66. THE FALL OF THE FATIMID CALIPHATE
Non-contemporary (c. 1200 C.E.) illumination depicting soldiers of the old Fāṭimid army, at the time of the conquest of Egypt.
Mourning an Autocrat
Manuel I Komnenos was one of Rhõmanía’s most extraordinary monarchs, and his legacy lived not only through his descendants who sat upon the throne in Constantinople, but also in his achievements. History decreed that his various military successes in Armenia, in Cilicia, in Syria and Palestine, in Sicily and in Hungary, would be overshadowed by his ultimately failed attempts of conquering Egypt, and this is demonstrated by the fact that, in spite of the various triumphal titles that he accumulated to his person, reviving the ancient Roman practice of using the names of the vanquished nations, the nonexistence of the name
Aegyptiacus [1] would haunt and humiliate his dynasty for generations to come, even more so after the Frankish conquest a few decades later. The fact that none of his predecessors since the reign of Heraclius, who witnessed the first Arabian conquests, had genuinely attempted to reconquer Egypt, and neither would Manuel’s immediate successors in the throne, not only demonstrates that no one saw the possibility of the restoration of imperial rule in the Nile as feasible, but also authorizes a conscientious Historian to criticize the whole enterprise as a folly, driven not by Rhõmanía’s necessities, but by the Basileus’ personal ambition and thirst for glory. The late Basileus had sought to capitalize in the evident weakness of the Fāṭimids, but, in retrospect, the task was nothing short of herculean, and wasted useful resources that might have been useful to the well-being of the Empire.
Be as it may, Manuel was much celebrated in his lifetime and his portrait was given to posterity with various endearing encomiums by the historians of his age, who described him as a magnificent monarch, as a valiant knight and as a pious devotee.
In diplomacy, he had been more successful, having obtained the recognition of his suzerainty by Rhõmanía’s neighbors, from the Hungarians, Croatians, and Serbians to the Armenians and the Turkomans, and fostered alliances with the great nations of the age by marriage and treaty, from Germany to Georgia, and from Russia to France, and everywhere he had been acknowledged as a powerful and dynamic ruler, even by the Roman Pope. Although the finances of the state had been compromised by the long campaigns and by extensive warfare, overall the economic situation of the themata was positive; taxation had not been raised, and whatever excesses of the provincial aristocracy might be perpetrated were either prevented or repressed by the law and by justice. And while his impetuous attempts of incorporating the Frankish “Crusadist” ideology to his own purpose was met with stern and determined resistance by the churchmen, late in his reign, he had cultivated good relations with the Church, and the Patriarchs of Constantinople remained allies to the Crown.
Upon his death, he was succeeded peacefully by his eldest son,
Alexios, who had long since been used to the honorific of
Despotes, but now emphasized the use of the ever-significant
Porphyrogénnētos - considering that he was born only a few months after Manuel was crowned Emperor [in 1155 A.D.]. Manuel’s other male sons,
Andronikos and
Alexander, both having only recently become adults, made no claim to the throne, and neither did the other nobles, most of whom, having been associated to the Komnenoi dynasty by marriage and happily obliging for the largesse, gifts and honors distributed by the new autocrat, also desired a peaceful transfer of power. And then, just as it had happened to himself, Alexios’ firstborn son was born not long after his accession, and was also baptized as Alexios, considering that the newly crowned Basileus regarded the AIMA prophecy as cyclical, meaning that his successor’s name had to begin with the letter “A” as well
[2].
Alexios had been associated with the imperial administration from young age, and, if on one hand he apparently lacked the same martial spirit of his father, his grandfather and his great-grandfather, he knew nonetheless that military victory was necessary to safeguard and to adorn his own reign, and thus he did not seek to make peace with the Ismaelites for the time being. One important extant document we have from the period is a missive written by
Hugh Eteriano [It. Ugo Eteriano] in Alexios’ name to the Duke of Ancona in which the Emperor affirms his intention of giving quarters to the Anconitan merchants to live and work in the port-metropolis of Alexandria. The project, however, would not be fulfilled in the years after his accession.
