repressive policies toward dhimmīs were no longer needed and so began to ease them. Just previous to his discussion of alḤākim’s policy change regarding Christians fleeing to Byzantium, Yaḥyā mentions that al-Ḥākim “enticed the people of the far-away places to pay him allegiance. The khuṭba acknowledged him in Kūfa, and his daʿwa reached the gates of Baghdad and to the city of Rayy. He gave a large sum of money to the governors and rebels in Iraq to gain their allegiance.” 18 Yet as we have seen from al-Maqrīzī, in 401/1010, the Iraqi cities of Mosul, al-Anbār, alMadāʾin, and Kūfa all then reversed course and reaffirmed their oath to the ʿAbbāsid caliph. That reversal surely came as a blow to al-Ḥākim, and it would not be at all surprising to find al-Ḥākim reversing course in his policies. This said, al-Ḥākim’s failure to appeal to and appease Sunnīs was probably not the only reason the caliph changed his policy in regard to dhimmīs. Yaḥyā writes that in this latter part of his caliphate, al-Ḥākim developed a genuine friendship with Anbā Salmūn (alternatively, Sulaymān), the abbot of the Melkite By comparison, al-Maqrīzī offers very little detail, particularly as it relates to al-Ḥākim’s dealings with dhimmīs, from the years 406/1015 to 411/1021. For more on this, see Walker, Caliph of Cairo, 241. 18 Yaḥyā ibn Sa‘īd al-Anṭākī (Kratchkovsky, PO 23), 517; (Cheikho), 206. See also Talia, 30–1. 17

130 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN monastery at Mount Sinai (today known as St. Catherine’s). Notably, in 411/1020, the abbot requested and was able to secure al-Ḥākim’s permission to restore the endowments (waqfs) that had supported the monks of the Sinai. Some months later, he again approached the caliph and asked him to rebuild the Melkite monastery of Quṣayr (located near Fusṭāṭ, in the Ṭura hills south of Cairo), to permit the Christians to worship there, and to return the monastery’s endowments. Al-Ḥākim agreed to this, and he also canceled the land tax (kharāj) and promised the monastery tax exemption as a sign of friendship. 19 Anbā Salmūn then appealed for the return of the property of the Christians “living in faraway districts,” and al-Ḥākim granted every request, except the property of those in Damascus and in districts along the Mediterranean coast, as the government had already spent the revenue due to financial difficulties. 20 Then, upon Anbā Salmūn’s informing al-Ḥākim that the populace was still fearful of him, the caliph wrote another proclamation, swearing by the Prophet and ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, and assured the Christian community of Egypt that he would protect them, their children, wealth, properties, and that no harm would come to them. 21 Some Muslims then became angry with al-Ḥākim for his friendship with Anbā Salmūn, accusing him that he did not deny any of the abbot’s requests, and they “saw in this an indication that he had become a disciple (tatalmadha) of Anbā Salmūn.” 22 It was soon after this that al-Ḥākim disappeared while on his way to visit the monastery of al-Quṣayr during its reconstruction efforts.

Yaḥyā ibn Sa‘īd al-Anṭākī (Kratchkovsky, PO 47), 432–5; (Cheikho), 228–9. See also Talia, 35–7 and Walker, Caliph of Cairo, 243. The monastery of al-Quṣayr was also known as St. Arsenius Monastery. See Christian-Muslim Relations 600–1500 s.v. al-Makīn Jirjis ibn al-ʿAmīd (Adel Sidarus). 20 Yaḥyā ibn Sa‘īd al-Anṭākī (Kratchkovsky, PO 47), 438–9; (Cheikho), 231. See also Talia, 39–40. 21 Yaḥyā ibn Sa‘īd al-Anṭākī (Kratchkovsky, PO 47), 440–3; (Cheikho), 232–3. See also Talia, 42–4. 22 Yaḥyā ibn Sa‘īd al-Anṭākī (Kratchkovsky, PO 47), 442–3; (Cheikho), 233. See also Talia, 44–5. 19

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Al-Ḥākim’s friendship with Anbā Salmūn is not the only personal exchange the caliph had with Christians. Yaḥyā mentions that in that same year, 411/1021, Patriarch Nicephorus of Jerusalem informed al-Ḥākim that “a group of Muslims were uniting against him,” and he asked that the caliph protect the churches in Jerusalem, the monasteries outside of the city, and the church in the city of Lydda (also in Palestine), as well as return the church’s endowed properties. Al-Ḥākim agreed and wrote a proclamation, dated Jumādā II of 411 / September 1020, in which he ensured the right for Christians to pray individually and communally; commanded that all hostilities stop against those who prayed on the premises of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre; gave Nicephorus control of all the churches inside and around Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Lydda; declared that crosses should not be destroyed; walls and buildings were not to be torn down; and warned that any government official who disobeyed this command would be punished. 23 Clearly, al-Ḥākim’s feelings about the Christians of his realm had changed significantly from his earlier treatment of dhimmīs, when in 395/1004 he forced dhimmīs to wear black, and in 400/1009, when he ordered the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and many other churches besides. While his earlier actions suggest that the caliph perceived them to be a threat at worst and a liability at best, near the end of his life al-Ḥākim no longer seemed to have any qualms about them and indeed openly associated with and supported them.

AL-ẒĀHIR LI-IʿZĀZ DĪN ALLĀH (R. 411–427 / 1021–1036)

Al-Ḥākim’s change of heart near the end of his reign did not resolve all of the problems Christian dhimmīs had faced during the earlier part of his caliphate. Yaḥyā records that early in al-Ẓāhir’s reign, both Christian and Jewish dhimmīs approached the new caliph with the complaint that they were being forced to observe Islamic law, and they expressed their anger over this, arguing that the Qurʾan affirmed in Sūrat al-Baqara 2:256 that there was to be Yaḥyā ibn Sa‘īd al-Anṭākī (Kratchkovsky, PO 47), 436–9; (Cheikho), 230–1. See also Talia, 37–9. 23

132 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN “no compulsion in religion” (lā ikrāha fī’l dīn). They asked that they be permitted to remove themselves from such legal restrictions and be given the protection due them as dhimmīs. Those who wished to convert to Islam voluntarily and from the heart should be permitted to do so, provided that their goal was not for worldly reasons (that is, to become strong or powerful through doing so). Those who wanted to “stay in their religion without apostatizing (irtidād)” should be protected, and the people of the milla (that is, the Christian community living under Muslim rule) should accordingly be guarded and preserved. 24 Yaḥyā then goes on to change topic and says that “there was a party that went to excess (al-ghulūw) in the imamate” by renouncing the truth and “describing the created with the attribute of the Creator.” 25 He appears to be referring here to those who divinized the imām-caliph, or what became known as the Druze movement. Shīʿites declared the Druze to be heretics particularly for their belief that God reincarnated himself in the bodies of the Fāṭimid Imams, beginning with al-Qāʾim and proceeding on through to al-Ḥākim, which seems to be to what Yaḥyā is alluding when he says that this party “described the created with the attribute of the Creator.” The text goes on to affirm, rather, that all of us “are created, lorded over, and subjugated, and we do not control death or life.” It further warns that whoever “maintains that belief, the sword of truth will annihilate them.” It is not clear here whether Yaḥyā is making his own pronouncement concerning the ghulūw or if he is reflecting the opinion of al-Ẓāhir. The son of al-Ḥākim did not tolerate the sect as his father had, and in fact al-Ẓāhir issued two edicts against

Yaḥyā ibn Sa‘īd al-Anṭākī (Kratchkovsky, PO 47), 446–9; (Cheikho), 235. Lev atributes this change in policy in part to Sitt al-Mulk, who was instrumental in overseeing a smooth transition in power from (the disappeared) al-Ḥākim to al-Ẓāhir and was closely involved in the affairs of the caliphate early in al-Ẓāhir’s reign. See Yaacov Lev, “The Fāṭimid Princess Sitt al-Mulk,” 327. 25 Yaḥyā ibn Sa‘īd al-Anṭākī (Kratchkovsky, PO 47), 448–9; (Cheikho), 236. 24

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the doctrine and persecuted its followers, such that it died out completely in Egypt. 26 What, though, is the connection between the two passages? How does Yaḥyā’s discussion of al-Ẓāhir’s treatment of dhimmīs relate to that of the Druze? Immediately following this criticism of ghulūw, Yaḥyā returns to his narrative concerning dhimmīs, affirming that the security of “all of the people of the milla and the dhimma [is assured] concerning themselves, their blood, their wealth, and their conditions as long as they travel the righteous path and not the blameworthy one.” He adds that “the people favored this decree and rejoiced.” He then follows this section with a survey of Melkite ecclesial appointments, noting how the Sayyida (al-Ḥākim’s sister Sitt al-Mulk) “supplied [the churches] with vestments, books, and silver vessels that belonged to her uncle Arsenius, patriarch of Jerusalem,” and that “the spirits of the Christians were made strong.” 27 What Yaḥyā seems to be saying here is that unlike the Druze, of whom al-Ẓāhir did not approve, dhimmīs were assured of their position in Fāṭimid society, so long as they abided by the restrictions placed on them. Farhad Daftary notes that certain dāʿīs of al-Ḥākim, beginning with alḤasan b. Ḥaydara al-Akhram in 408/1017, organized a movement that claimed al-Ḥākim was divine. Despite their high view of the caliph, most Fāṭimid dāʿīs could not accept this claim, and within a few months of declaring al-Ḥākim’s divinity, al-Akhram was assassinated while riding with al-Ḥākim. Other dāʿīs, though, assumed leadership of the new movement, including Ḥamza b. ʿAlī b. Aḥmad and Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl al-Darazī, the latter from whom the Druze movement took its name. AlDarazī was the first to publicly proclaim al-Ḥākim’s divinity, and after rioters began protesting this claim in 410/1019, Turkish troops of alḤākim killed a number of al-Darazī’s followers and probably al-Darazī himself (who mysteriously ‘disappeared’). It was Ḥamza who “gave the Ḥākim cult its definitive theological form and developed a strong daʿwa organization for the propagation of the new doctrine.” Interestingly, all this occurred around the same time that al-Ḥākim’s policy toward Christians was becoming more generous. See Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines, 186–8. See also Halm, Shiʿism, 178–80. 27 Yaḥyā ibn Sa‘īd al-Anṭākī (Kratchkovsky, PO 47), 452–3; (Cheikho), 237. 26

134 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN While Yaḥyā does not relate Muslim-Christian relations to the Sunnī-Shīʿa divide here, he nonetheless is drawing an interesting contrast between Fāṭimid acceptance of dhimmīs and caliphal rejection of Shīʿite “extremists,” thereby demonstrating the intensity of sectarian tensions within Shīʿism itself. If by the end of his reign, al-Ḥākim had begun to reverse some of his earlier policies that targeted and punished dhimmīs, al-Ẓāhir appears to have gone even further in helping restore their position. Yaḥyā writes that “the Christians went back to publicly celebrating their feast days and Easter processions that were on the outskirts of the city [of Cairo].” He also notes that “al-Ẓāhir was present to witness their gatherings and to guard them,” an observation that accords with those of al-Maqrīzī, as noted in the previous chapter. He also “lightened their ghiyār [badge], and many of them were required [only] to wear the zunnār and a black ʿimāma [turban]. And he permitted them the building of churches and returned to them endowments (awqāf) that had not been disposed of [already] by al-Ḥākim.” 28 Al-Ẓāhir also allowed Christians who had converted to Islam under duress during the reign of al-Ḥākim to return to Christianity (a point also made by al-Maqrīzī). Yaḥyā mentions the curious case of a group of Christians who had fled to and then returned from the lands of Byzantium. At some point, they had converted to Islam, but then they publicly observed Christianity. “No-one opposed (lam yataʿarraḍ) them, and it [the jizya] was taken from them.” Yaḥyā adds that this was the case also with Egyptian Christians who ‘returned’ to Christianity from Islam, and that the jizya was taken for “the year in which it stopped being collected from them to the year in which each of them reverted [to Christianity].” 29 In other words, al-Ẓāhir did not accept the ‘conversion’ to Islam of these Yaḥyā ibn Sa‘īd al-Anṭākī (Kratchkovsky, PO 47), 454–5; (Cheikho), 238. It will be remembered from the first chapter that al-Ḥākim instituted the requirement to wear the zunnār and ghiyār (badge), and Yaḥyā provides further information that al-Ḥākim had required a black ʿimāma as well. See Yaḥyā ibn Sa‘īd al-Anṭākī (Kratchkovsky, PO 23), 468, 502; (Cheikho), 187, 200. See also Talia, 11, 23. 29 Yaḥyā ibn Sa‘īd al-Anṭākī (Kratchkovsky, PO 47), 456–7; (Cheikho), 239. 28

