branch of the Assassins was completely exterminated, and the great
headquarters at Alamut was destroyed by the Turks, but besides these two
greater branches there were many minor groups of the sect which have
lived out a secluded existence scattered in various parts of central Asia
and India, and undoubtedly exist at the present day. As late as 1866
an English judge in Bombay was called upon to decide a succession case
according to the jurisprudence of the Assassins. Prof. Browne states,
“remnants of the sect, as I was informed by a very intelligent and
observant Babi dervish of Kirman, of whom I saw a great deal when I was
in Cairo in the early part of the year 1903, still exist in Persia, while
in India (under the name of ‘Khojas’ or ‘Khwajas’) and Chitral (under
the name of ‘Mullas’), as well as in Zanzibar, Syria, and elsewhere,
they still enjoy a certain influence and importance, though it requires
a great effort of imagination to associate their present pontiff, the
genial and polished Agha Khan, with the once redoubtable Grand Masters
of Alamut and the ‘Old Man of the Mountain’—‘Le Vieux’ of Marco Polo’s
quaint narrative” (Browne: _Literary Hist. of Persia_, p. 460).
As a political force the Fatimids rapidly vanished. In the great struggle
between Franks and Turks they had for a while hindered the co-operation
of the Muslims under Turkish leadership, and perhaps had contributed to
the weakness which had allowed the establishment of a Frankish kingdom
in Jerusalem, though this weakness would be sufficiently explained by
the fact that the earlier Turkish migration westwards had just ceased,
and the greater movement which followed had not yet begun. When Saladin
swept aside the remnants of the Fatimid Khalifate it disappeared without
leaving any appreciable mark on contemporary history.
On the religious history of Islam the Fatimids left even less impression.
They were entirely excluded from the theological life of the Muslim
community, save that they probably contributed to the strong disfavour
with which the orthodox regarded philosophical and scientific studies as
these took a suspected colour by reason of the sympathy with which the
Shiʿites generally, and the Ismaʿilians in particular had regarded them.
XIX
THE FATIMID KHALIFATE IN ITS RELATION TO GENERAL HISTORY
A few words may be added to define more plainly the part taken by the
Fatimid Khalifate in the general course of history. So long as the
Fatimite movement merely took the form of a sectarian body in Asia it had
hardly more than a local interest, and even the formation of a Fatimid
Khalifate at Kairawan does no more than illustrate the disintegration of
the empire of the Khalifs of Baghdad. But the conquest of Egypt brought
the Fatimids into relation with a wider world and induced them, unwisely
no doubt, to venture on the conquest of Syria. It is a question how
far the power ruling in Egypt ever can be free from Syria: the ancient
Pharaohs were drawn into Egyptian expeditions, and the two lands have
been closely involved one with the other ever since: nearly always Syria
has proved the grave in which the prospects and hopes of Egypt have been
buried. In the days of the Fatimids Syria was the battle ground of the
Near East, and every country from Byzantium to the Oxus was more or less
drawn into the conflicts there, whilst in the later part of the period
the whole of Christendom, except Spain, was involved: and every power
of East or West found there either severe loss or total ruin. The whole
course of the history of the 9-12th centuries of the Christian era shows
the gradual sucking in of Muslim and Christian powers to this maelstrom,
and in every case with disastrous results.
The whole period of the Fatimid Khalifate, from the first formation of
the parent sect or conspiracy to the final downfall before Salah ad-Din,
may be divided conveniently into three periods; (i) the rise of the
Ismaʿilian sect and the establishment of a Khalifate claiming Fatimid
descent at Kairawan, (ii) the conquest of Egypt and the period of more or
less prosperous rule over Egypt and Syria, and (iii) the period of decay
under the attacks of the Saljuq Turks and the Crusaders to its final
downfall.
(i) _The Formation of the Fatimid Khalifate._ (A.H. 260-356 = A.D.
873-966.)
