Part 14

We have already seen that strict laws against going out at night were made as the result, no doubt, of abuses arising from the nightly illuminations and merry-making. Now, in 395, more stringent regulations were made. It was enacted that no women were to appear in the street unveiled, and that no persons were to use the baths without wearing wrappers. In Jumada II. of this year, a general prohibition was issued against any persons going out of doors after sunset, so that the streets were deserted by night. In accordance with another law all vessels containing wine were seized, the vessels broken, and the wine poured out (Maq. ii. 286). Another law dealt with the dogs which roam about most eastern cities and who, in Muslim lands are savage because they lack human intercourse, for the religion of Islam has placed the dog and the pig apart as animals who are in all circumstances unclean, so that no one who has touched either of these is able to pray or eat without formal ablution. Now al-Hakim commenced a war of extermination against dogs, with the result that in Cairo many were slain and very few could be seen in the streets. Severus says that this rule was made because al-Hakim’s ass had taken fright at a dog barking at it: in strict accuracy the Khalif had not at this time adopted the custom of riding an ass, but this is a minor detail.

Stricter rules also were made excluding ordinary civilians from Kahira, from which it appears that the seclusion of the guarded city had been somewhat relaxed. In future no one was to be allowed to ride into it, but must dismount and proceed on foot, and all those who let out asses for hire were to be excluded from its precincts, whilst no one was to be allowed to pass in front of the royal palace even on foot.

We must now turn to consider conditions in Syria, for it is always impossible to understand Egyptian history unless the course of events in Syria is kept in view. At the time of Barjawan’s death Syria was under the governorship of Jaysh, but when he died in 390 it became necessary for al-Hakim to nominate a successor for this important post. He chose Fahl of the B. Tamim, but Fahl died after only a few months. The Khalif then appointed ʿAli b. Fallah of the Katama. In 392 the Hamdanid prince of Aleppo, Saʿid ad-Dawla, and his wife, were poisoned by his father-in-law Luʿluʿ, who desired to obtain the throne for himself. He did not seize the supreme power immediately, but proclaimed Saʿid’s two sons ʿAli and Sharif as joint rulers, retaining the real control in his own hands. This continued for two years, then in 394 he sent them together, with the whole of the harim of the Hamdanids to Cairo, and assumed to himself the office and title of Emir in conjunction with his son Mansur, and these two ruled as Emirs under the protection of the Fatimid Khalif until Luʿluʿ’s death in 399. Then Mansur became sole ruler under the title of _Murtada l-Dawla_ which was conferred on him by al-Hakim, and he had the name of the Fatimid Khalif inserted in the Friday prayer and inscribed on the coinage so that by 399 Aleppo was fully admitted as a part of the Fatimid empire, having been a protected district for the previous five years, before which it had for forty years been included in the Byzantine Empire.

The first evidence of al-Hakim’s strong religious interest appears in his diligence as a builder of mosques, and in the completion or adornment of those already erected.

A mosque near the Bab al-Futuh, the second congregational mosque of Kahira, had been commenced by al-ʿAziz and the Wazir Ibn Killis in 380, and was sufficiently advanced to allow the Friday prayers to be held there in 381. In 394 al-Hakim added the minarets and the decorations so that Maqrizi describes him as reconstructing the building. The work was not completed until 404. At first known as the “New Mosque” or as _al-Anwar_ “the brilliant,” it afterwards generally bore the name of Hakim’s Mosque. Desecrated by the Crusaders, severely injured by an earthquake in 703, it was in a semi-ruinous condition by fire and neglect with its roof falling to pieces when Maqrizi wrote his description of it about A.H. 823 (= A.D. 1420. Cf. Maqrizi ii. 277, sqq.). After even worse decay in later days it was temporarily converted in recent times to a museum of Arabic art, the collection being removed to its present quarters in 1903. The mosque is now abandoned and in ruins. Its general plan follows that of the mosque of Ibn Tulun, a square courtyard surrounded with arcades, the centre open to the sky. A considerable part of the east _liwan_ remains, with a few fragments of the north _liwan_, of the other two sides only portions of the exterior walls survive. Two towers can be seen standing at the ends of the west wall, but the open-work minarets which crown these towers are additions made some three centuries later and alien to the style prevailing in the time of the Fatimids.

In the year 393 al-Hakim also began to rebuild the mosque in the district of Rashida to the south of Kataiʿ near the Mukattam hills, on a ground where a Christian church had once stood. The mosque had been built of brick; this al-Hakim destroyed and reconstructed on a larger scale and of more imposing appearance. It was known as the mosque of Rashida from its position, the ground being so called after a person of that name who had once been its owner. This mosque was commenced in Rabiʿ I. 393, and the position of the _mihrab_ was carefully adjusted by the astronomer ʿAli b. Yunus. Two years later the Khalif made this mosque a present of carpets, curtains, and lamps.