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Christians (that is, of either the Christians who fled to Byzantine lands, or those who stayed under the Fāṭimids), insisting that the jizya be charged retroactively for the period in which they had publicly been living as Muslims but privately holding Christian convictions. Yet al-Ẓāhir was willing to go only so far in his tolerance of dhimmīs. It will be recalled from the previous chapter that alMaqrīzī recorded the story of Abū Zakariyyā, who was executed by al-Ẓāhir for leaving Islam for Christianity. Yaḥyā also relates this story but with much more detail, mentioning that a Jacobite man named Ibn Abī Zakariyyā Ibn Abī Ghālib “publicly confessed” to be a Muslim in the days of al-Ḥākim but then returned to Christianity. He writes that a group of Muslims “shouted about it in the markets, and protested that he, during the days of being a Muslim, attended a mosque, was assiduous in prayer, that he copied in his own hand [the sacred text] and studied it, and wrote ḥadīths and fiqh, and that other Christians who had returned [to Christianity] had not done things like that.” 30 Al-Ẓāhir then proceeded to arrest Ibn Abī Zakariyyā, imprisoned him for ten days, and tried to persuade him to return to Islam with threats and intimidation. The prisoner, though, refused to submit, and al-Ẓāhir ordered his execution. What we learn from Yaḥyā, then, is that the matter came to the attention of al-Ẓāhir through the protests of Muslims on the street, and that these Muslims persuaded him to arrest the man on the grounds that no secretly practicing Christian would immerse himself so deeply in the Qurʾan, Hadith, and Islamic legal studies. Al-Ẓāhir drew the line, then, between extending as much grace as he could toward dhimmīs living in fear of al-Ḥākim’s suppression of Christianity (as witnessed in his ruling concerning the Christians who converted to Islam under duress) and tolerating what he viewed as a clear-cut case of apostasy from Islam, despite Ibn Abī Zakariyyā’s claim to the contrary. Let us finish our study of Yaḥyā’s narrative by examining Fāṭimid-Byzantine relations during the caliphate of al-Ẓāhir. Like Yaḥyā ibn Sa‘īd al-Anṭākī (Kratchkovsky, PO 47), 456–7; (Cheikho), 238. 30

136 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN al-Maqrīzī, Yaḥyā describes how the Church of the Holy Sepulchre became a bargaining chip in relations between the two powers. Yet as we saw above, Yaḥyā gives us information different from al-Maqrīzī’s. First, he relates how in the year 415/1024, the Sayyida (that is, Sitt al-Mulk) attempted to negotiate with Byzantium by sending Nicephorus, patriarch of Jerusalem, to demonstrate to the emperor how well the Fāṭimid caliphate was treating its dhimmīs. She instructed the patriarch to “highlight the return of the churches, the restoration of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and the rest of the churches in the lands of Egypt and Syria, the return of endowments to it [that is, the church], and the soundness of the affairs of the Christians who were under their possession, guard, and maintenance.” 31 In return, the Sayyida asked that “commerce be released from Byzantium to their lands, and that those who come from the lands of Islam to their districts be received.” As a leading member of the caliphal family, Sitt al-Mulk was trying to use Fāṭimid tolerance of dhimmīs as a tool to increase trade between the Byzantines and the Fāṭimids, a strategy that failed when she died before the emperor could respond to her offer via the patriarch. 32 Yaḥyā also mentions al-Ẓāhir’s negotiations with the Byzantine emperor, Romanos III Argyros, though Yaḥyā gives different details from those offered by al-Maqrīzī. According to Yaḥyā, it was Romanos who proposed to al-Ẓāhir the terms of a treaty: In securing the treaty about a truce between them, the Emperor imposed three conditions. The first of them was that the Emperor be allowed to rebuild the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and renovate it from his wealth, that he [be allowed] to appoint the patriarch of Jerusalem, and that Christians be permitted to rebuild ruined churches that were in the lands of al-Ẓāhir. The second condition was that

Yaḥyā ibn Sa‘īd al-Anṭākī (Kratchkovsky, PO 47), 468–9; (Cheikho), 243. 32 Yaḥyā ibn Sa‘īd al-Anṭākī (Kratchkovsky, PO 47), 470–1; (Cheikho), 244. 31

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al-Ẓāhir not go after Aleppo, and that he and his followers not wish to fight it nor go after it with ill will, because there was established over the city an itāwa [a kind of submission tax], and it would bring him annually truce money. The third condition was that he [al-Ẓāhir] not aid the lord of Sicily in fighting Byzantium, nor anyone else who intended corruption in any of their provinces, and not to support or strengthen him. 33

In return, Romanos offered the “release of prisoners seized in his days according to the rules of war from the lands of Islam.” He also offered the border fortress of Shayzar in exchange for the fortress of Apamea. Yaḥyā states that al-Ẓāhir accepted Romanos’s first condition, though he would not restore churches that had been converted into mosques. Moreover, in exchange, he wanted the release of all prisoners taken during the time of Emperor Romanos. He also accepted the third condition, but refused the second one, saying that Aleppo “was a great border city of the Muslims,” and that it was not “fitting” for the city to be in the possession of the Byzantines. Yaḥyā records that Emperor Romanos would not agree to the striking of this condition, and did not approve the treaty, leaving the matter for the following emperor, Michael IV, to resolve three years later. 34 This failure to come to terms had consequences, for Yaḥyā records that al-Ẓāhir then “began to build the walls of Jerusalem,” and “the ones charged with it razed the many churches outside the city, and their stones were taken. They resolved on the destruction of the Church of Sion and others also to carry their stones to the wall.” 35

SINAI MANUSCRIPT ARABIC 692

While Yaḥyā’s account remains our best (and only) Melkite history for this period of the Fāṭimid caliphate, it is not Yaḥyā ibn Sa‘īd al-Anṭākī (Kratchkovsky, PO 47), 532; (Cheikho), 270. Yaḥyā ibn Sa‘īd al-Anṭākī (Kratchkovsky, PO 47), 534–5; (Cheikho), 271. 35 Yaḥyā ibn Sa‘īd al-Anṭākī (Kratchkovsky, PO 47), 534–5; (Cheikho), 272. 33 34

138 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN necessarily our only Christian source to shed light on it. An anonymously authored manuscript in the archives of the Melkite monastery of St. Catherine’s in the Sinai of Egypt, dated by the text to the year 1241/1825, may offer some further clues as to how Melkites fared under Fāṭimid rule. 36 One part of the text is particularly relevant to this study, and it begins with the heading “the year 1008 Christian era”: In the days of the king (malik) Ibn Marnān, king of Egypt, when the youth of the monastery were [fighting] one another, they killed one another, and those who remained were very few. They did not have the ability to protect themselves from the Bedouins. In the days of the sulṭān king al-Ẓāhir, king of Egypt, the Bedouins were attacking [them], consuming their wealth, and plundering them. In that time [at] the monastery, the guards were not able to protect them, as the guards were very few [in number]. In those days, there formed a group of Bedouins nearby, and they were more numerous and stronger than all the groups of guards and others [in the monastery], and their names were [that is, the name of the tribe was] the Maḥāsina. When the monks saw that the youth [of the monastery] were not able to live without someone to assist them, all the monks of the monastery held a council, and there were present there three groups of guards. The monks and guards came to an agreement. They gave the youth to the Maḥāsina as a trust. They did not stipulate [that they must do anything] good for them; rather, the Maḥāsina need [only] protect the youth. For this trust, the monks gave the Maḥāsina orchards (kurūm) of the monastery which were on the [mountain of] Farīʿ, such that they could eat their fruit but not own [the orchards]. This council occurred in the mosque which was in the monastery. There was present among the guards a party of elders from

For discussion of the manuscript’s dating, see Juan Pedro MonferrerSala, “Dos documentos manuscritos del monasterio de Santa Catalina, en el Monte Sinaí: Codex Sinaiticus Arabicus 692/2 y Codex Sinaiticus Arabicus 482/2,” Boletín de la Asociación Española de Orientalistas, 36 (2000), 107–120. Monferrer-Sala also provides an edited Arabic version of the text translated here.

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the [tribe of] the Zuhayrāt whose names were as follows: Salāma Zuhayr the Blind and his brother, Salīm Ibn Zuhayr Waʿīd, and Khalīl Zuhayr; and of the shaykhs of [the tribe of] al-ʿAwārimī: Saʿāda Ibn ʿAṭiyya, Suwaylim and his brother Ramaḍān, the sons of Abū Manṣūr, and Salām Ibn Ghunaym; and of the shaykhs of [the tribe of] al-ʿUlayqāt: Maḥmūd Ibn ʿUṭaywa, ʿUmar Ibn Sulaym, Mubārak Ibn Fāʾid, Marʿī, and Ṣabāḥ ibn Salmā. A consent and agreement was achieved between the monks and the guards whose names have been mentioned in this compact. They gave it [that is, the agreement] to those who were present of the shaykhs of the Maḥāsina, whose names were as follows: the shaykh Marʿī alʿUqayd, the ḥājjī ʿUmar Ibn Ḥamd, and ʿAjamī Ibn Maḥmūd. The monks and guards came to an agreement with the Maḥāsina whose names have been mentioned. They said that as long as the Maḥāsina guarded their trust with the youth, they could eat the fruit of the orchards which were on the [mountain of] Farīʿ. If there came from them a breaking [of the contract] and the committing of error and they did not guard their trust [with the youth], the monks would take their orchards. Also, the monks and the guards and the Maḥāsina agreed and said that if one of the Maḥāsina was found in the house of one of the youth, he could not even drink [the] water [of the youth] because the alliance [presupposes] no wage, according to what followed in the mutual agreement. God knows better that which is right. 37

Several items are of interest here. First, the anonymous author concentrates on the affairs of the Melkite monastery located at the foot of Mount Sinai, where the book of Exodus relates that God gave Moses the Ten Commandments, and where (according to tradition) God met Moses at the Burning Bush. Second, next to the monastery of Mar Saba, located near Bethlehem, the monastery at Sinai was the most important and productive of the Melkite monasteries, and indeed became a major repository for

See Sinai manuscript Arabic 692, 3–4. The manuscript has been added to the online collection of the Library of Congress at https://www.loc.gov/item/00279391524-ms/.