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In late January 1176 A.D., upon Manuel’s last breath, the upper-echelon officers who witnessed his passing sought to withhold the information about his passing from the soldiery and from the auxiliary armies.
It was a useless effort. The Emperor, in fostering the sublime and quasi-divine presence in his contact with the lowly subjects, made his very absence all too evident. In scantily less than three days after his passing, the rumors abounded through all the peoples involved in the campaign about Manuel’s untimely death, and the high officialdom, themselves paralyzed by the abrupt fatality, could do little to nothing to prevent the predictable outcomes: confusion from the lack of orders and miscommunication from across the spread of rumors in various languages immediately provoked hysteria in the soldiery and inspired insubordination and desertions.
Soon enough, a dispute arose between the officers, aggravating the crisis even more:
John Doukas Komnenos claimed the leadership of the army, but was contested by
Megas Primikērios Andronikos Komnenos and his son John Komnenos the Younger.
By the time the dispute was solved the army was in complete disarray, having failed to take Cairo by storm. Even if they could scantily hope to conquer the well-fortified Egyptian capital, and neither to face the more numerous Fatimid army in the field of battle, John Doukas Komnenos refused to abandon the siege, arguing that they ought to avenge the deceased Basileus, whatever high might be the cost. The decision proved to be unpopular and then, suffering through constant harassment of the Saracens, the remaining officers orchestrated a coup and demoted John Doukas Komnenos from leadership, replacing him for
Megas Primikērios Andronikos. The new general detained John Doukas and ordered the siege to be lifted immediately.
Using diplomatic parleys as an strategic subterfuge, he sought to keep the Fatimid army at bay while he could organize the retreat. In spite of enjoying a far larger numerical superiority, the Fatimids did not attempt to engage in a pitched battle nor did they effectively cut off the possible venues for a retreat of the Christian army. The Fatimid army, comprised by the
Rayhāniyya [the "Sudanese" regiment] and the
Juyūshiyya (the "Armenian" regiment), led by the battle-untested
Grand Vizier Husayn ibn Abu ʾl-Hayjā, assisted by a recently arrived allied army of Shia Yemenis under
Yāsir bin Bilāl - himself a Vizier of the
Zurayid Emir Abi Saud bin Imran Muhammad bin Saba [3], likely feared that the Christians, if encircled and desperate, could very well attempt to take Cairo by storm or, even worse, perpetrate atrocities in the sacred grounds of the Caliphal palace. It seems that Husayn ibn Abu ʾl-Hayjā, indecisive about the course of action, simply humored the Rhõmaîon embassies over the course of several days, while Andronikos’ army broke off the camp and marched northward.
The Fatimids, however, refused to acquiesce to a truce, and remained battle-ready.
Indeed, in his path to Bilbeis, Andronikos’ army was constantly harassed and assaulted in its weakest elements by the Ismaelites.
Andronikos Komnenos’ Anabasis
Andronikos knew that the expeditionary army could only survive if they returned to Damietta, whose outlying region had been deftly fortified.
In Bilbeis, however, he was forced to give battle to the Caliphal army. His rearguard secured by the citadel-city itself, he pivoted the army due south to face the oncoming Egyptian men-at-arms. The combined Rhõmaîon army, with their associated auxiliaries and mercenaries, was superior in experience and organization, but their individual soldiers were demoralized, famished and struggling with the very epidemic of fever that had reaped their monarch’s life. The Ismaelite army consisted in the crack regiments of heavy infantry and archers (generally of Sudanese, Armenians and Syrians) and heavy and archer cavalry (mostly Turks and Bedouins), assisted by light infantry and cavalry and other divisions. The battle concluded in a tactical victory to the Christians, who successfully preserved their position in Bilbeis, but the engagement was impressively violent, involving wanton use of Greek fire and naphtha weapons against the infantry formations, resulting in hundreds of men immolated in unbearable agony. John Kinnamos, who was an eye-witness of the engagement, now attached to the administrative retinue of Andronikos Komnenos, describes the battle in grisly details in an eerie narrative that emulates the scenes of Hell.
