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Middle East and Egypt (6th–10th c.)Politics and state

The Fatimids conquer Egypt and found Cairo

In 969 the Fatimid general Jawhar, sent by the caliph al-Mu'izz from Ifriqiya with a large and well-paid army, took Egypt from the collapsing Ikhshidid regime with little resistance. Beside Fustat he founded a palace city, later named al-Qahira — Cairo — with the al-Azhar Mosque, and in 973 al-Mu'izz moved his court there, making Egypt the centre of a Shi'ite caliphate that rivalled the Abbasids of Baghdad for two centuries.

Date
6 February 969 – 10 June 973exact date · duration: ≈ 4 yearsDate in the Julian calendar
Place
Cairo (al-Qahira): al-Azhar Mosquetoday: Islamic Cairo, Cairo, Egypt · Middle East and Egypt
Route
Raqqada → Barqa → Alexandria → Giza → Fustat
Participants
Fatimid Caliphate, Al-Mu'izz li-Din Allah, Jawhar al-Siqilli, Ikhshidids, Qarmatians, Kutama, Makuria
Threads
Middle East and Egypt (6th–10th c.)
Also known as
Fatimid conquest of Egypt; Founding of Cairo; al-Qahira; al-Mansuriyya; al-Azhar; Фатимидское завоевание Египта; Основание Каира; Аль-Кахира; Аль-Азхар

The Fatimids had coveted Egypt ever since they came to power in Ifriqiya: invasions in 914–915 and 919–921 took Alexandria but failed before Fustat. By the 960s the balance had shifted. The Abbasid caliphs were puppets of the Buyids, and Egypt, ruled since 935 by the Ikhshidids and from 946 by the eunuch Kafur, suffered from low Nile floods from 962, famine and plague, Nubian and Berber raids, Qarmatian attacks in Syria and on the pilgrim caravans, and the advance of the Byzantines under Nikephoros Phokas. When Kafur died in April 968 the regime fell apart, and Fatimid agents, who worked openly in Fustat, found many notables ready to welcome a takeover.

Al-Mu'izz prepared carefully: according to al-Maqrizi he spent 24 million dinars — a figure that, Yaacov Lev cautions, should perhaps not be taken literally — and Jawhar raised fresh troops among the Kutama Berbers. The army left Raqqada on 6 February 969 and in May entered the Nile Delta, occupying Alexandria without resistance. Jawhar issued a guarantee of safety (aman) promising to respect the lives and property of the Egyptians, restore order, protect the pilgrim routes and wage holy war against the Byzantines. Ikhshidid troops tried to hold the Nile crossings and were routed (29 June – 3 July); on 6 July Jawhar took possession of Fustat, and on 9 July the Friday sermon in the Mosque of Amr was read in the name of al-Mu'izz.

To keep his Berber soldiers apart from the Sunni townspeople, Jawhar laid out a walled palace city at his camp north-east of Fustat, at first called al-Mansuriyya after the Fatimid capital in Ifriqiya; its congregational mosque, al-Azhar, was begun on 4 April 970 and first used for the Friday prayer in June 972. Fatimid armies took Damascus in 970 but were then driven from Syria by the Qarmatians, who invaded Egypt and were beaten back just north of the new city in December 971. In August 972 al-Mu'izz left his palace in Ifriqiya with his court, his treasure and the coffins of his ancestors, entrusting the province to Buluggin ibn Ziri, and on 10 June 973 he entered the new capital, which he named al-Qahira al-Mu'izziyya, ‘the Victorious City of al-Mu'izz’. Cairo remained the seat of the Fatimid caliphs until Saladin abolished their caliphate in 1171, and al-Azhar, a centre of teaching from 988, became in later centuries the foremost institution of Sunni learning.

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Related events

  • Arab conquest of EgyptDecember 639 – September 642 · Middle East and EgyptCairo was founded beside Fustat, the garrison city of the Arab conquerors, and the first Fatimid sermon was read in its Mosque of Amr
  • Siege of Dongola and the Baqt treatybetween 651 and 652 · AfricaJawhar sent the missionary Ibn Salim al-Aswani to the kings of Nubia to renew the baqt
  • Ahmad ibn Tulun rules Egypt: al-Qata'i and the Mosque of Ibn Tulun15 September 868 – 10 May 884 · Middle East and Egyptunder the Tulunids and Ikhshidids Egypt had already become an autonomous regional power; under the Fatimids it became the seat of a rival caliphate
  • Qarmatians sack Mecca and carry off the Black Stonebetween 11 January and 12 January 930 · Middle East and EgyptJawhar's aman cursed the Qarmatians by name; they invaded Egypt in 971 and again in 974
  • Nikephoros Phokas retakes Crete: the siege of Chandax960 – between 6 March and 7 March 961 · Balkans and Anatoliabesieged Chandax asked Egypt and the Fatimid caliph al-Mu'izz for help; he proposed joining the Egyptian and Fatimid fleets in May 961, but the city fell first — and eight years later his general Jawhar conquered Egypt itself

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The same period

10th century

Sources

  1. Wikipedia (English): Fatimid conquest of Egypt
  2. Wikipedia (English): Cairo
  3. Wikipedia (English): Al-Azhar Mosque
  4. Wikipedia (English): Jawhar (general)
  5. Wikipedia (Russian): Фатимидское завоевание Египта
  6. Wikipedia (Russian): Каир
  7. Wikipedia (Russian): Мечеть аль-Азхар
  8. Bianquis Th. La prise de pouvoir par les Fatimides en Égypte (357–363/968–974) // Annales islamologiques. — 1972. — Vol. XI. — P. 49–108.
  9. Brett M. The Rise of the Fatimids: The World of the Mediterranean and the Middle East in the Fourth Century of the Hijra, Tenth Century CE. — Leiden; Boston; Köln: Brill, 2001.
  10. Lev Y. State and Society in Fatimid Egypt. — Leiden: Brill, 1991.
  11. Wikidata: Q85760625