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140 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN its manuscripts. 38 Third, the author of this text dates the events recorded here to the Christian year 1008, which would place this during the heyday of al-Ḥākim’s reign over Egypt and Palestine. Fourth, he mentions a mosque inside the monastery, a mosque that according to the monastery was built to mollify al-Ḥākim after the caliph threatened to destroy the monastery during the earlier part of his reign. 39 The fifth and final item to note is that the author goes on to describe events that occurred apparently under al-Ẓāhir, indicating a gap of at least two decades. This kind of jumping around is typical of the text, as earlier in the manuscript, the author described negotiations made on behalf of the monastery by the sixth-century Byzantine emperor Justinian, before jumping to negotiations made by the tenth/sixteenthcentury Ottoman sulṭān Salīm. There are, though, a number of difficulties with this text. Shortly after dating this account to the year 1008, the author gives the ruler the name of Ibn Marnān, a name that does not typically appear for al-Ḥākim in the narratives of al-Maqrīzī or Joshua Blau has observed that St. Catherine’s, unlike other Melkite monasteries, is “the only monastery that has not been pillaged and set on fire by the bedouin,” thereby increasing its importance as a repository of manuscripts. See Joshua Blau, “A Melkite Arabic Literary ‘lingua franca’ from the Second Half of the First Millennium,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 57.1 (1994), 14. 39 Father Justin, the librarian of the Sinai monastery (now called St. Catherine’s), shared this explanation for the mosque’s existence with me during a visit to the monastery that I made in March 2019. It is a claim, though, that has been contested. John Andrew Morrow has instead championed the theory that the mosque was built by the Fāṭimid caliph Abū ʿAlī al-Manṣūr, also known as al-Āmir bi-Aḥkām Allāh (d. 524/1130) in order to serve Fāṭimid soldiers quartered in the Sinai to fight the Crusaders. Morrow appears to favor this theory because the mosque’s pulpit (minbar) and Qurʾan stand (kursī) were built during the caliphate of al-Āmir in the year 500/1106. The argument, though, does not preclude the possibility that al-Ḥākim built the mosque a century earlier. Morrow ultimately concedes that “the origin of the mosque appears to be lost in time.” See John Andrew Morrow, The Covenants of the Prophet Muhammad with the Christians of the World (New York: Angelico Press, 2013), 17–18. 38

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Yaḥyā. This is in fact a significant issue and not one easily solved. If one assumes the first “nūn” in the name to have been an intended “waw,” this could alternatively be a reference to the Umayyad caliph ʿAbd al-Malik Ibn Marwān (d. 86/705), which is apparently what the patriarch Nectarius of Jerusalem (d. 1087/1676) thought when he encountered this text at St. Catherine’s monastery. 40 Yet this solution does not shed any light on the designated year of 1008 directly preceding the name of Ibn Marnān, but in fact makes it completely unintelligible. Another problem with the text is that the author uses the Arabic word malik, a term that usually translates as “king” and not “caliph” among Muslim writers, and which in the Qurʾan (Sūrat Āl-ʿImrān 3:26) has the connotation of impiety, as God, not man, is the “possessor of sovereignty” (malik al-mulk). 41 Yet we know that in the late fifth/eleventh century, the Fāṭimid rulers did adopt malik as their royal epithet, and they passed on the term to the Ayyūbids, who in turn passed it on to the Mamlūks after them. 42 Thus, it is not out of the realm of possibility that al-Ḥākim and alẒāhir might have used the title, or permitted others to use it. Moreover, as the text appears in the archives of a monastery, the author (presumably a Christian) may not have had the same scruples regarding the term malik as a Muslim would. For more on this, see Andrei Popescu-Belis, “Légende des origins, origins d’une légende: les Ǧabāliyya du mont Sinai,” in J.-M. Mouton (éd.), Le Sinaï de la Conquête arabe à nos jours. Cahiers des Annales Islamologiques. 21 (Le Caire: IFAO, 2001), 118. 41 Given that this is a Christian text, the Qurʾanic context may not appear relevant. Yet Christians were speaking a language permeated with Islamic vocabulary. Sidney Griffith has observed that Melkites’ “enculturation into the world of Islam … was principally accomplished by their adoption of the by now thoroughly Islamicized Arabic language as an ecclesiastical language.” See Griffith, The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque, 50. Moreover, the Qurʾan itself set a linguistic standard for Muslims and Christians alike, one which the Arabic Bible would not meet. For more on this, see Griffith, The Bible in Arabic: The Scriptures of the “People of the Book” in the Language of Islam (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2013), 210. 42 See EI2 s.v. Malik (A. Ayalon). 40

142 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN For his part, Clinton Bailey has proposed an altogether different solution for this text, arguing that the year 1008 refers not to the Christian calendar but to the Muslim one, and that the designation masīḥiyya (Christian) underneath the date is an error. This would make the events relating to Ibn Marnān as taking place in the year 1008/1595, probably during the reign of the Ottoman sulṭān Meḥmed III (d. 1012/1603), at the beginning of his reign, and that the Ẓāhir mentioned in the text is al-Malik alẒāhir Rukn al-Dīn al-Ṣāliḥī (d. 676/1277), also known as Baybars. 43 That these events may have taken place during Mamlūk and Ottoman times could account for the use of the terms of sulṭān and malik, as both caliphates used these designations. Yet we should also consider that the author of this text was writing during the late Ottoman period and that this may simply be a case of the author adopting terms common to his own time when copying the account from an older manuscript. Bailey also offers the argument that the Maḥāsina we find in the text (rendered as Maḥāsnah by Bailey) “are the bedouin who gave the name Ṣawālḥah to the tribal federation of which they were the leaders, as they actually came to southern Sinai from the Ṣāliḥīya area of Egypt,” but that the town of Ṣāliḥīya “only received its name during the rule of its founder, al-Malik al-Ṣāliḥ Nijm al-Dīn Ayyūb (1240–1249).” 44 Bailey, then, is arguing that the Maḥāsina did not live near the monastery during the Fāṭimid period but came there only later. Moreover, he mentions that the Maḥāsina were part of the ʿAwārmah tribe, a name which appears in the text as “al-ʿAwārimī.” Yet nowhere in the text do we see the name of the Ṣawālḥah mentioned, and the al-ʿAwārmah are in fact represented among the guards of the monastery while the monastery considered the Maḥāsina as a potential threat. Is it not possible that the Maḥāsina preceded the coming of the Ṣawālḥah and then joined with them upon their arrival? Bailey mentions

See EI2 s.v. Meḥemmed III (S.A. Skilliter), and Baybars I (M.F. Köprülü). Clinton Bailey, “Dating the Arrival of the Bedouin Tribes in Sinai and the Negev,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 28:1 (1985), 20–49. See especially page 30.

43 44

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that the Banū Wāṣil preceded the Ṣawālḥah in Sinai, but that does not rule out the possibility that the Maḥāsina were already there. It is not possible, then, to know for sure whether this text depicts accounts taking place during the Fāṭimid period, or if they reflect later periods. If it does refer to the Fāṭimids, it has likely been modified with Mamlūk and Ottoman language and thus not been transmitted faithfully. Also, if one does not accept Bailey’s solution, the year 1008 likely converts to the year 999/1000, since the dating system used by medieval Melkite copyists was that of the Era of Incarnation, which on the basis of manuscript research, Samir Khalil Samir equates to eight years before the A.D./C.E. dating system. 45 This means that the fighting the author describes among the youth of the monastery would have occurred near the beginning of al-Ḥākim’s caliphate rather than at its midpoint, before al-Ḥākim intensified pressure on his Christian subjects that culminated in his order to destroy the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Yet even though the document is historiographically suspect, it is still worth our consideration, especially as it allows us a window into events that general histories concerned with rulers typically do not access. If the text is relevant to the Fāṭimid period, what can we learn from it? If we assume that al-Ẓāhir is in fact the Fāṭimid caliph that we have studied, it is interesting that he does not appear to intervene in the conflict between the monastery and the neighboring Bedouins. As will be recalled from Yaḥyā’s narrative, caliphs were not always hands-off in their approaches to monasteries. Al-Ḥākim became increasingly involved in the affairs of the monasteries of Egypt, at the invitation of Anbā Salmūn. The text reflects an ongoing tension between the monks of the monastery and the nearby Bedouin tribe of the Maḥāsina that might well have invited caliphal intervention. Indeed, earlier in the manuscript, the authors notes that the Byzantine emperor Justinian had a wall built around the monastery to protect it from unfriendly neighboring Bedouin Samir Khalil Samir, “L’ere de l’Incarnation dans les manuscrits arabes melkites du 11e au 14e siècle” Orientalia Christiana Periodica 53:1 (1987), 193–201.

45

144 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN tribes, and the manuscript also mentions a later episode in which the Ottoman sulṭān Salīm assured the youth of the monastery that he would give them security. Yet it is the monks and their guards (and not the caliph) who forge an agreement with the Maḥāsina to protect the youth of the monastery. This they do by allowing the Bedouin to eat the fruit of orchards located near the monastery in exchange for the Maḥāsina ensuring the security of the youth of the monastery, that is, leaving them unmolested. The Bedouin were not even allowed into the houses of the youth; if they tried to do so, they would not be permitted to drink their water. The text suggests, then, that while caliphal relations with dhimmīs were highly significant, they were not the only kind of interaction between Christians and Muslims. The Melkite monks of Sinai could and did demonstrate agency in resolving tensions with their Muslim neighbors and did not always rely on the caliphs to solve their difficulties, as Anbā Salmūn had with al-Ḥākim near the end of the caliph’s reign. It is important to remember this, especially as the sources we have consulted thus far reflect knowledge of caliphal rather than local politics.

CONCLUSION

What then, does our reading of Yaḥyā add to our understanding of dhimmī relations with the Fāṭimids? First, it reinforces the larger argument of this study, that is, that the Fāṭimid caliphs were indeed impacted by sectarianism and motivated to counter other Muslim sects in their policies. Al-Ḥākim was not unique in pursuing punitive measures toward Sunnīs within his realm; as noted, Yaḥyā observes that al-ʿAzīz stopped the qunūt prayer, a prayer marked by sectarian disagreement, and that he did this shortly after a defeat the Fāṭimids suffered on the Palestinian frontier at the hands of the Turkish commander Alptakīn. This happened in the year 360/971; it will be recalled from al-Maqrīzī that six year later, when the Fāṭimids were once again fighting with Alptakīn, al-ʿAzīz banned Christians from celebrating the festival of al-Ghiṭās (Theophany/Christ’s baptism). While Yaḥyā does not make a direct link between sectarianism and MuslimChristian relations in his text, he nevertheless offers further

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evidence of anti-Sunnī sentiment among the Fāṭimid caliphs, directed not only at the far-off ʿAbbāsids but also toward Sunnīs inside the Fāṭimid realm. We also see al-Ẓāhir publicly directing animus against the ghulāt (that is, the Druze), reserving at least in rhetoric only the sword for such Muslims, while at the same time ensuring the security of dhimmīs abiding by the laws under which they were constrained. Second, it gives us a fuller picture of how Fāṭimid relations with Christian Byzantium impacted Christian dhimmīs living under Fāṭimid rule. Al-Maqrīzī’s account revealed how the decisions of Byzantine nobility could negatively impact Christian dhimmīs, as we saw when the Byzantine empress Theodora allowed the khuṭba in Constantinople’s mosque to acknowledge the ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Qāʾim rather than the Fāṭimid caliph alMustanṣir. Yaḥyā’s account shows that it was not only the Byzantine nobility who could make such consequential decisions but also Byzantine merchants living in Fāṭimid domains (assuming, of course, that these merchants truly did torch boats in Egypt’s fleet). Yet the concern for good relations with Byzantium could also translate into pressure on the caliphs to treat their Christian subjects well, as evidenced by Sitt al-Mulk’s attempt to persuade the Byzantines to sign a trade agreement with them and return Muslims captured and enslaved by Constantinople. 46 Finally, Yaḥyā’s account reminds us that, contrary to the notion that dhimmīs were mere pawns in the hands of the caliphs, they could and did show agency in their dealings with the caliphs as well as with fellow Muslim subjects. ʿĪsā b. Nasṭūrus stepped in to stop Muslims from destroying and pillaging churches in Egypt, following the allegation that Byzantine merchants had

This is not to say that relations could not be combative. Yaacov Lev has pointed out that “Fatimid policy toward Byzantium oscillated between contradicting tendencies: a practical policy of modus vivendi, and the need to appear as champions of jihad.” Yet Arabic sources generally portray peaceful relations as prevailing between the two empires. See Lev, “The Fatimids and Byzantium, 10th–12th Centuries,” 192, 197. 46

146 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN torched boats in the caliphal navy, and Anbā Salmūn took the initiative to approach al-Ḥākim to restore the endowments of monasteries, despite the punitive policies the caliph had pursued toward dhimmīs earlier in his caliphal reign. In addition, we have just observed the anonymous writer of Sinai Arabic 692 recording how Christians and Muslims did not always rely on their Muslim rulers to resolve their difficulties but rather formed councils of their own to solve conflicts between them. That Christians showed agency does not negate the argument that they were caught in and impacted by the Sunnī-Shīʿa conflict, but it does complicate the picture, reminding us that the caliphs were responding not only to intra-religious conflict but to the actions of dhimmīs as well.