Besides this building al-Hakim made many gifts to various mosques, especially to those he purchased for the special purposes of the Shiʿite sect, presenting them with copies of the Qurʾan, silver lamps, curtains, Samanide mats, etc.

The earlier Fatimids in North Africa present rather a brutal appearance and, so far as we can see, their one ideal was the establishment of political power. But that was not the original character of the movement which had distinct intellectual tendencies, and to this earlier type al-Moʿizz had reverted. Since the dynasty had been established in Egypt the humane side had been more prominently in evidence, and especially in the encouragement of medicine and natural science. The Khalif al-Moʿizz employed the Jewish physician Musa b. al-Ghazzan and his two sons Ishaq and Ismaʿil: these were not only eminent practitioners but Musa was distinguished as a writer on the pharmacopoeia, and all three were regarded as leading authorities on medicine. Another distinguished physician was the Christian Eutychius or Saʿid b. Batriq, patriarch of the Malkite church of Alexandria who died in 328 (= A.D. 943), the author of a history of which an edition in Arabic and Latin was published at Oxford in 1654.

Al-Hakim himself was anxious to encourage scholarship in accordance with the traditions of the sect of which he was the head. The mosque of al-ʾAzhar had been especially devoted to the learned by his father, and now in Jumada II. 395 he founded an academy on the lines of similar institutions already existing at Baghdad and elsewhere. This new foundation was named the _Dar al-Hikma_ or “house of wisdom.” To it were attached a number of professors, both of the traditional sciences and Qurʾan and canon law, and also of the natural sciences. A library was connected with it and was filled with books transferred from the royal palace near by. All who came to it were supplied with ink, pens, paper, and rests for books.

It seems probable that the intellectual efforts of the Fatimids should be connected with the _Ikhwanu s-Safa_, “the brotherhood of purity” and with the Assassins. The former began as a kind of masonic society at Basra soon after the capture of Baghdad by the Buwayhids in 334. Undoubtedly it had some connection with the sect established by ʿAbdullah the son of Maymun, but it is not possible to specify accurately what that connection was. It may have been a more cultured off-shoot, just as the Qarmatians were a cruder branch; but the more probable explanation is that it was a descendant of the movement which produced ʿAbdullah, but free from the Shiʿite elements which he inherited from the sect founded by his father Maymun. To a large extent it seems that the “Brotherhood” displayed the true principles adopted by the Ismaʿilians free from the Shiʿite ideas and free from the political opportunism which marked the development of the Fatimids in Africa and Egypt. To the Assassins we shall have occasion to return at a later stage. The “Brethren of purity” were disposed in four grades, the highest of which was composed of those who desired the union of their souls with the world-spirit, so that their final doctrine was a species of pantheism. They were a body of religious and ethical reformers, a purified and gentle society, at the opposite pole to the fierce Qarmatians. On the literary side they are best known as the producers of the fifty-one “Epistles of the Brethren of Purity,” an encyclopaedia of philosophy and science as known in the Arabic speaking world of the fourth century. These “Epistles” were edited and translated by Prof. Dieterici between 1858 and 1879, and show a general scheme of education in grammar, theology, philosophy, and physics, the latter including mineralogy, chemistry, botany, and zoology. It is in no sense an original work, but simply an encyclopaedic compilation of all the material then available.

The whole Fatimid movement took place in an atmosphere saturated with Hellenistic thought, and the revived study of the Greek material was the direct inspiration both of the Ismaʿilian sect as organised by ʿAbdullah and of the “Brethren.” But the influence of these latter was checked by the strong tendency towards reaction in Muslim theology and thought generally which was gathering even in the fourth century in Asiatic Islam. The future of the philosophers lay in the far west: Ibn Sina (d. 428) was the last of the Muslim philosophers in the east, and he was associated with Shiʿite circles, whilst al-Farabi had lived under the shelter of the Shiʿite Hamdanids, and the “Brethren” flourished under the Buwayhids who also were Shiʿites. For the most part the study of Greek philosophy, therefore, progressed under Shiʿite influences.

The “House of Wisdom” continued until 513 when the reactionary wave of orthodoxy had reached even Fatimid Egypt, and in that year it was closed as a home of heresy by the Wazir Afdal. Four years later a new academy near the great palace was founded by the Wazir Maʾmun, but this adhered more strictly to the traditional lines of Muslim study.