This was the period during which the Ismaʿilian sect was founded, spread
to North Africa, and a Khalifate was established at Kairawan. It was a
time during which the Khalifate of Baghdad was passing through a course
of rapid decay: under no other circumstances would such progress on the
part of the Ismaʿilis have been possible. The Khalif Harunu r-Rashid died
in 193 (= 808) whilst actually proceeding against a rebellious son in
Khurasan. His death was followed by a civil war at the end of which his
rebellious son was established as Khalif, but soon afterwards in 205 (=
820) Khurasan was practically lost to the Khalifate and passed into the
hands of the independent dynasty of the Tahirites, who ruled nominally in
the Khalif’s name but paid him no obedience. Tahir himself was an Arab,
but his supporters were mainly Persians, and this begins the period of
Persian political supremacy which lasted until the rise of the Turks in
the middle of the 4th cent. The Saffarids who ruled in Khurasan from 260
to 290 A.H. were purely Persian, and so were the Samanids who arose in
288 and ruled until 400. All these maintained themselves in the east, but
in 320 (= 932) the Buwayhids, a Daylamite tribe from the shores of the
Caspian Sea came down into the very heart of the Khalifate, and from 344
until 447 controlled Baghdad, holding the Khalif as an ornamental figure
to adorn the pageant of state. Not only were these Buwayhids Persians
but, like the Saffarids and Samanids, they were Shiʿites, not themselves
recognising the Khalif as the true ruler of Islam, but using him simply
as a tool to give effect to their rule over those who did. This was the
golden period of Arabic philosophy and literature.
In North Africa the Aghlabid dynasty of Zairawan went down before the
followers of the Fatimid Mahdi, who increased in power and prosperity
until they conquered Egypt in 356. Only in the far West the rival
Khalifate of Cordova held its own, minor independent states were formed
in the further parts of North Africa, and in Sicily a popular movement
declared for the orthodox Khalif of Baghdad.
During all this time Islam hardly enters into the political history of
Europe, save in Spain. The Byzantine Empire held its own owing to the
weakness of Islam: the Latin Empire was in process of disintegration and
new states were being formed in the west. Almost contemporaneously two
sturdy races begin to appear at points far removed, the Turks who are
gradually filtering across the Oxus into Persia and becoming Muslims,
and the Northmen who are settling on the sea-board of the North-West of
Europe and becoming Christians.
(ii) _The Golden Age of the Fatimids._ (A.H. 356-469 = A.D. 966-1076.)
During the period of the decay of the Abbasid Khalifate the Fatimids
were able to seize an important part of the Abbasid dominions and make
themselves rulers of Palestine and Syria, with more or less intermittent
control over Arabia. At this time the three leading powers in the Near
East were the Khalifate of Baghdad, the Fatimid Khalifate of Egypt,
and the Byzantine Empire, but of these three the Fatimid Khalifate of
Egypt was the most vigorous and aggressive. Under Karl the Great the
Western Empire had assumed a kind of protectorate over the Christians in
Palestine, but in Fatimid times this had become obsolete. The two rival
Khalifates were separated by a wide gulf of religious difference, how
wide cannot be appreciated without following the history of the formation
and development of the Fatimid Khalifate. Both made overtures to the
Greeks, but the relations of Byzantium with the Muslim world generally
turned on questions connected with Fatimid rule: Fatimids and Greeks
faced one another in North West Syria, and it was only in Sicily that
the Greeks had to deal with the Baghdad Khalifate. Before the beginning
of this period Crete which had fallen into the hands of the Muslims in
A.D. 825, was recovered (in A.D. 961): Sicily, conquered by the Muslims
between A.D. 827 and 878, remained in their hands but, after the Fatimid
conquest of North Africa it revolted and gave in its allegiance to the
Khalifate of Baghdad. North Africa was divided amongst various Muslim
groups, and Spain was fully occupied with its own problems. In A.D. 1038
Byzantium lost control over North Syria, so that on the whole the Greeks
were receding before the Muslims. In A.D. 1029 (= A.H. 419) there was,
however, a _modus vivendi_ reached between the Fatimids and the Greeks
by which, in return for help during famine, the Muslims were allowed to
have a mosque in Constantinople provided prayer was offered there for the
Fatimid Khalif, and, apparently, the Christians were allowed freedom to
visit Jerusalem. The persecution of Christians under Hakim had culminated
in the destruction of the church of the Holy Sepulchre in A.D. 1009,
but this was re-built soon afterwards: the persecution was an isolated
incident: in Muslim lands generally neither Christians nor Jews suffered
any serious disabilities, the penal laws were long obsolete, and the only
penalty enforced was against a Muslim who became a convert to another
religion. An additional tax had to be paid by non-Muslims, but this was
in lieu of military service from which they were exempt.