CHAPTER 6. CONCLUSION This book began by asking a series of questions, as well as making a few promises. The general question that we have had before us has been this: how did sectarianism in Islam affect the decisionmaking as well as religious identity of the Fāṭimid caliphs of the fifth/eleventh century vis-à-vis the Christian Melkite dhimmīs living under their rule and especially of those living in Jerusalem and in greater Palestine? Related to this are questions having to do with Fāṭimid fiqh: particularly, did the comparatively militant orientation of Ismāʿīlīs translate into negative perceptions of the ‘other’ similar to those that David Freidenreich describes in his research of Imāmī jurists? Related to this, what shape did the charisma of the Shīʿite religious ethos take in the Fāṭimid court and then how was it routinized in Fāṭimid fiqh? Moroever, how did the Fāṭimid fiqh written about dhimmīs and its application actually impact Melkites living under Fāṭimid rule? In other words, how do the principles enshrined in fiqh translate into the policies and politics pursued by the caliphs? To answer these questions, we endeavored to shine a light on Fāṭimid fiqh (and Shīʿite fiqh more broadly) through the Daʿāʾim of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, as well as examine the history of Fāṭimid relations with dhimmī Christians (and in particular Melkites) primarily through the narratives of al-Maqrīzī and of Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd al-Anṭakī. We have also highlighted, and promised to revisit, two case studies as they relate to the Christians of Jerusalem: that of al-Ḥākim’s order to destroy the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 400/1009, and then al147

148 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN Mustanṣir’s decision to pressure the Christians in Jerusalem to rebuild part of the outer wall of the city in light of advancing Saljūk armies in 455/1063. Overall, we are asking: what can we learn about religious identity formation in the caliphate by examining the principles and application of Fāṭimid law toward dhimmīs? What then have we discovered? In the second and third chapters, we established that traditions ascribed to ʿAlī (which were crucially important to the Fāṭimids in formulating their law) were widely circulating in the Middle East and North Africa in the late fourth/tenth century, and thus it should not be surprising to find overlap between Imāmī and Ismāʿīlī attitudes toward both Sunnīs and dhimmīs. As for Shīʿite criticism of Sunnīs, we find in both the Nahj al-Balāgha and the Daʿāʾim al-Islām biting critiques of the caliphs who preceded ʿAlī (especially ʿUmar) as well as of the enemies of ʿAlī during his caliphate (especially ʿAĀ ʾisha and Muʿāwiya), thereby confirming the animus that the Fāṭimids shared with other Shīʿa for their Sunnī counterparts. When we examine attitudes toward dhimmīs, al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s decision to highlight traditions in his books on purity and prayer that prohibit Muslims from eating with Jews and Christians or from praying in clothes worn by them, and the fact that he placed Jews and Christians in the same category as Zoroastrians, suggest general concord with Imāmīs on the question of the status of dhimmīs in Shīʿite law. As Freidenreich articulated in his scholarship, Shīʿites came to group the ahl al-kitāb with the mushrikūn while Sunnīs gave Jews and Christians an intermediate position between believers and unbelievers, and al-Qāḍī alNuʿmān appears to have agreed with other Shīʿite jurists on this point. We might conclude from this that, in seeking to distinguish themselves from their despised Sunnī rivals, the Fāṭimids endorsed stringent policies that kept dhimmīs separate from Muslims, thereby preserving their ritual purity; and we might expect that Fāṭimid law was more punitive toward dhimmīs than were the Sunnī schools of law. Yet as we have seen, there is ample proof from both al-Maqrīzī and Yaḥyā that the Fāṭimid caliphs did permit Muslims and Christians to mix together. While we find al-

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ʿAzīz prohibiting the Christian festival of al-Ghiṭās—due presumably to complaints over Muslims joining in the festivities—the very prohibition indicates that the celebration had been the accepted practice, and indeed, al-Ẓāhir not only permitted the festival but protected the Christians and their public practices during the festival. Moreover, the caliphs did not shrink from appointing dhimmīs to top government posts (for example, al-ʿAzīz appointed the Christians ʿIsā b. Nasṭūrus to build his fleet and Faḍl b. Ṣāliḥ to command his army), positions that would have encouraged the mixing of Jews and Christians with Muslims at the highest levels. As we saw with al-Ḥākim, the caliphs also employed Christian physicians, entrusting them with their medical care and thereby giving them close access to them and to their families. It would seem, then, that there was at times a disconnect between the traditions and guidelines enshrined in Fāṭimid law and the actions of the caliphs as it concerned the treatment of dhimmīs. Was Fāṭimid law in fact not all that influential in how the caliphs went about relating to Christians and to Jews? To answer this question, we need to look beyond the issue of ritual purity. As valuable as Freidenreich’s contribution has been in helping us understand the ways in which Sunnīs and Shīʿa have differed over ritual purity vis-à-vis dhimmīs, the matter of ritual purity does not comprise the only or even the most important issue as it concerns caliphal relations with dhimmīs. We have observed that there are in fact several parallels between the fiqh of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān and the policies of the Fāṭimid caliphs. As we find al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān denouncing ʿUmar and other enemies of ʿAlī, we find al-ʿAzīz suppressing the qunūt prayers and alḤākim banning certain foods associated with the enemies of ʿAlī, and (as we have argued) effectively destroying the Mosque of ʿUmar at the same time that he ordered the demolition of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. While we find al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān criticizing Sunnī jurisprudence and, consequently, the Sunnī claim to govern Muslims and dhimmīs wisely, we see alMustanṣir’s intense jealousy and anger over Empress Theodora agreeing to permit a statement of ʿAbbāsid loyalty in Constantinople’s mosque. As al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān warns his reader not to

150 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN allow dhimmīs social standing or financial power, we find alḤākim forcing Christians to wear the zunnār and increasing the weight of their ghiyār. Conversely, as we find al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān citing ʿAlī’s ʿahd protecting the persons and property of dhimmīs, we have seen how al-Ḥākim and then al-Ẓāhir restored endowments to monasteries and freedom to Christians to ‘reconvert’ after al-Ḥākim forced conversions earlier in his caliphate. Moreover, we have already mentioned how al-Ẓāhir protected the Christians performing baptisms at night during Layl al-Ghiṭās. One could rightly observe that it is possible to find examples counter to these among the different caliphs, but as previously argued, we need to take the legal literature seriously, and we should not underestimate its influence in the religious identity formation of the caliphs. As we suggested in the fourth chapter, though, the policies of Fāṭimid caliphs were also reactive, not only to the great political events of the time, but also to dhimmīs themselves. As we observed in the previous chapter, dhimmīs were not mere pawns on the chessboard of the caliphs but indeed took the initiative to better their condition. Al-Ḥākim’s radical change of policy toward dhimmīs occurred in part as the caliph changed tactics in his failed attempt to appease Sunnīs living in his realm. However, one needs to also take seriously the friendship that formed between him and Anbā Salmūn of the monastery at Mount Sinai and the good favor that Patriarch Nicephorus of Jerusalem was able to secure with the caliph, as depicted by Yaḥyā. For other examples of Christian agency, consider ʿĪsā b. Nasṭūrus’s assertive efforts to bring an end to Muslims rioting over the burning of Fāṭimid ships (along with al-ʿAzīz’s cooperation in punishing many of the rioters), and while questions remain about the historicity of the events at Mount Sinai, the ingenuity of the monks of Mount Sinai in resolving tensions with nearby Bedouin without involving Muslim rulers. How dhimmīs (and especially the leaders of dhimmīs) responded to the Fāṭimid caliphs, their policies, and the problems of the time was just as important as the principles and actions of the Fāṭimid state. There is another reason for the reactive nature of the caliphate, and that is the distinctive charismatic nature of the

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Fāṭimid imamate. Through our study of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s Daʿāʾim al-Islām, we observed how the Fāṭimids incorporated traditions from the Prophet and Imams and developed a corpus of law that could and did help guide Fāṭimid jurists. Yet we should not forget that the Fāṭimid imām-caliph commanded a political and religious authority that no Sunnī caliph, imām or jurist could ever claim (and indeed, more political authority than the Twelve Imams managed in medieval Iraq!). The statements and decisions of the Fāṭimid caliph trumped all other sources of authority (short of the Qurʾan and ḥadīths from the Imams, perhaps) in political, legal, and religious matters. If al-Ḥākim chose to reverse course in his persecution of Christian dhimmīs near the end of his caliphate, this was not to be questioned but rather accepted (though indeed some Muslims complained about this change). AlḤākim was not bound to the rulebook put in place by al-Qāḍī alNuʿmān, even though the caliphs of the fifth/eleventh century generally accepted its authority and promoted its usage among the jurists of the land. In this sense, one might say that the charism of the Fāṭimid caliph was never fully routinized, for the fiqh was still subordinate to the authority of the caliph. When we consider again the contrast that Hamid Dabashi drew between Sunnīs and Shīʿites in the introduction of this book, we find it is the Fāṭimids (and not the Imāmīs) who most fully embraced the paradigm of Prophetic charisma. How, then, do these conclusions illuminate the case studies with which we began this book? First, let us highlight the point just made about the reactive nature of the Fāṭimid caliphate. When al-Maqrīzī described al-Ḥākim’s decision to order the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, he featured alḤākim observing what Christians in Egypt were doing as they left for Jerusalem to participate in the festivities and ceremonies surrounding Holy Week, and his anger appeared to be sparked by the claim of Christians that God sends down holy fire every Easter to light the lamps inside the Holy Sepulchre. Al-Ḥākim, then, was not deriving his policy from the Daʿāʾim alone but was observing the public prestige of Christianity in Jerusalem and reacting to this. Moreover, Fāṭimid caliphs were also conscious of the support Byzantium offered to Christian Melkite dhimmīs and this in turn

152 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN played an important part in policy formation. Al-Maqrīzī relates that al-Ḥākim’s officers were fearful of what Christians in Byzantine lands and elsewhere might do in response to the destruction of churches and so did not carry out al-Ḥākim’s order to “destroy the synagogues and churches that were in the various districts of his kingdom.” Likewise, the Christians of Jerusalem did not merely accept al-Mustanṣir’s orders to build the northwestern section of the city wall and attempt to fund it themselves, but they appealed to Constantine X for financial assistance, and they complained to him about the ways in which they were being treated by the Fāṭimids. Moreover, they appear to have convinced al-Mustanṣir to grant them more autonomy, as the creation of a Christian quarter in the northwestern part of the city eased the quarrels that William of Tyre said came with “enforced association with the men of Belial.” These two events are further illuminated when we consider our findings in chapter four, that is, the parallels identified between al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s fiqh and the actions of the caliphs. We have already argued that al-Ḥākim had reason to destroy the Mosque of ʿUmar at the same time that he destroyed the Holy Sepulchre, and observed that the greater context of the Saljūq advance on Jerusalem provoked al-Mustanṣir to pressure the Christians to contribute to the building of the wall. Yet we also see evidence of caliphal unease over dhimmīs’ social standing or financial power. Consider al-Ḥākim’s unease over the prominence of the Holy Week festivities in the city of Jerusalem and particularly at the Holy Sepulchre. We also see a commitment to protect the persons and property of dhimmīs, despite al-Ḥākim’s actions to the contrary. Al-Mustanṣir’s decision to create a Christian quarter in Jerusalem can be interpreted as an attempt to safeguard the Christians there, though it was also a concession to Constantine X’s request that “none but Christians should be permitted to dwell within the circuit of the wall which they proposed to erect by means of the imperial donation.” What this suggests, then, is that Fāṭimid law had an indirect but still substantial impact on the decisions that al-Ḥākim and alMustanṣir made vis-à-vis the Christians of Jerusalem.