The hard-won victory, however, gave the Christians only a brief respite, because the Fatimids did not retreat; on the contrary, they remained afield, still holding numerical advantage. The
Megas Primikērios knew that the only hope for salvation was to abandon Bilbeis and to go back all the way to Damietta, which had been fortified. Chronos, however, was not seemingly acting in their favor. Desertion of the mercenaries was rife, and disease, from camp fever to malaria, was rampant among the soldiery.
Two strokes of luck saved the Christians, after all.
Firstly, in Fustat, the collective social climate of hysteria and apprehensiveness provoked a riot against perceived enemies of the state, such as Sunnis and Copts. Secondly, and even worse, we see that the treacherous
Emir Kanz al-Dawla, established in Aswan, had brought Makurian raiders from Dongola to serve as mercenaries to attack the provincial governors of Upper Egypt still loyal to the Caliphate, and, after sacking and occupying Qus, he marched against the fortified city of Akhmim, while his tribesmen, taking advantage of the lack of organized defenses, made themselves the masters of the oases of Kharga and Dakhla, which, despite fairly isolated, were inhabited by families of prosperous merchants and served as entrepots of the Saharan trade. Both of these events, which happened between February and May 1176 A.D., forced the Caliphal army to give halt to the pursuit of Andronikos’ host and to face these threats.
Andronikos attempted to win over to his cause the deposed Vizier
al-Malik al-Ghazi - who was still biding his time in Alexandria the unraveling of the war between the Rhõmaîoi and the Caliphal government - promising to surrender Bilbeis to him. Al-Malik al-Ghazi, however, was no fool, and knew that it was far more useful to him that the Christians and the Ismaelites exsanguinated themselves in another campaign. His condition was that the Rhõmaîoi evacuated Egypt, surrendering both Bilbeis and Damietta and all other captured cities to him, but to this Andronikos could not answer favorably.
The
Megas Primikērios devised an alternative, more desperate strategy: he would retreat back all the way to Damietta, and secure this small stretch of northeastern Egypt until the reinforcements from Constantinople came; but he would devastate the whole land between Bilbeis and Damietta, so as to deny to the Egyptians themselves much needed foodstuff and manpower when they proceed to march against Damietta.
This reverse scorched earth campaign lasted only a couple months in the middle of 1176 A.D. and was of limited geographical scope, but it resulted in widespread destruction of rural settlements and in substantial human casualties.
John Kinnamos says that Andronikos ordered the Pecheneg, Cuman and Turkish horsemen under his purview “to live and walk in the manner of the basest of animals, of jackals and wolves, to extirpate the soulless and godless Saracens and to make the earth black with cinders”. And this they did, indulging in every type of atrocity against the hapless and mostly undefended Egyptians, indiscriminately against Muslims, Jews and Christians. The historian
Usamah ibn Mundiqh, who at the time was living in Medina, far more sympathetic to the plight of the Muslims, remarks in his chronicle that:
“Egypt, already a land of veritable ancient ruins and buried nations, saw new ruins to appear and another nation to be buried”. The violence appalled both the Ismaelites and the Egyptian Coptic populations, represented by the Patriarch of Alexandria, who supposedly died of heart-break once he heard about the heinous campaign of the Rhõmaîoi. In the end, Andronikos’ strategy was successful: the Caliphal army became much less concerned with impeding their retreat than with facing these swarming bands of horse-mounted marauders, whose attacks they could only combat by employing their own cavalry and by detaching small mobile units, but to no avail.