The real stirring of history lay in the extreme east and west, in the
rise of the Turks and of the Normans, both gradually converging upon
western Asia and at the close of this period are both approaching
Syria, bringing even greater disasters to their co-religionists than to
those whom they regarded as their foes. During the period under present
consideration both were already in this arena in small numbers, employed
as mercenaries by all the three Near Eastern powers, Turkish soldiers
of fortune serving under the Khalifs of Baghdad and under the Fatimids
of Egypt, Northmen serving in the employ of the Emperors of Byzantium,
but neither Turks nor Northmen had as yet moved in in sufficiently large
numbers to become independent factors in politics.
The first assertion of the Turks appears in the career of Mahmud of
Ghazna. Turkish soldiers had been employed by the Samanide of Khurasan,
and one of these, Alptekin, was made governor of Khurasan, but at a
disputed succession in the house of Samani he unfortunately took the
side of the candidate who proved unsuccessful and so had to flee the
country. With a body of followers he established himself in the mountain
fortress of Ghazna (in A.H. 350 = A.D. 961), and there he and his son
Sebektakin held their own, nominally as vassals of the Samanids, really
as an independent brigand state. The third ruler of Ghazna, Mahmud,
declared himself independent in 390 (= 999), and received investiture
directly from the Khalif of Baghdad, assuming the title of Sultan, a
title which he was the first to introduce into the community of Islam.
Mahmud of Ghazna is one of the brilliant figures of history, but one
whose importance can easily be over-estimated. In a series of twelve
expeditions to India he won both fame and booty, but was not in any
real sense a conqueror of India. In A.H. 407 (= A.D. 1016) he extended
his power northwards to the shores of the Caspian Sea, and here before
long he was brought into contact with other kinsmen of his own, Turks
living across the Oxus, and it was the advance of these Turks led by
the Saljuq tribe which, in his son’s days, cut off the Sultanate of
Ghazna from Persia and the West and compelled the Ghazni dynasty to
turn its attention eastwards. This led to the foundation of a Muslim
state in India which, under the successive rule of Turks, Afghans, and
Mongols, had a continuous existence to the time of the Indian Mutiny in
the 19th cent. Although Mahmud and his followers were Turks he gave the
civil administration mainly into the hands of Persian officials, and
thus Persian became the court language of Muslim India, though Arabic
was sometimes employed in important charters,—both foreign languages to
rulers and subjects; and thus, when the native Hindi began to be used
as a literary medium it appeared as a language which, though thoroughly
Hindi in structure and grammar, had a vocabulary full of Persian and
Arabic words, and in this form is known as Urdu or Hindustani. Thus
Indian history, through the pushing eastwards of the Ghazni Turks by the
advance of the Saljuqs, connects with the history of the West.
The Persian dynasties of the Saffarids, Samanids, and Daylamites were
Shiʿite in religion, but the Turks were Sunni, that is to say “orthodox”
in the sense of adhering to the traditional school which was in
communion with the official Khalifate of Baghdad, so that when they came
westwards they came as its champions, in contrast to the Normans who were
unfriendly towards the Greek Church.
The Saljuq Turks migrated from Turkistan to Balkh about 345 (= A.D. 956),
and there accepted Islam. They settled on the farther side of the Oxus
about 20 parasangs from the town of Balkh, and there they were found
by Mahmud of Ghazna. He removed then to the near side of the Oxus and
distributed them through the province of Khurasan where, as they were
broken up into small groups, they were harshly treated, and plundered
until a body of 2,000 fugitives fled to Ispahan for protection. The
governor there wished to employ them in the army, but Mahmud sent orders
that they were to be imprisoned and their property confiscated, and
followed up these orders by sending a force to scatter them. After this
they took to brigandage under a leader named Tughril, and finally were
pardoned by Mahmud on condition that they reduced the whole province
of Khurasan to obedience to him. This work they took in hand but, in
the days of Masud, the successor of Mahmud, they were able to establish
their own independence and compelled the Sultan of Ghazna to abandon all
control over Persia and turn his attention eastwards (Ibn Khall. iii.
224-226x).
The Saljuqs were now so prominent that al-Qaʾim the Khalif of Baghdad
sent to Tughril as a loyal Sunni to deliver him from the tyranny of the
Buwayhids. In response Tughril marched to Baghdad and formally restored
the temporal power of the Khalif in 447 (= A.D. 1055), though this soon
meant simply that the Khalif was under the guardianship of a Saljuq
Turk instead of a Daylamite Buwayhid; though there was this much gain,
that the Saljuqs were theoretically orthodox supporters of the Abbasid
Khalifate.