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In the introduction of this book, we noted that some activists and scholars of the modern Middle East dislike the word “sectarianism” primarily out of fear that it could be used by some to stir up religious hostilities among Muslims there. It has not been the purpose of this study to exacerbate sectarianism among Muslims, however, but rather to draw attention to a neglected aspect of Muslim-Christian relations, that is, how sectarianism in Islam impacts Muslim relationships with Christians. This study, among others, demonstrates that religion and politics do intersect, and while sectarianism in the age of the modern state is not the same as it was during the medieval caliphates, it was and continues to be a real phenomenon. Sectarianism is not simply a matter of politics, or political authoritarianism, but is indeed much more complex than this. In the Fāṭimid empire, it was reinforced in several different arenas: in the collections of traditions, the architecture of legal jurisprudence, in the machinations of the caliphal court, and in the military strategies on the battlefield. As we have seen, the Shīʿī Fāṭimid-Sunnī ʿAbbāsid divide was one marked not merely by the politics of the struggle but by the traditions and beliefs that helped guide (though not dictate) the decisions of the caliphs. An even more significant insight into sectarianism emerges from this study, though, than has been thus far articulated, and that is that Christians (and especially Christian dhimmīs) did not, on balance, benefit from the Sunnī-Shīʿa conflict but rather suffered because of it. Al-ʿAzīz prohibited Egyptian Christians from celebrating a baptismal holiday along the Nile on the heels of a military defeat in Palestine. Al-Ḥākim forced Christians to wear black as a sign of the shame they shared with Sunnī enemies. Al-Mustanṣir punished the Christians of his empire because of a change in caliphal loyalty as announced in the khuṭba in Constantinople’s mosque, and he made Jerusalem’s Christians pay for a wall as Sunnī Saljūqs advanced on the city. One might be able to find counter examples; al-Ḥākim’s change of heart regarding Christians near the end of his caliphate and his efforts to repair relations with them may come out of a change in policy toward Sunnīs in Fāṭimid lands, as he realized that he was not

154 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN winning support among them by persecuting Christians. Yet Christian dhimmīs were frequently viewed as an untrustworthy ‘fifth column’; and as they were drawn into the conflict, they risked becoming collateral damage if they failed to successfully navigate Fāṭimid-ʿAbbāsid tensions. This study has suggested that sectarianism, then, is not good for inter-religious relations, complicating as it does the divisions that already exist and making inter-religious relations even more challenging than they are without it. Sectarianism should not only be a concern for the sects that are suffering disunity and conflict, but they are of concern to those outside those communities who may be drawn, however unwillingly, into the conflict. Second, how does this study contribute to our understanding of Islamic religious identity and how it forms at the level of elites? When we look at the narratives as recorded by al-Maqrīzī, we see Fāṭimid identity taking shape as a counterweight to the ʿAbbāsid claim that Baghdad was the center of the Muslim world, and as we have observed, dhimmīs became a target for retribution if they were perceived to not be doing their part to counter the power of the ʿAbbāsids. The events we mentioned above (al-ʿAzīz prohibiting Christians from celebrating a holiday, al-Ḥākim ordering dhimmīs to dress in black, al-Mustanṣir punishing the Christians for the change in khuṭba in Constantinople, and alMustanṣir’s forcing Christians to build part of Jerusalem’s city wall) are all good examples of this retribution. Religious identity formation may be evaluated, then, through the lens of pragmatic power, that is, the use of force to achieve and express religious identity, especially when it suits the political and religious aims of those in power. 1 We better understand the religious and political priorities of the caliphs by how they treated their subordinates. Alongside the use of state power, we need to consider the persistent influence of tradition in religious identity formation. One finds a similar concept to this in Derya Iner and Salih Yucel’s discussion of the “reductionist approach” to Muslim religious identity formation, in which Islamists seek to Islamicize a society from the topdown through the use of force. See Iner and Yucel, 8–10.

1

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The writings and accounts of one’s forebearers greatly impact how one views both oneself and the world. For example, al-Ẓāhir commanded his dāʿīs to instruct the people to memorize al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s Daʿāʾim al-Islām as their madhhab’s work of fiqh, in which jurists would find purity laws concerning dhimmīs that would problematize al-Ẓāhir’s actions protecting Christian public festival processions, and Muslims’ decisions to accompany them in the streets. In the case of the Fāṭimids, the traditions attributed to ʿAlī and the Imams formed the backbone to Qāḍi al-Nuʿmān’s fiqh, insofar as it differed from Sunnī fiqh, and became the source of authority by which all Fāṭimid caliphs could measure their ‘orthodoxy’. Yet the work of those whose authority is widely accepted may become ‘tradition’ itself. Consider again how the jurists effectively protested al-ʿAzīz’s desire to raise the work of Yaʿqūb to the level of prominence that al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s work had achieved. Once a text, or a canon of texts, achieves undisputed prominence in the community, it becomes the measure by what constitutes ‘correct’ religious identity. Depending on the degree to which those members adhere to or diverge from the ‘norm’ established by the text, authorities then proceed to commend or censure various members of that community. Yet there is another, more unpredictable element in religious identity formation: that of friendship. By ‘friendship’ we mean a cordial relationship that while genuine may also be pragmatic. Given that the Fāṭimid caliphs commanded an unrivalled authority based on the charisma accorded them, it is hardly surprising that dhimmīs of significant social and religious stature would seek to befriend them. By approaching the caliphs (rather than jurists), dhimmīs learned that they could secure significant benefits for their community. This is perhaps most clear in alḤākim’s change in policy toward dhimmīs, when as a result of his close relationship with Anbā Salmūn of Mount Sinai, he returned the endowments to the monasteries and churches that he had taken earlier in his caliphate. Yet we also see other examples of friendship: in Sitt al-Mulk’s overtures to the Byzantine emperor to establish good relations by drawing attention to how al-Ẓāhir was treating dhimmīs with generosity; or al-ʿAzīz forming so close an

156 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN attachment to Yaʿqūb, his converted Jewish wazīr, that he would try to promote Yaʿqūb’s fiqh, giving it apparently the same prominence as that of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s, that is, until the fuqahāʾ rejected this plan. Religious identity formation takes place, then, in the context of relationships that inform both one’s self-perception and one’s actions, and this can be especially powerful if those relationships are with leading representatives of the religious or political ‘other’. 2 Of the three influences mentioned above, the role that friendship plays in religious identity formation deserves further comment, for unlike the exercise of power and the persistence of tradition, friendship has no legal orientation. As we noted in the introduction, Shahab Ahmed has argued that when answering the question “What is Islam?” we should not look to Islamic law exclusively but also consider other phenomena in Islam (such as Sufism, Islamic philosophy, and Islamic literature more broadly), and acknowledge that these other expressions of Islam often contradicted Islamic law. Religious identity formation is not strictly a matter decided by the law, but in fact occurs outside as well as inside its boundaries, and we should not be surprised to find ‘contradictions’ in Muslim thought and practice that (as Ahmed has argued) are no less Islamic than is the law. This is the case when it comes to Muslim religious identity formation vis-àvis the “other.” When we look at genres of literature other than fiqh, such as we have with history in this book, we catch glimpses of Muslim relations with Christian dhimmīs that do not accord with the legal expectation of supremacy and purity that we observed in our study of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s jurisprudence. Rather, such narratives emphasize the importance of personal agency and relationship, and they suggest alternative avenues for

Friendship as a focus for Muslim religious identity formation has similarities with Iner and Yucel’s “accommodating approach” to religious formation, which among various phenomena explores how Muslims have “different affiliations in different contexts.” Friendship as religious identity formation, though, is more specific in its focus and in this context has to do with inter-religious relationships. See Iner and Yucel, 10–13. 2

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religious pluralism within Islam, avenues (as Ahmed argues) that are as “Islamic” as the fiqh that stands in contrast to them. Religious identity formation, then, may occur under a number of influences. The exercise of power, the persistence of tradition, and the fostering of friendship all played important roles in the formation and maintenance of Fāṭimid religious identity. This is clear from the actions of the caliphs: from their raising of taxes, to their promotion of certain books of fiqh over that of others, to their returning of endowments. This range of influences, though, also suggests that Islamic religious identity formation does not fit any single pattern but may develop differently from individual to individual, from community to community, and from sect to sect. Yet, following Ahmed’s line of thinking, this is not to say that some formative processes were more “Islamic” than were others. All of these formative experiences, including friendship, may reasonably be included in the range of experiences that constitutes Islamic religious identity formation. 3 Moreover, such formation occurred in a multiconfessional context, as caliphs navigated a complex religious landscape in which various communities (Shīʿa, Sunnīs, Christian and Jewish dhimmīs and even foreign residents) competed for caliphal favor. As the world (and particularly the Western world) becomes increasingly pluralistic in composition, scholars of religious identity formation might consider evaluating this formation through the lenses of power, tradition, and friendship,

The Ṣūfī practice of ṣuḥba (companionship) as a locus for religious identity formation could be a fruitful area for further exploration. Ṣuḥba can also be translated as “discipleship,” in which individuals relate to instructors in a hierarchical but intimate relationship. Notably, this kind of friendship may exist across religious lines. Recall the accusation that the caliph al-Ḥākim had become Anbā Salmūn’s disciple. For a modern example of friendship across religious lines in the context of Ṣūfism, see Valerie Hoffman, Sufism, Mystics, and Saints in Modern Egypt (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1995). For more on ṣuḥba, see Jason Welle, “Clarifying Companionship: Al-Sulamī’s (d. 412/1021) Kitāb ādāb al-ṣuḥba (PhD dissertation, Georgetown University, 2016); see also EI3 s.v. Companionship (Robert Moore).

3

158 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN and do so in the context of inter-confessional and inter-religious dialogue, relations, and indeed, rivalry.