In the line of philosophers strictly so-called, that is to say, of those who worked from the basis of Greek science, one is associated with al-Hakim and the Cairo of the Fatimids, namely, Ibn al-Haytsam, known to the mediaeval Latin writers as Alhazen. He was born at Basra in 354, and became distinguished as a student of the Greek philosophers. At that time the path of philosophy was beset with many difficulties owing to the orthodox reaction.

Ibn Sina was a wanderer in many lands, and Ibn al-Haytsam found it more prudent to seek a refuge in Cairo where he made his home amongst the learned of the al-ʾAzhar mosque. He died in 430. We have a long list of the works he produced, all of the type usually associated with the Arabic philosophers, manuals, commentaries, and discussions of questions arising from the teaching of the ancients. In his case these deal chiefly with mathematics, physics, the Aristotelian logic, and the medical works of Galen. The Bodleian contains a MS. of his commentary on Euclid. To the mediaeval west he was best known as the author of a treatise on optics which was translated into Latin and used by Roger Bacon. Occasionally this optical work of “Alhazen” appears in the curricula of the mediaeval universities.

Various evidences of a fanatical spirit in maintaining the doctrines and usages of Shiʿism begin to appear in al-Hakim about 393. In Syria a person was arrested on the charge that he denied that any special devotion was due to ʿAli. The offender was imprisoned by the authority of the Chief Qadi of Egypt who acted as pope over all the territories subject to Fatimid rule, and was examined by four jurists who did their best to persuade him to recognise the Imamate of ʿAli, but, as he remained stubborn, he was beheaded.

In Cairo thirteen persons were arrested for having observed the _Salat ad-Duha_ or “mid-morning prayer,” one of the voluntary observances sometimes added to the five canonical daily prayers, but disapproved by the Shiʿites. The offenders were paraded through the streets, beaten, and detained three days in prison.

In the month of Rabiʿ II. of this same year (393) a man named Aswad Hakami was punished for some offence of which the details are unknown, but which probably was a public championship of the three first Khalifs whom the Shiʿites regarded as usurpers. He was paraded through the city and a herald cried before him: “This is the reward of those who are the partisans of Abu Bakr, and Umar,” after which he was beheaded (As-Suyuti, _History_, chap. I., Qadir bi-llah).

In 395 al-Hakim re-enforced many old laws against Christians and Jews, and the decrees ordering the strict observance of these penal regulations contained many abusive expressions against Abu Bakr and Umar. A new decree of 395 forbade the use of _malukhiya_ or “Jews’ mallow” as food because it was traditionally stated to have been a favourite article of Muʿawiya the opponent of ʿAli. Similarly the use of _jirjir_ (_girgir_) or “watercress” was forbidden because it had been introduced by ʿAyesha: and of _mutawakkiliya_, a herb named after the ʿAbbasid Khalif Mutawakkil. The sale or making of beer (_fuqqaʿ_) was severely prohibited because it was especially disliked by ʿAli: it was forbidden to use _dalinas_, a species of small shell fish, for some reason not known: and very strict orders were made against the sale or use of any fish which had no scales.

In the same year a law was published that the noon prayer was to be said at the seventh hour and the afternoon prayer at the ninth, that is to say the modern way of counting the correct hours was to be observed instead of the traditional method of observing the sun. In these cases tradition allowed the noon prayer to be said as soon as the sun is actually seen to begin its decline from the meridian (Bukhari: _Sahih_ ix. 11), and the afternoon prayer after it has declined (id. 13, 13A). Orthodox Islam allows the former at any time between noon and the hour when the shadow of a thing is equal to the thing itself in length, and the latter at any time between the moment of equal shadow and the sunset (cf. id.). The Fatimid Khalif now replaced these very primitive methods of reckoning, which are still in force, by the observance of fixed hours as marked by the dial.

In the month of Safar of 395 al-Hakim caused inscriptions cursing the three first Khalifs, the “usurpers,” and certain others such as Talha, Zubayr, Muʿawiya, and Amru, all regarded as enemies by the Shiʿites, to be written up on the doors of the mosques and of shops, and on the guard houses and in the cemeteries, and compelled the people to display similar inscriptions in gold lettering and bright colours (cf. Maq. ii. 286, As-Suyuti: _al-Qaʾim_. Ibn Khall. iii. 450). These were extremely offensive to the Sunnis or orthodox who formed the large majority of the people, indeed at the present day the attitude to be observed towards the first three Khalifs is the sorest point of difference between the Sunnis and Shiʿites, and even in recent years more than one Shiʿite has risked death for the sake of spitting on the tomb of ʿUmar. At the same time efforts were made to induce citizens to join the Ismaʿilian sect, and two days were set apart every week for the admission of those who desired to be initiated. On some of these occasions the crowds were so large that several people were crushed to death (Maq. ii. 286).

