Beginning of Fatimid decline
The height of Fatimid expansion to the east was reached in 1057–59, when a dissident general in Iraq changed sides and proclaimed the Fatimid caliph in Mosul and then, for a year, in Baghdad itself. The Fatimids were unable to provide support, however, and the general was driven out of Baghdad by the Seljuq Turks. This proved to be a turning point and the beginning of the decline of both Fatimid power and Ismāʿīlī influence.
Several reasons may be adduced for the failure of the Fatimid bid for Islamic leadership. One was their adoption and retention of a religious doctrine that was ultimately unacceptable to the Sunni majority. Fatimid Ismāʿīlism, as a theology, was remote from the central consensus of Islam, and with the Sunni revival of the 11th and 12th centuries its rejection became certain. The coming of the Crusaders indirectly sealed its fate, for in the great 12th-century contest between Islam and Christendom there was no room for dissension on the Muslim side.
In their ventures abroad, the Fatimids achieved many successes, the most notable being the conquest of Egypt itself. They suffered repeated setbacks, however, in Palestine and Syria where, in addition to local opponents, they also had to face major attacks from outside—by the Byzantines, the Turks, and then the European Crusaders. It was in Syria that the great Fatimid advance to the east was delayed and halted, and it was in Syria that a new power arose that in time destroyed them.
These troubles abroad no doubt fed, and were fed by, the growing discontent in Egypt. At first the caliphs retained full personal control of affairs, presiding over an essentially civilian government. The army’s importance increased, however, and factional differences arose among the Amazigh, Turkish, Sudanese, and Nubian troops. Fights between the different groups first became a factor during the reign of al-Ḥākim (reigned 996–1021), in whose time, partly because of his own highly eccentric behaviour, the personal authority and religious prestige of the caliph began to decline. His successors became little more than puppets in the hands of their viziers and their generals. During the long reign of al-Mustanṣir (reigned 1036–94) factional strife brought Egypt into a vicious circle of anarchy and tyranny, made worse by recurring famine and plague. The provinces, in east and west, were lost to local dynasts or invaders.
In 1073 an able soldier, Badr al-Jamālī, went to Cairo at the invitation of the caliph and seized power; in one night his officers rounded up the leading generals and officials and put them to death. He assumed the titles of commander of the armies, director of the missionaries, and vizier, symbolizing his control of the military, religious, and bureaucratic establishments; it is by the military title that he is usually known. Badr al-Jamālī restored order and, for a while, even brought some measure of prosperity. Egypt came under the rule of a military regime, headed by the commander of armies and maintained by his troops. The office became permanent; Badr was succeeded by his son and then by a series of military autocrats who kept the Fatimid caliphs in tutelage. The later commanders were not even Ismāʿīlīs.
The end of the Fatimid state
Badr and his successors saved the Fatimid state from collapse and postponed its end for nearly a century. Responding to the Seljuq challenge from the east, he pursued an active policy in Syria, Arabia, and elsewhere, using both religious and worldly weapons. In Syria, however, the armies of the Fatimids suffered repeated defeats, and in Arabia their following was reduced to insignificance. Badr’s son and successor al-Afḍal in effect renounced the claims of the Egyptian Fatimid dynasty to the universal caliphate.
On the death of al-Mustanṣir in 1094 it was al-Afḍal who chose the new caliph. Al-Mustanṣir had nominated his elder son, Nizār, who had been accepted by the Ismāʿīlī leaders. The younger son, Aḥmad, was a youth without allies, who would be entirely dependent on his sponsor. It was no doubt with this in mind that al-Afḍal married his sister to Aḥmad and, on al-Mustanṣir’s death, proclaimed his brother-in-law as caliph with the regnal name al-Mustaʿlī (reigned 1094–1101); in doing so, al-Afḍal split the sect from top to bottom.
Even in Egypt there was some opposition. In Persia, Iraq, and Central Asia the Ismāʿīlī mission, led by Ḥasan-e Ṣabbāḥ, refused to recognize the new caliph and broke off relations with the Fatimid authorities in Cairo. Ḥasan-e Ṣabbāḥ’s new Ismāʿīlī movement, known as the Nizārī Ismāʿīliyyah (commonly called the Assassins by its detractors), proclaimed Nizār and his descendants as rightful imāms and condemned the caliphs in Cairo as usurpers. Even those Ismāʿīlīs, chiefly in Yemen, who had accepted al-Mustaʿlī broke away in 1130 when al-Mustaʿlī’s son al-Āmir (reigned 1101–30) was murdered by the Assassins and was succeeded by his cousin al-Ḥāfiẓ (reigned 1130–49). Claiming that al-Āmir had left an infant son who was now the hidden imām, the Yemenis refused to recognize al-Ḥāfiẓ or his successors in Cairo.
The end of the dynasty came in 1171. The last four caliphs were no more than a local Egyptian dynasty, without power, influence, or hope. In 1171 the last caliph died. Saladin, the nominal vizier, had become the real master of Egypt, and the Fatimid caliphate, already dead as a religious and political force, was formally abolished.