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INDEX INDEX OF PERSONAL NAMES

ʿAbd al-Jabbār, 34 ʿAbd al-Malik Ibn Marwān, 33, 141 Abū al-Fawāris Aḥmad b. Yaʿqūb, 18, 20 Abū ʿAlī al-Manṣūr, 140n39 Abū al-Manṣūr Bishr ibn Sūrīn, 18–19, 19n40, 20 Abū al-Qāsim ʿAlī b. Aḥmad alKūfī, 91 Abū al-Ṭayyib Muḥammad b. Ḥamza, 35 Abū Bakr, 12, 55–56, 65, 67 67n61, 76–77, 77n19, 78, 123n8 Abū Ḥanīfa, 79–80, 86 Abū Rakwa, 23, 105 Abū Yaʿqūb Isḥāq b. Ibrāhīm b. Anasṭās, 127, 128n16 Abū Zakariyyā (see Ibn Abī Zakariyyā Ibn Abī Ghālib) Abū ʿAbdallāh al-Quḍāʿī, 53, 53n10 Abū ʿAbdallāh al-Shīʿī, 4, 73 Aftakīn (Alptakin), 99–100, 120, 121n4, 144 Aḥmad b. Ṭāṭwā, 108

171

Aḥmad b. Ṭūlūn, 33 Aḥmad ibn Yaʿqūb, 18, 20 ʿᾹʾisha, 56, 56n19 al-Mutawakkil, 21, 21n44, 41 al-Āmir bi-Aḥkām Allāh (see Abū ʿAlī al-Manṣūr) al-Basāsīrī, 110–12 al-Darazī (see Ḥamza b. ʿAlī b. Aḥmad and Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl al-Darazī) al-Faḍl b. Shādhān, 91 al-Ḥākim bi-Amr Allāh, 102–3, 103n23, 104–8, 108n35, 109, 115, 116n52, 121n5, 126–27, 127n13, 128, 128n16, 129, 129n17, 130– 32, 132n24, 133, 133n26, 134, 134n28, 135, 140, 140n39 141, 143–44, 146– 47, 149–55, 157n3 al-Ḥasan al-ʿAskarī, 154n12 al-Ḥasan b. Bishr al-Dimashqī, 98, 115 al-Ḥasan b. Ḥaydara al-Akhram, 133n26 ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, 3–4, 11–12, 22, 22n47, 34n56, 42–45,

172 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN 49–50, 50n2, 51–53, 53n11, 54–55, 55n13, 56, 56nn17.19, 57–58, 58n25, 59, 59n32, 60–61, 61n44, 62–63, 65–68, 68nn63.66, 69, 73, 73n7, 76–79, 79n24, 80–81, 83–85, 87, 90–91, 94–95, 97, 97n7, 104, 106, 107n33, 115, 117, 130, 148–50, 155 ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad al-Zanjī, 57n23 al-Jāḥiẓ, 50 al-Malik al-Ṣāliḥ Nijm al-Dīn Ayyūb, 142 al-Malik al-Ẓāhir Rukn al-Dīn alṢāliḥī (Baybars), 142 al-Maqdisī, 35 al-Māwardī, 87 al-Muqaddasī, 94n3 al-Muqtadir, 21n44 al-Musabbiḥī, 27n54 al-Mustanṣir bi-llāh, 24, 27, 46, 49, 53, 110–15, 119, 145, 149, 152–54 al-Muʿizz b. Bādīs, 114 al-Muʿizz li-Dīn Allāh, 21n45, 71, 75, 95, 97–98, 122 al-Nuʿmān ibn Muḥammad (see Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān) al-Qāḍī Aflaḥ ibn Hārūn alMallūsī, 73 al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, 45, 49, 51, 71, 71n2, 72, 72n4, 73–74, 74nn9–10, 75, 75n13, 76– 77, 77n19, 78–82, 82nn32– 33, 83–84, 90–92, 95, 106n31, 109, 115, 116n52,

123–24, 128n16, 147–52, 155–56 al-Qādir, 50n2, 104, 109 al-Qummī, 54, 54–55n12, 64–65 al-Shāfiʿī, 79, 86–88 al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā, 50, 89 al-Sharīf al-Raḍī, 49–50, 50n2, 51, 54, 57, 57n23, 74 74n9, 89–90 al-Ṭabarī, 21, 35, 37, 39, 51 al-Yaʿqūbī, 35 al-Ẓāhir li-iʿzāz Dīn Allāh, 27n54, 53, 106–8, 108n36, 109–10, 112, 115–16, 119, 124, 131–32, 132n24, 133– 38, 140–41, 143, 145, 149– 50, 155 al-Zubayr, 56, 56n19, 57, 78 al-ʿAzīz bi-llāh, 48, 97, 97n8, 98–102, 102n20, 103, 106, 108n36, 115, 120–21, 121nn3–4, 122, 122n6, 123–25, 144, 149, 153–55 Alp Arslan, 27, 111–13, 113n49 Alptakīn, (see Aftakīn) ʿAmr b. al-ʿĀṣ, 77, 123n8 Anbā Salmūn (Sulaymān), 129– 31, 143–44, 146, 150, 155, 157n3 Aristos of Jerusalem, 108n35, 121, 121n5 Arsenius, 121, 121n5, 133 Atsiz b. Uwaq al-Khwārizmī, 112 Basil II, 102n20, 107, 124 Baybars (see al-Malik al-Ẓāhir Rukn al-Dīn al-Ṣāliḥī) Bishr ibn Sūrīn, 18–19, 19n40, 20

INDEX Constantine IX Monomachus, 26, 114 Constantine X, 152 Dayṣān b. Saʿīd al-Khurramī (false prophet), 104, 104– 5n28 Faḍl b. Ṣāliḥ (Christian), 98, 122, 149 Faḍl b. Ṣāliḥ, 120, 120n1 Fāṭima, 4, 67, 67n61, 76, 83 Ḥamza b. ʿAlī b. Aḥmad and Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl alDarazī, 133n26 Ḥasan, 76 Ḥassān ibn al-Mufarrij ibn Daghfal ibn Jarrāḥ, 107 Ḥusayn, 76 Ibn Abī al-Ḥadīd, 49–50, 50n2 Ibn Abī Zakariyyā Ibn Abī Ghālib, 108, 135 Ibn al- Washshāʾ, 21 Ibn al-Athīr, 98 Ibn al-Faqīh, 34 Ibn Bidwās, 107, 107n34 Ibn Ḥanbal, 86, 88 Ibn Ḥawqal, 94n3 Ibn Khallikān, 71n2 Ibn Marnān, 138, 140–42 Ibn Mufliḥ (see Ibn Qudāma) Ibn Muzāḥim al-Minqarī, 50 Ibn Nujaym, 43 Ibn Qudāma (Ibn Mufliḥ), 87, 87n54 Ibn Taymiyya, 87

173

Ibrāhīm b. al-Qazār, 98 ʿImād al-Dīn Idrīs, 47 ʿIsā b. Nasṭūrus, 98, 122n6, 124– 25, 145, 149–50 Jābir b. ʿAbdallāh al-Anṣārī, 84 Jawhar, 21n45, 95–96, 99–100 Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, 3, 34n57, 80–82, 90–92 Justinian, 140, 143 Kāfūr al-Ikhshīdī, 122 Khalīl Zuhayr, 139 Khatkīn al-Ḍayf al-ʿAḍudī, 17 Mālik b. al-Ḥārith al-Ashtar alNakhaʿī, 51, 60 Mālik ibn Anas, 60, 79, 86, 88 Marwān ibn al-Ḥakam, 67, 68n63, 141 Maṣqala ibn Hubayra, 66 Meḥmed III, 142 Minjūtakīn, 101 Monomachus (see Constantine IX) Muḥammad al-Bāqir, 35 Muḥammad al-Mahdī, 3, 4n3 Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr, 61 Muḥammad, the Prophet, 4, 6, 9, 12, 21, 33, 53n11, 67, 67n60, 68n66, 69, 73n7, 74, 76–77, 77n19, 81, 84, 111 Muʿāwiya b. Abī Sufyān, 11, 56n17, 57–58, 58n25, 59– 60, 66, 68n63, 84, 90, 105– 6, 148 Nāṣir al-Dawla, 111n45 Nāṣir Khusraw, 27n54

174 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN Nectarius of Jerusalem, 141 Nicephorus of Jerusalem, 131, 136, 150 Qirwāsh b. al-Muqallad b. alMusayyab, 20n41, 24n52, 104–5 Romanos III Argyros, 108, 136– 37 Salāma Zuhayr the Blind, 139 Salīm (sultan), 140, 144 Salīm Ibn Zuhayr Waʿīd, 139 Sayyida (Sitt al-Mulk), 121–22, 122n6, 132n24, 133, 136, 145, 155 Saʿīd b. al-Ḥusayn, 34–35n57 Saʿīd ibn al-Biṭrīq (Eutychius of Alexandria), 36, 42, 45, 119 Severus of Antioch, 46n79 Sophronius, 36, 37n63 Sulaymān al-Ghazzī, 48 Ṭalḥa, 56, 56n19, 78 Taqī al-Dīn Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī alMaqrīzī, 17, 17n34, 19–20, 45, 47–48, 94, 94n2, 95, 97–107, 107n33, 108–12, 112n46, 114, 116–17, 119– 22, 125–26, 129, 129n17,

134–36, 140, 144–45, 147– 48, 151–52, 154 Theodora (empress), 112, 114– 15, 145, 149 Theophanes, 37 Thomas (patriarch of Jerusalem), 42 Ṭughj b. Juff al-Farghānī, 35 Tughrilbīk (Tughril Beg), 111– 13, 113n49 ʿUbaydallah, 34, 34n57 ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb, 32, 35, 37n63, 45, 55 ʿUmar II b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, 41, 41n70, 48 Usāma ibn Zayd, 77 ʿUthmān, 12, 55–56, 56n17, 67, 77 ʿUthmān ibn Ḥunayf al-Anṣārī, 67 William of Tyre, 18, 24, 27–28, 113, 152 Yaḥyā b. ʿĪsā al-Tamīmī alNahshalī al-Fakhūrī, 35 Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd al-Anṭākī, 45, 47, 117, 119–24, 126–29, 131–34, 134n28, 135–37, 141, 143–45, 147–48, 150 Yaʿqūb b. Killis, 98–99, 109, 120n1, 122, 122n6, 123– 24, 155–56 Yūsuf al-Shayzarī, 124

INDEX OF PLACES

Acre (Acco), 34, 99 al-Anbār, 20, 66, 66n57, 84, 104, 129

al-Madāʾin (Ctesiphon), 19n40, 20n41, 104, 129 al-Qāʾim, 110–13, 132, 145

INDEX al-Shām, 59, 98–99, 105, 111– 13, 124 Aleppo, 101–2, 111, 113, 119, 137 Alexandria, 46n79, 111n45, 119, 121n5 Amalfi, 124 ʿAmmān, 34 Antioch, 46n79, 119, 129 Apamea, 137 Arabian Peninsula, 43, 87 Ascalon (ʿAsqalān, Ashkelon), 34, 99 Baghdād, 4, 20n41, 27, 33, 50, 54, 98, 103–4, 109–13, 119, 129, 154 Baḥrayn, 57 Baṣra, 19n40, 56n19, 57, 57n23, 67 Bethlehem, 131, 139 Cairo, 2, 17, 23, 44, 47, 94, 99, 106, 108, 110–1, 111n45, 112n46, 114, 116n52, 121, 125, 130, 134 Caspian Sea, 4 Constantinople, 25–6, 108, 108nn35–36, 112–15, 121, 145, 153–4 Damascus, 27, 33–4, 99–101, 107, 130 East Africa, 57n23 Edessa, 104n28 Egypt, 2, 17, 23–26, 33, 44–45, 49, 50n2, 51, 60, 75, 93– 95, 99–100, 101n17, 105,

175

109, 111n45, 112, 116, 119–122, 123n8, 124–25, 130, 133–34, 136, 138, 140, 142–43, 145, 151, 153 Euphrates, 84 Fadak, 67, 67nn60–61, 68n63, 83 Fusṭāṭ, 21n12, 95, 97, 101n17, 121–23, 123n8, 124–25, 130 Galilee, 35, 99 Gaza, 48 Ghadīr Khumm, 73, 73n7 Ḥamāh, 101 Ḥaram, 39 Ḥijāz, 67, 101n17 Ḥimṣ, 101 Ifrīqiya, 114 Iraq, 19n40, 24n52, 52, 66n57, 90, 119, 129, 151 Jaffa, 99 Jerusalem, 2, 17–18, 20, 22, 24– 27, 27–28n54, 29–31, 32n55, 33–36, 36n61, 37, 37n63, 38–42, 46, 84, 101n17, 103, 106–7, 108n35, 112–14, 121, 131, 133, 136–37, 143, 147–48, 150–54 Khurāsān, 27n54, 111–12 Kūfa, 4, 20n41, 34n56, 35, 44, 50, 59, 68n66, 104, 108, 129

176 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN

Qayrawān, 4, 71

Latakia, 129 Lydda, 131 Manzikert, 27 Mecca, 27n54, 73n7, 111–12 Medina, 56n19, 64–65, 67, 73n7, 76, 112 Mesopotamia, 20n41, 104 Middle East, 13–14, 14n33, 47, 93–94, 148, 153 Mosul, 104, 129 Nābulus, 34 Nile, 100, 106, 122, 153 North Africa, 35n57, 52, 74n10, 121n3, 124, 148 Palestine, 2, 13–14, 19, 24, 27, 27n54, 32, 32n55, 33, 33n56, 34–35, 35n57, 41– 42, 44, 46–47, 49, 49n1, 93–94, 94n3, 95, 97–100, 103, 107, 112–17, 119–20, 122, 123n8, 131, 140, 147, 153