Infuriated by the act, the Caliphal army, led by the Vizier, only saw their resolve strengthened to destroy the Christian invading army, and thus, once the summer season ended, they, having suppressed the riot in Fustat - but yet still to suppress the
Banu Kanz in Qus and Aswan - came in full force to besiege Damietta.
Of the Siege of Damietta
In November 1176 A.D., Andronikos, preparing for the inevitable siege, had been reinforced by five hundred men from the Catepanate of Syria and from Cyprus, though he awaited for even more reinforcements still, believing he lacked enough men to adequately defend the port. Then, before they even received the news about the approach of the Caliphal army, the Franks, here including the Hungarians, and the Armenians staged another mutiny. Their leaders, notably
Robert of Emèse,
Ampud of Csánad and
Thomas of Tarsus, all argued that they had given their oaths personally to Emperor Manuel, and that it had thus expired by his untimely passing, and that they had been released from their oaths. Faced with threats of death and all sorts of brutal reprisals by the
Megas Primmikērios, they sustained their rebellion and forced him to acquiesce, and before the middle of the month they departed to Acre, transported by Genoese galleys.
Worse even was the desertion of not a few Cuman and Turkoman warbands, who, of more adventurous disposition, claimed their respective shares of booty and departed as well. Andronikos attempted to challenged them by force of arms, but the effort was useless and counterproductive; his own men were demoralized and dispirited. The prospect of a long siege instilled their hearts with fear. So he simply desisted and made no opposition to the barbarian mercenaries. Only some of these Cumans and Turkomans did find their way back to the confines of Asia from whence they came; but most of them, of more adventurous disposition, actually remained at large in the regions of Sharqia and Gharbia, forming a swarm-like band of bandits and raiders based off a cluster of towns near Bilbeis.
Left to the
Megas Primmikērios were the Rhõmaîon soldiers, with Syrian and Turcopole conscripts, some Turkoman mercenaries and the Serbian soldiers under Prvoslav, son of Tihomir, who was a hostage in the Constantinopolitan court.
To many of the Rhõmaîoi soldiers, to defend Damietta, according to John Kinnamos, was an impossible venture, but Andronikos Komnenos, driven by a heroic devotion to his cause, sustained the siege. He had expected the Ismaelites in 1176 still, but they awaited for the spring of 1177 to make the move, and finally Damietta was besieged.
The siege of Damietta lasted for various months, only because the Christians held absolute mastery over the sea, and thus could be replenished by ships coming from Cyprus, Greece and Anatolia, but, in time, it became impossible to face the Fatimid onslaught.
Realizing that it would be useless to starve them into submission, the Muslims made good use of their numerical superiority, having conscripted thousands and thousands of commoners to participate in the operations. Every sortie and every defense of the battlements were, to the Christians, pyrrhic victories; the reinforcements they expected from Constantinople would never come. Once again, their greatest enemies were not only the besiegers, but demoralization, exhaustion, deprivation and disease - the latest one aggravated by the fact that the Ismaelites constantly catapulted pestilent mortal remains inside the city to spread foul miasmas. Andronikos had had the means to use Greek Fire as a desperate defensive measure only in the first month of the siege, before even this resource was exhausted, but the Egyptians constantly used
naphtha weapons, which, even if in smaller scope of destruction, were nonetheless an important piece in the engagement.
In the height of summer, fearing that the next assault of the Saracens would be the final, the
Megas Primmikērios finally decided to abandon the siege. He had provided for five Anconitan galleys to assist in the evacuation of his retainers and the soldiers, but many others were compelled to stay, so as to avoid suspicion from the besiegers, and to secure the town’s defenses in its last effort. Afterwards, they left by sea, carrying all the booty and pillage, and went to Cyprus.