Those who were keen Shiʿites naturally were encouraged by this legislation to become somewhat aggressive in their attitude. When the caravan of African, that is to say Moroccan and Tunisian, pilgrims on their way home from Mecca passed through Egypt and rested at Cairo, some of the more ardent Shiʿites tried to induce them to utter curses against ʿUmar and the other early Khalifs, and the refusal of the pilgrims to do so led to some disturbances.

At the beginning of the year 396 the usual Shiʿite feast of the _Ashura_ commemorating the martyrdom of ʿAli and his sons, a regular occasion for an outbreak of Shiʿite fanaticism at the present day, was duly celebrated on the first ten days of Muharram. This time the offensive attitude of the Shiʿites caused a good deal of annoyance, and one man was arrested for shouting: “Such be the recompense of those who curse ʿAyesha and her husband.” For this he was beheaded.

In 393 al-Hakim commenced the strict observance of the old laws, now long obsolete, against the Christians and Jews. We are left in no doubt as to the reason why these ancient penal laws were revived and strictly enforced. Maqrizi tells us that it was due to the arrogance and wealth of those Christians and Jews who had been unduly favoured by the Fatimids. The greater part of the civil service was filled by them, and some Christians, such as ʿIsa b. Nestorius and Fahd b. Ibrahim, were then acting as ministers of state. To a large extent we may ascribe al-Hakim’s treatment of Christians and Jews as due to the pressure of public opinion, and it is rather interesting to observe how such opinion was brought to bear upon a mediaeval Khalif.

One day as al-Hakim was riding through the streets he was confronted by a female guy made of paper bearing in her outstretched hand a document which Hakim took, and read: “In the name of him who has honoured the Jews in Manasseh, and the Christians in ʿIsa b. Nestorius, and has dishonoured the Muslims in himself, deliver us from the evil state we are in, in good time” (Abu l-Feda, _Annal. Mosl._ ii. 591).

Hakim’s first step was to endeavour to bring pressure to bear upon his chief officials in order that by getting them to profess Islam he might remove the objection felt towards them. One of these was Fahd b. Ibrahim, a Christian who had been _raʾis_ or lieutenant under the commander-in-chief Husayn b. Jawhar since 389. He, however, proved stubborn in his adherence to the Christian religion and so was beheaded and his body burned, an act of severity which was not justified by Muslim law. As soon as the execution was over Hakim sent for Fahd’s children, assured them of his protection, and forbade any one to do them harm. Fahd was succeeded in his office by the Muslim ʿAli b. ʿUmar al-ʿAddas. Hakim then made a similar attempt to convert ʿIsa b. Nestorius and with similar result, so ʿIsa also was beheaded. Bar Hebraeus puts this event in the period 386-389, but as Maqrizi mentions it just before his reference to the execution of Fahd it is more probably dated 393.

Al-Hakim had ten of the chief Christian clerks, including Fahd, arrested. The first of these to be brought before him was Abu Najah, who was a member of the Greek Church. Hakim urged him to become a Muslim, and promised him rapid promotion and immediate rewards if he would do so. Abu Najah asked that he might be allowed a day’s delay, and this was granted him. He then went home and, gathering together his kinsmen and friends, told them what had taken place, and assured them that he had asked for this delay, not because he was in any doubt as to what he would do, but in order to meet them and exhort them to remain steadfast in their faith in the persecution which he fore-saw was about to fall upon the church. He then entertained them all to a feast and next day presented himself before the Khalif. Al-Hakim asked him if he had made his choice: he replied that he had done so:—“And what is your intention?”—“It is to remain firm in my religion.” Al-Hakim then tried promises and threats, but without result. He then had him stripped and scourged until he had received five hundred stripes, so that his flesh was torn and the blood flowed freely. As the torturers stopped al-Hakim ordered them to continue until the sufferer had received a thousand lashes. After three hundred more Abu Najah cried out that he was in thirst and, as this was reported to al-Hakim he ordered one of the men to give him a drink of water. But when the water was offered Abu Najah said: “Take away his water. I have no need of it, because Jesus Christ the true King has given me to drink,” and then he died. When this was reported to Hakim he ordered the thousand strokes to be completed on the dead body.

Of the other eight clerks remaining after Fahd and Abu Najah, four remained firm and were executed, and four turned Muslim. Of these latter one died during the night after making his profession of faith, the other three remained conforming Muslims until the penal laws were relaxed in the latter part of Hakim’s reign when they returned to the Christian Church, the Khalif protecting them from the legal penalties to which this exposed them.