Ramla, 34–35, 99, 107 Rayy, 4, 129 Salamiyya, 34, 34n57 Ṣāliḥīya, 142 Sea of Galilee, 99 Shayzar, 101, 124, 137 Sicily, 137 Sidon, 99 Sinai, 46, 130, 138–39, 140n39, 142–44, 150, 155 Sind, 21n45 Syria, 13–14, 25, 27, 34, 34n57, 57, 93–94, 94n3, 98, 100– 1, 101n17, 104, 107, 111n45, 119–20, 136 Tiberias, 34–35, 99, 112 Tunisia, 4, 114 Ṭura hills, 130 Tyre, 34, 99 Yemen, 47

SUBJECT INDEX

Aaron, 68n66, 76, 77n17 ʿAbbāsid, 3–4, 12–13, 19n40, 20, 20n41, 21, 21n44, 24n52, 27, 28n54, 32–33, 33n56, 41–42, 46, 50n2, 57, 57n23, 75, 84, 91, 100, 103–5, 107, 109–16, 119, 129, 145 149, 153–54 Abraham, 76 Adam, 80, 80n27

ʿahd, 51–53, 60, 73, 83, 83n38, 95, 97, 97n7, 115, 117, 150 ahl al-bayt (the house/family of the Prophet), 17n34, 54, 54n12, 78, 83–84, 117 al-Aqṣā Mosque, 27n54, 32n55 al-Ghiṭās (Theophany; see also baptism), 100, 100n15, 144, 149

INDEX layl al-Ghiṭās 106, 106n30, 115, 150 al-Qiyāma (see also al-Qumāma; Church of the Holy Sepulchre, 17n35 al-Naṣārā (see also Christians), 17 al-Qumāma (see also al-Qiyāma; Church of the Holy Sepulchre), 17, 17n35 al-Shiqshiqiyya, 55 al-ʿAwārmah (tribe), 142 almsgiving, 9, 25, 96 alms tax (see zakāt) amān, 64, 95–96, 96n5, 97, 97n7, 110 ʿĀmila tribe, 35 angel, 65, 67n61 apostasy, 108–9, 132, 135 Arab, Arabs, 12, 17n35, 68, 93, 97, 123n8 Arab Christians, 43, 86–88 Arabic, 17n35, 19n40, 21n44, 22n46, 36n62, 40, 48, 52, 55n13, 68n66, 137, 141, 141n41, 145n46, 146 Armenians, 46, 47n79 aṣḥāb, 79 Baghdad Manifesto, 24n52, 50n2, 104 Banū al-ʿAbbās, 110 Banū Ghāmid, 66 Banū Isrāʾīl, 86 Banū Nājiya, 66 Banū Najrān, 43 Banū Taghlib, 43, 43n75, 87 Banū Umayya, 58, 90

177

Banū Wāṣil, 143 Banū Wāʾil, 101, 101n17 baptism, 100, 100n15, 106, 106n30, 115, 144, 150, 153 Bar-Kokhba revolt, 38 Battle of Manzikert, 113n49 Battle of Ṣiffīn, 50, 57, 5758n25, 59, 59n32, 60, 90 Battle of the Camel, 56n19, 57, 67, 90 Bedouin, 35, 36n61, 49, 57n23, 64–65, 107, 138, 140n38, 142–44, 150 Belial, 26, 152 Berbers, 35n57 black color, 21, 84, 103, 110, 126, 131, 134, 134n28, 153–54 blood (not to be consumed), 3n2 blood-money (diya), 86 Book, People of the, 3, 45, 61– 62, 62n49, 86–88 Booty, 78, 83, 110 business (buyūʿ), 61, 73, 80, 95, 122 Byzantium, Byzantine, 20, 27, 37–38, 40, 43, 47, 53, 65, 101n17, 102n20, 107, 107n34, 108, 108nn35–36, 109, 112, 113n49, 114, 119, 121n5, 123n8, 124– 25, 129, 134–37, 140, 143, 145, 145n46, 151–52, 155 Cairo Geniza, 47 caliph, caliphate, 2, 4–6, 12–13, 18–19, 21n45, 22, 22n47, 23–26, 27n54, 33, 35,

178 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN 35n57, 36, 40–42, 44–50, 53, 55–56, 56n19, 57, 65– 67, 71–72, 75–77, 77n19, 82n34, 83–84, 90, 92, 94– 97, 97n8, 98–100, 102–17, 119–26, 128, 128n16, 129– 32, 132n24, 133n26, 134– 37, 140, 140n39, 141–55, 157, 157n3 caliphs, ʿAbbāsid, 4, 12–13, 20n41, 21, 21n44, 50n2, 84, 104, 110, 129, 145 caliphs, Fāṭimid, 2, 4, 4n4, 6, 17, 18n36, 20–21, 21n45, 23–24, 35n57, 44–49, 71–72, 74n10, 75, 84, 92, 94, 94n2, 95, 96n6, 97, 100, 102–5, 107, 109–10, 111n45, 112, 112n46, 114–17, 122–23, 125, 128, 135–37, 140n39, 143–45, 147–51, 155 caliphs, Umayyad, 12–13, 33, 38, 41, 41n70, 84, 141 Cardo Maximus, 22, 28 Chalcedonian(s), 20, 46n79 Christ (see also Jesus), 25–26, 46n79, 144 Christian quarter of Jerusalem, 22, 28, 36n62, 152 Christian, Christianity (see also (al-Naṣārā), 2–3, 6, 13, 17, 17n35, 18–20, 25–26, 33, 36, 36n61, 37, 37n63, 38– 46, 46n79, 47–48, 53, 62,

62n49, 66, 66n57, 69, 80, 82, 82n32, 83, 86–89, 92– 94, 94n3, 95, 97, 97n8, 98– 101, 101n17, 102–3, 104n28, 106–7, 107n34, 108–9, 112–15, 117, 120, 122, 122n6, 123–25, 125n12, 128, 128n16, 129– 33, 133n26, 134–36, 138, 140–41, 141n41, 142–57 Church of St. Michael, 124 Church of the Holy Sepulchre (see also al-Qiyāma; alQumāma), 17–19, 22–23, 23n48, 36n62, 46, 84, 102– 3, 105–8, 108n35, 113, 115, 131, 136, 147, 149, 151 Church of the Nestorians, 124 Companions of the Prophet (ṣaḥāba), 22n47, 23, 56, 76–78, 96 companionship (ṣuḥba), 157n3 Con-Text, 8–9, 53–55, 75 Constantinople’s mosque, 108, 108n36, 112–13, 145, 153 convert (mawālī), conversion, 12, 24n52, 73, 86–88, 95, 98, 103, 108, 122–23, 129, 132, 134–35, 143, 150, 156 Coptic, Copts, 47, 47n79, 101n17 Council of Chalcedon, 46n79 Crusaders, Crusades, 18–19, 24, 27–28, 32, 32n55, 33, 106, 140n38 dār al-Islām, 83n38

INDEX Daʿāʾim al-Islām (Pillars of Islam), 45, 49, 51–53, 55, 71–72, 72n4, 73–74, 74n10, 75, 77n17, 78, 80– 82, 82nn32–33, 83, 83n38, 85, 89–91, 95, 109, 115, 116n52, 147–48, 151, 155 dāʿī (missionary), 4, 18, 20, 21n45, 22, 34, 71, 73, 97, 109, 115, 124, 133n26, 155 dhimmī(s), 2, 5–6, 21, 21n44, 24, 32–33, 39, 41, 41n70, 42– 44, 47–49, 52–53, 55, 60– 61, 61n44, 62, 66–67, 69, 73, 80–82, 82nn32.34, 83, 83n37, 84–85, 85n45, 86, 88–90, 92, 95–97, 97n7, 98–103, 103n23, 105–6, 106n31, 107–9, 112, 115– 16, 121, 122n6, 123–26, 128, 128n16, 129, 129n17, 131–36, 144–57 diet, dietary (see also food laws), 3n2, 5 Dome of the Rock, 27n54, 32n55, 33, 42 Druze, 132–33, 133n26, 145 Easter (Fiṣḥ), 17–18, 134, 151 fast, fasting (ṣawm), 9, 72, 96 Fāṭimid, 1–4, 4nn3–4, 5–6, 14, 17, 17n34, 18n36, 20, 20n41, 21, 21n45, 22–24, 24n52, 27, 27–28n54, 32, 32n55, 33–34, 34–35n57, 35, 41–42, 44–49, 50n2, 52–53, 61n44, 67, 71–73,

179

74n10, 75–76, 83–85, 90, 92–94, 94n2, 95–96, 96nn5–6, 97, 97n8, 98– 105, 107, 108n36, 109–11, 111n45, 112, 112n46, 113– 17, 119–20, 121n3, 122– 23, 125, 128, 132–33, 133n26, 134–38, 140n39, 141–45, 145n46, 147–55, 157 Feast of the Cross, 100–1, 101n17, 102 fiqh, 5–6, 42, 44–45, 47, 72, 74– 75, 80, 85, 85n45, 88–90, 92–94, 109, 115, 123–24, 135, 147, 149, 151–52, 155–57 food laws (see also diet, dietary), 2, 3n2, 62n49, 82–83, 89, 92, 115, 149 fuqahāʾ, 7–8, 109, 156 Gabriel, 64, 67n61 ghayba, 3, 4n3 ghiyār, 21, 21n44, 134, 134n28, 150 God, 3n2, 7–8, 26, 37, 50, 55– 60, 62nn49–50, 63–65, 69, 72, 76, 80, 87, 89–91, 96, 120, 126–27, 132, 139, 141, 151 Hadith, 6, 21, 51, 54, 76, 77n17, 79, 79n26, 83–85, 92, 135 ḥajj (see also pilgrimage), 9, 17– 18, 27–28n54, 42, 72, 73n7, 91, 96, 108 Ḥanafī, 43, 86

180 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN Ḥanbalīs, 86 ḥaqīqa, 7 Hindus, 61 Holy Week (see also Easter), 151–52 ḥukm, 5, 45, 92 ʿibādāt (the duties owed to God), 72, 75, 80 identity communal, 2, 46n79, 68 (religious), formation of, 1, 1n1, 2–3, 5–6, 9–10, 13, 46, 53–55, 75, 147–48, 150, 154, 154n1, 155–56, 156n2, 157, 157n3 sectarian, 10–11, 55 idol, idolater, idolatry, 39, 62n49, 69, 76, 87 Ikhshīdid, 2, 33, 35, 96 imam, 2–3, 4n3, 5, 12–13, 18n36, 21n45, 34nn56–57, 49, 51, 53, 64, 72, 75–76, 77n17, 79, 79n26, 80–84, 87, 91, 94–95, 96n6, 115– 16, 123, 132, 151, 155 the first twelve, 3–4, 4n3, 34nn56–57, 35, 49, 53, 53n11, 54n12, 76, 80, 91, 151, 155 ʿimāma (turban), 21, 134, 134n28 imamate, 34nn56–57, 72, 132, 151 Imāmī, 2–3, 4n3, 5, 24, 45, 50, 52, 54, 54n12, 62, 68n66,