Uncertain of what would be the reaction of the new Emperor, Alexios, when the news about the fall of Damietta arrived in the capital, Andronikos decided to await in Nicosia, and there they remained for months, enjoying the accumulated booty, by the virtue of which many lowly men had become rich from night to day. His fears were apparently unfounded: the new Emperor, instead of chastising or punishing him for the desertion, actually welcomed him in Constantinople with the honors due to the a war hero, and he was afterwards granted the governorship of Macedonia, but would in fact remain active in the imperial court in the Bosporus. It is impossible to say if Alexios' consideration to his cousin was genuine or if he, having been recently elevated, was simply complying to the established precedent of the Komnenoi Emperors of favoring and patronizing their own family members, though the fact that Andronikos would never more be given a significant military command, instead bestowing his favoritism towards the Axouches, the Doukai and the Hethoumids of Cilicia, seems to demonstrate that the new Basileus held the
Megas Primmikērios responsible for the loss of the short-lived Exarchate of Egypt. Or perhaps he simply did not trust Andronikos, who, famed for his good looks and charismatic persuasion, was a potential contender to the imperial throne. In any event, this veiled fall from grace fed into the
Megas Primmikērios' resentment.
Meanwhile, in Damietta, the city finally fell in August 1177 A.D., and its remaining garrison men were slain to the last man and crucified near the Mediterranean shore.
Likely fearful of another attempt of amphibious assault by cross-bearing assailants, the Grand Vizier ordered the destruction of the harbor, and of the towns’ defenses, leaving only the towers and the fort which had been constructed by Manuel Komnenos in the beginning of the war, further to the south of the city’s walls, which became appropriately known as
Qalat ar-Rumi [5].
The expulsion of the Christians, for the second time, was regarded as an undeniable triumph, but it did actually very little to save the ailing Caliphal regime. It was in fact a hollow victory, one that demanded a substantial amount of human casualties to be obtained, and it did not prevent the action of other enemies of the state: the Mamluks in Alexandria, the Banu Kanz in Upper Egypt, the Berber raiders in the western deserts, and the Cuman and Turkoman bandits who were rampaging in Gharbia and in Sharqia.
Now, it was during the siege of Damietta that the determined Mamluk warlord, al-Malik al-Ghazi, hitherto restive in Alexandria, made his own move. With it, he intended to topple the decadent Caliphate once and for all.
Of the Capture of Cairo by the Mamluks
It is evident that, in 1177 A.D., when al-Malik marched against the capital of Egypt, he had long since abandoned any prospect of being reinstated as Grand Vizier, as he now desired to install himself as the reigning monarch. By then, he styled himself with lofty victory titles commonly used by the Caliphs, such as “King of Kings” [Ar.
Malik al-Muluk] and “Emir of Emirs” [Ar.
Amīr al-Umarā] - even though he did not adopt the title of Imam, which, being of religious nature, still seemed reserved to the actual successors of the Prophet.
To ensure the success of his own play for power, the former Vizier reached out to his former adversary,
Abū Ḥafṣ ʿUmar ibn Yahya, the
Sheik of Ifriqyia, and a vassal to the Almohad Caliph, for an alliance. Abū Ḥafṣ enjoyed a quasi-independent autonomy, as did his own men, whose tribal allegiances were stronger than the superior bond to the Moroccan Caliph - who, at the time was campaigning in distant al-Andalus - and he accepted to join al-Malik’s campaign in return for tribute and a share of plunder.
Al-Malik al-Ghazi ignored Damietta for the time being and made his way directly to Cairo, marching along the Canopic course of the Nile. His march was so impressively quick that contemporary sources attributed to him the sobriquet of “Great Panther”. In the span of a few days, his whole army, having come from Alexandria, had already crossed the Nile and put Cairo to siege. The palace-city, well guarded by a large bodyguard corps comprising various groups, from Sudanese and Nubians to Armenians and Yemenis, fell shortly after the beginning of the siege due to the agency of treacherous elements inside the court. Disgruntled and disaffected with the shadowy rule of the eunuchs, the guardsmen of the palace opened the gates to the besieging army and immediately proceeded to slay the eunuchs, including their minister
Mu’tamin al-Khilāfa, who was tortured to death.