The Saljuqs were now established as the champions and defenders of the
Baghdad Khalifate. Under Tughril’s successor, Alp Arslan, they came into
direct conflict with both the Fatimids and the Greeks. By 457 (= A.D.
1068) they were in possession of Georgia and Armenia, and had become a
very serious and pressing menace to the Byzantine Empire. A few years
later the Emperor Romanus IV. was totally defeated by them in 460 (=
A.D. 1071), and all Asia Minor lay open to the Turks, though the Saljuq
position there was insecure until they took Antioch from the Greeks.
Alp Arslan was succeeded by Malah Shah who, in the course of 467-477 (=
A.D. 1074-1084) established the Saljuq power in Asia Minor, and in 469
conquered Jerusalem from the Fatimids, so that practically the Saljuq
Sultan, theoretically the Commander-in-Chief serving under the Khalif of
Baghdad, was the master of all Western Asia. This brings us to the close
of the second period and to the end of the golden age of the Fatimids.
Meanwhile in the West the Normans, destined to be the protagonists of
the Saljuq Turks, were becoming a leading power in another way. In 1038
we find them serving in Sicily, in 1040 they were conquering Apulia, and
soon afterwards they began minor encroachments on the Byzantine Empire.
Their chief settlement, Normandy, dates from 911, and it is significant
that this was one year after the foundation of the Abbey of Cluny,
from which proceeded a religious reformation which found its warmest
supporters in the Normans. When Pope Leo IX. made an expedition against
the Normans in Apulia and was defeated by them, his greatest surprise
came in finding his victorious enemies ready to pay him a reverent
loyalty far beyond anything he had previously experienced. The recently
converted Normans were no less definite in their orthodoxy as Christians
than the recently converted Saljuqs in their orthodoxy as Muslims.
It is, no doubt, impossible to regard the Crusades as entirely religious
in their spirit and character, but it is equally impossible to ignore
the fact that religious motives played a very large part in their
history. We may venture to say that they commenced under the influence
of the Cluniac reformation, and that most of those who took part in the
First Crusade, if they had any regard for religion at all, accepted the
Cluniac standards: whilst the Second Crusade was still more definitely
associated with the Cistercian order, itself an after-math of the Cluniac
reformation. The attitude of the Latin clergy towards the Greek Church
was exactly the same as that of the Cistercian missionaries towards the
native Keltic clergy of Ireland a few years later: wherever religion
enters into the programme of the Crusaders it is always treated according
to Cluniac standards, and everything is disapproved which does not
conform to those standards. The Normans and Burgundians formed the most
loyal contingent of those who contended for Cluniac ideals, and they, the
Normans especially, formed the real nucleus of the First Crusade. The
Crusading movement cannot be separated from the Cluniac reformation.
In referring to the Cluniacs we do not confine the term to those who were
actually monks in the Abbey of Cluny, nor even to those in the priories
which were in obedience to Cluny, but extend it to all those portions of
the Latin Church which followed the leadership of Cluny in the way of
church reform and saw the ideal Christianity in the Cluniac programme, an
ideal of which we have the fullest expression in the writings of S. Peter
Damian. These reformers were loyal to the Papacy, but to an idealised
Papacy reconstructed on Cluniac lines; they were outspoken in their
criticism of the actual Papacy and its entourage as it existed in the
10th cent. Incidentally Rome ceased to be the chief place of pilgrimage,
not because there was any repugnance felt towards Rome or the Papal
court, but because, in conformity with the spirit of Cluny, a greater
emphasis was laid upon the suffering Christ, and thus greater prominence
was given to the sites connected with the Passion: thus Palestine tended
to become a “Holy Land,” and Jerusalem itself the chief object of the
pilgrim’s devotion. Thus, early in the 11th century, the thoughts of
the leading and most vigorous element in the Latin Church began to turn
towards Jerusalem and predisposed men to regard the liberation of the
holy sites of Palestine from infidel rule as a work of piety.