75n13, 88–90, 92, 121n3, 147–48, 151, Imāmiyya, 4n3 īmān (faith), 72 inherit(ance), 55, 72n4, 81–82, 82nn32–33 Ishmael, 76 islām (submission), 72 Islam, Islamic, 1–2, 5–14, 27, 32, 39, 41, 43, 45, 47–48, 51, 55, 58–61, 62n50, 63–66, 71–72, 72n5, 73, 81–82, 85–89, 93, 95–96, 98, 100, 103, 108–9, 113, 115–17, 122–23, 128, 131–32, 134– 37, 141n41, 147–48, 151, 153–54, 154n1, 155–57 Ismāʿīlī, 1–4, 4n4, 5, 17, 20, 20n41, 21n45, 23, 27n54, 34n57, 44–45, 47, 52–53, 71, 71n2, 72, 72nn5–6, 73, 77n17, 85, 89–90, 92, 96n5, 109, 115, 116n52, 121n3, 147–48 isnad, 50 iʿtikāf (devotion), 72 Jacobites, 46–47, 47n79, 66n57, 135 janāʾiz (funerals), 72 Jesus (see also Christ), 20, 42, 86, 100n15 Jew(s), Jewish, 2–3, 3n2, 6, 20, 23, 32n55, 33, 37–39, 42, 44, 46–47, 53, 62, 62n49, 66n57, 67–68, 68n66, 69, 80, 82–84, 86–90, 92, 97, 97n8, 98–100, 102, 106,

INDEX 115, 117, 122–23, 129, 131, 148–49, 156–57 jihād (struggle and warfare), 72, 77, 80, 83–84, 85n45, 90, 96, 145n46 jizya (poll tax), 43, 51, 60–61, 80–81, 85n45, 87, 112, 134–35 Judaism, 47, 68n66, 86–87 jurist, juristic, 3, 5, 24, 42–45, 69, 71–72, 79n26, 80, 86– 87, 89–92, 96–97, 124, 147–48, 151, 155 kharāj (land tax), 51, 60–61, 66, 122, 130 Khārijites, 58–59, 59n32, 66, 90 kufr, kuffār, al-kafir (see also unbelief, unbelievers), 59, 61–62, 62n50, 64–65, 81 land tax (see kharāj) Latins (Crusaders), 24, 28 law, Islamic, 2, 5–8, 10, 12, 39, 41–42, 44, 61, 62n50, 63– 64, 72, 75, 75n13, 81, 85n45, 86, 88, 91–92, 96n5, 97, 115–16, 116n52, 117, 123–24, 131, 145, 148–49, 151–52, 155–56 law schools (madhhab), 41, 74– 75, 79n26, 86, 96, 109, 116, 121n3, 148 madhhab (see schools of law) maghrib, 54, 74n9, 122, 124 Maḥāsina (tribe), 138–39, 142– 44

181

Mahdī (see also messiah), 68n66 al-Mahdī, ʿAbdallāh, 34, 34n57, 73 al-Mahdī, Muḥammad, 3, 4n3 Majūs (see also Zoroastrians, Persians), 82–83 Mālikīs, 5, 71, 71n2, 74, 86, 109, 121n3 Mamluk, Mamlūk, 17, 45, 47, 94, 94nn2–3, 95, 141–43 marriage (nikāḥ), 43–44, 73, 76, 78, 85–88, 90–91 mashriq, 54, 74n9 Melkites, 20, 44–46, 46n79, 47– 48, 107, 113, 119–20, 122, 122n6, 129–30, 133, 137– 39, 140n38, 141n41, 143– 44, 147, 151 messiah, messianic (see also Mahdī), 35n57, 68n66 Miaphysite(s), 46, 46–47n79, 47 Michael (angel), 64 Michael (emperor), 109–10, 137 Michael, church of St., 124 milla, people of the, 132–33 missionary (see dāʿī) monastery, monasteries, 23, 28, 46, 48, 129–31, 138–40, 140nn38–39, 141–44, 146, 150, 155 of (al-)Quṣayr (St. Arsenius Monastery), 130, 130n19 of Mar Saba, 139 of St. Catherine, 46, 129– 30, 138–39, 140nn38– 39, 141, 150

182 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN monk, 28, 46n79, 112, 130, 138–39, 143–44, 150 Moses, 68n66, 69, 76, 77n17, 86, 139 mosque, 18, 20, 22, 22nn46–47, 36n62, 37, 76, 96, 108, 108n36, 110–14, 116, 120, 123, 135, 137–38, 140, 140n39, 145, 149, 153 al-Aqṣā, 27n54 in Constantinople, 108, 108n36, 112–13, 145, 153 of Manṣūr, 110–11 ʿUmar, 22, 22nn46–47, 23n48, 32n55, 36, 36n62, 105–6, 115, 149, 152 mushrikūn, 62, 62nn49–50, 82– 83, 83n37, 92, 148 Muslim(s), 1, 1n1, 2–11, 13, 17, 17n35, 18–21, 21n44, 22– 24, 32n55, 33–36, 36nn61– 62, 37–45, 47, 51, 53, 55– 56, 58, 61–67, 67n61, 68, 68n66, 69, 73–75, 77–78, 79n26, 80–82, 82nn32–33, 83, 83n38, 84–90, 92–94, 94n3, 95, 97–100, 103, 104n28, 106, 106n31, 108, 113, 115, 116n52, 117, 119–20, 121n4, 124–25, 128, 128n16, 130–32, 134– 35, 137, 141, 141n41, 142, 144–46, 148–51, 153–54, 154n1, 155–56, 156n2 mutʿa, 91

muʿāmalāt (laws relating to human interaction), 72–73, 80 Nahj al-Balāgha (The Peak of Eloquence), 45, 49–53, 53n11, 54–56, 56n17, 59, 59n32, 60–62, 65–68, 68n66, 69, 69n67, 72–76, 82n32, 83–85, 89–91, 97, 97n7, 148 Nestorian, 19, 66n57, 124 non-Arab, 12, 87 non-Muslim, 1, 1n1, 2–3, 5, 13, 43–45, 61, 78, 83n38, 85– 86, 88, 92–94 Ottoman, 140, 142–44 Pact of ʿUmar, 32, 39–42, 86 Pahlavi, 21n44 Patriarch(ate), 19n40, 24, 26– 27, 36, 37n63, 38, 42, 46n79, 108n35, 112, 121, 121n5, 131, 133, 136, 141, 150 of Antioch, 46n79 of Cairo, 121 of Jerusalem, 36, 37n63, 38, 42, 108n35, 121, 131, 133, 136, 141, 150 People of the Book, 3, 45, 61–62, 62n49, 86-88 persecution of Christians, 23, 106–7, 151, 154 Persian, 19n40, 27n54, 61, 65 pilgrim Christian, 42

INDEX Muslim, 27n54 pilgrimage (see also ḥajj), 9, 17– 18, 72, 73n7, 91, 96 pillar, 63, 72 Pillars of Islam (see Daʿāʾim al-Islām) seven of Ismāʿīlī Islam, 72, 72n5 poll tax (see jizya) prayer, praying Christian, 36, 37n63, 131 Muslim, 9, 36, 37n63, 66, 72, 74, 76–77, 77n19, 78, 82–83, 92, 96, 116n52, 120, 121nn3–4, 122, 128, 135, 144, 148–49 qunūt, 120, 121nn3–4, 128, 144, 149 ṣalāt (ritual prayer), 72, 74, 83, 92 pre-emption, 81 pre-Islamic, 12, 21n44 Pre-Text, 6–9, 53, 53n11, 116 qāḍī, 12, 107n33 Quraysh, tribe, 12, 110 Qurʾan (Koran), 2, 3n2, 6–7, 40, 44, 51, 54, 54n12, 55, 59, 59n32, 62, 62n49, 63, 65, 69, 69n67, 77n17, 79, 79n26, 80n27, 85, 87, 91, 108, 131, 135, 140n38, 141, 141n41, 151 Ramaḍān, 96, 120, 139 Revelation, 86, 91

183

Revelation to Muhammad, 6–9, 87 Roman empire, 38, 94 Rūm (see also Byzantine), 65 Saljūq, 27, 27n54, 111, 111n45, 113–14, 152–53 Samaria, Samaritan, 21 Saracens, 26 Sasanian, 19n40, 21n44 Satan (Iblīs), 58–59, 62n49, 80, 80n27 Ṣawālḥah, 142–43 sect, sectarian, 2, 7, 9–11, 13– 14, 14–15n32, 19–20, 23, 27, 46, 55, 65–66, 72–74, 95, 100, 113, 115, 120, 121n3, 132, 134, 144, 147, 153–54, 157 Seen, World-of-the, 6 Seveners, 4, 72n6 sharīʿa, 23, 75 Shīʿite , Shīʿa, Shīʿism, 1–4, 4n3, 10–13, 17, 22, 22n47, 23– 24, 24n52, 32n55, 33, 33– 34n56, 35, 42, 44–47, 49– 50, 52–54, 62, 64, 67n61, 68n66, 72, 72n6, 73n7, 74, 74nn9–10, 75, 75n13, 76, 83n38, 85, 88–92, 102n20, 103, 120, 128, 132, 134, 146–49, 151, 153, 157 slaughter, ritual, 9, 87, 89 slave, slavery, 21, 40, 56n19, 57, 57n23, 66, 145 Sufi, 7, 13, 17n34, 156, 157n3 Sunna, 91–92, 96

184 SHIʿITE RULERS, SUNNI RIVALS, AND CHRISTIANS IN BETWEEN Sunnī, Sunnism, 2–3, 5–6, 10, 12–13, 17, 20, 22n47, 23– 24, 24n52, 27, 27n54, 32– 33, 35, 41–43, 43n65, 44– 46, 49, 53–55, 62, 62n50, 72, 72n3, 73n7, 74, 74nn10–11, 75, 75n13, 79, 79n26, 80, 83n38, 84–85, 85n45, 86, 88–92, 94–96, 96n5, 97, 97n7, 100, 102n20, 103, 105, 109, 114–16, 120–21, 121n3, 128–29, 134, 144–46, 148– 51, 153, 155, 157 synagogue, 18, 39, 152 ṭahāra (ritual purity), 72, 82, 82n34, 92, 106n31, 148–49 tax alms tax (see zakāt) land tax (see kharāj) poll tax (see jizya) Text, the, 6–9, 53, 53n11, 54–55, 75 Truth, 7–9, 116 turban (see ʿimāma) Turkey, Turks, Turkish, 27, 49, 109, 111, 111n45, 112, 112n46, 113, 120, 133n26, 144 Twelvers, 3–4n3, 54n12

Umayyad, 11–13, 19n40, 23, 32– 33, 33n56, 38, 41, 41n60, 42, 58, 84, 141 ʿUmar mosque, (see mosque) umma, 11–12, 22, 45, 64–65, 69, 75 unbelief, unbelievers (see also kufr), 2, 59, 61–62, 62nn49–50, 63–65, 67, 69, 81, 82n32, 83n38, 148 Unseen, 8 God, 7–8 Truth, 7 World-of-the, 6 ʿurwa, 63–65 walāya (the authority of the imām), 11, 64, 72–74, 74n10, 75–76, 84 wazī, 12, 20, 96, 98–99, 109–10, 120n1, 122, 122n6, 123– 24, 156 wizāra, 51, 99 Yamanīs, 33 zakāt (alms tax), 72 Zanj, 57, 57n23 Zoroastrians, 61, 82–83, 88, 92 148 zunnār (a waist band), 20, 40, 134, 134n28, 150

ʿulamaʾ, 13, 76, 109

SŪRAT INDEX

Sūrat Āl ʿImrān 3:26, 141 3:103, 65 Sūrat al-Aḥqāf 46:15, 79n24

Sūrat al-Aḥzāb 33:33, 54 Sūrat al-Anʿām 6:136–47, 3n2 6:121, 89

INDEX Sūrat al-Aʿrāf 7:11–12, 80n27 Sūrat al-Baqara 2:171, 62 2:196, 91 2:233, 79n24 2:248, 77n17 2:256, 63, 131 Sūrat al-Ikhlāṣ 112, 35 Sūrat al-Māʾida 5:3, 73

185

5:5, 2, 89 4:20, 78 4:24, 91 4:54, 76 4:59, 76 4:160, 62n49 Sūrat al-Zukhruf 43:44, 76 Sūrat Ibrāhīm 14:35, 76 Sūrat al-Nisāʾ