In 1074 Pope Gregory VII., himself a product of the Cluniac movement,
laid a programme of reform before a council assembled at Rome; the
liberation of Jerusalem did not actually figure in this programme, but
later in the same year (on Dec. 7) we find it expressed in a letter to
Henry IV. (cf. Gregor. Pp. VII. _Epist._ II. 31, in Jaffe: _Mon. Greg._,
pp. 14415, but a previous suggestion had been made by Silvester II. as
far back as 999). No doubt the news of the Saljuq advance into Asia
Minor had something to do with his proposal, the report of vast numbers
of “Christians living beyond the seas” slain by “the pagans” so that
the Christian community was reduced to nothing (id. p. 145), but the
chief point was that Gregory and his party looked at the world through
a Cluniac medium and so to them Palestine was the “Holy Land,” and it
was a terrible thought that the sacred sites of Christ’s passion were in
the hands of unbelievers. The violent storms aroused by the reforming
programme of 1074, however, prevented any action being taken in this
direction.
(iii) _Third Period. Fatimid decline._ (A.H. 469-564 = A.D. 1076-1168.)
When Urban II. became Pope in 1087 events had moved forward with
startling rapidity. In 1076 Jerusalem had fallen into the hands of the
Saljuqs, and the Byzantine Empire was practically deprived of all its
Asiatic possessions, so that both Egypt and Byzantium were at bay. In
this desperate crisis the Greeks made an appeal to the West, and this was
laid before two councils assembled in the year 1095, the one at Piacenza
in March, the other at Clermont-Ferrand in November, and from these
councils proceeded the First Crusade.
At the moment the three great powers in the Near East were the Byzantine
Empire, the Fatimid Khalifate, and the Saljuq Sultanate, but of these
the two former were on the defensive and steadily losing ground; the
Fatimids had just suffered the loss of Jerusalem, the Greeks had lost
North-West Syria and practically all of Asia Minor. The Saljuqs were the
leading military power and held the Khalifate of Baghdad absolutely in
subjection, but they already showed signs of decline, their empire was
beginning to be divided amongst provincial rulers known as _atabegs_,
and these were getting to be more or less independent of the central
authority: it was the old story of the Khalifate over again. Both in
Cairo and in Baghdad the real power was in the hands of the wazir or
prime minister.
In 1097 the First Crusade came east: its advent was hailed by Byzantium
and by the Fatimids, both believing that it would prove a check to the
Saljuqs. The Greeks were the first to be undeceived, and soon found
that the Crusaders were extremely undesirable neighbours. The Fatimids
were anxious to join in alliance with the Crusading forces but wanted
to recover Jerusalem. It was a purely religious motive which prevented
this,—the Crusaders were unwilling to leave the Holy Sepulchre in Muslim
hands.
So far as the history of Western Asia is concerned the Crusaders produced
very great results, but these were purely destructive in character. They
checked the Saljuqs and effectively broke their power, though that power
had already commenced its decline before the Crusaders’ arrival: but
this only made way for a new Kurdish power. The Crusades as a religious
war provoked an anti-Crusading movement, quite distinctly religious in
its character, on the Muslim side,—a Holy War to resist the champions of
the Cross. The first mover in this was Zengi atabeg of Mosul, and it was
continued by his son Nur ad-Din. In the employ of these atabegs of Mosul
was a Kurdish soldier named Ayyub who, at the death of Zengi in 541 (=
A.D. 1146) moved to Damascus, and eight years later became governor of
the city. From him were descended the Ayyubites, Shirkuh and his nephew
Salah ad-Din, the instruments by which the Fatimid Khalifate was finally
destroyed. It was not the rise of a new power but merely the development
of one of the minor local states formed from the disintegrating Saljuq
empire.
The immediate result of the Crusades lay in the formation of Latin states
in Palestine and Syria, at Jerusalem, Edessa, and Antioch, and in the
final exclusion of the Fatimids from Syria, but none of these states
had any stable foundation. Only in quite minor issues can we find any
permanent traces of the Crusaders’ presence in Asia. In the East their
memory lives as a legend of tyranny and religious intolerance, whilst a
few Arab tribes preserve a tradition of Crusading blood. In the West it
may be possible to argue that only the Carmelite Friars show any enduring
trace of the Crusades: almost every influence which has been traced to
the Crusades seems to have been due to intercourse between Muslim and
Christian in Spain, or to Frederick II. in Naples and Sicily,—though, of
course, it might be argued that Frederick himself was a product of the
Crusading age: yet it must be remembered that Frederick came more under
the influence of Jews and Muslims expelled from Spain by the intolerance
of the Muwahhid rulers.