The capture of Cairo could have very well signified al-Malik’s ultimate victory in this long war, because he could make the Caliph himself his own prisoner. However, after whole days scouring the inner sanctum of the palace, the Mamluks failed to encounter
Caliph al-ʿĀḍid. Under torture, one of his former concubines confessed that the Caliph and his sons had, in the day before the fall of Cairo, been spirited away from the palace disguised as slave women by Yemeni soldiers loyal to Yāsir bin Bilāl.
This abduction, which surprised even the Grand Vizier Husayn, was carefully orchestrated by the Zurayid Emir, who, predicting the inevitable collapse of the rightful Caliphate, acted to save the life and to preserve the lineage of the man that he considered to be the genuine successor of Muhammad. Caliph al-ʿĀḍid had, before the fall of Cairo, been escorted the Red Sea coast and ferried in a fishing boat to the port-town of ‘Aydhab, from whence he was transported across the sea to Aden in Yemen.
Righteous purposes notwithstanding, the Zurayids did not waste the opportunity of taking advantage of the situation; shortly after his arrival, Caliph al-ʿĀḍid and his sons Da’ud and Sulayman were compelled to marry Ibn Saba’s daughters and sisters, and their respective male sons would later be regarded as the successors of the Caliphal lineage, with other claimants relegated to obscurity.
Still active in Egypt, Yāsir ibn Bilāl, after leaving Cairo, occupied the two main ports of the Red Sea to the Zurayids without any resistance. Al-Qusayr [modern
El-Qoseir] and ‘Aydhab would then be used as bases to raid the nearby villages and merchant ships, further weakening whatever remnant was left of the Caliphal government.
Of the Collapse of the Caliphal Rule in Egypt
Regardless of his triumph, al-Malik al-Ghazi would still have to contend with the Caliphal army.
As the “Great Panther” prepared to face the Rayhāniyya and Juyūshiyya once and for all, he was surprised by another wave of violent riots by the overcrowded and distressed populace of Fustat. The inhabitants were suffering with chronic famine and the war and instability severely impoverished them. In spite of their general apathy towards the political questions - the population could hardly be expected to be anything less than indifferent towards the Fatimid Caliphs, whose reclusiveness had been the norm for the better part of a century -, they came to actively despise the self-proclaimed Mamluk warlord, seen as a corrupt usurper and despised for being a freedman. The enraged civilians were no match, however, to the seasoned and well-armed slave soldiers, and thus the insurgence was rapidly quenched. However, it happened that precisely during the parade to commemorate his victory, in the very apex of his fortunes and prestige, al-Malik al-Ghazi was ignominiously slain. Mounted in his Kipchak steed, even surrounded by his guardsmen, he was felled by an assailant who surprised him from above, having jumped from a rooftop. He fell hard from his horse, the throat trespassed by a small dagger. The perpetrator was then killed in the very spot, eviscerated and hacked to pieces by spears. His personal identity was never discovered, but it was all but evident that he was one of the
Nizari Assassins [4]; the causes of the crime are impossible to ascertain, but it seems that they had become inimical to him once he revealed himself an enemy of the Caliph.
The foul assassination of the Emir of Emirs, in the view of his contemporaries such as Usamah ibn Mundiqh and of later historians, put to death the last hope for a genuine revival of the political and military strength of the Caliphate, because his immediate successors would fail to prevent the collapse of the realm into anarchy.
On the other hand, the kidnapping of Caliph al-ʿĀḍid and of his immediate family by the Yemenis had removed the very final figment of ceremonial conformation that still existed to guide the fragilized state apparatus and the warring statesmen, considering that, over the last hundred years, the physical presence of the Caliph in Cairo as a de facto hostage to the multitude of tyrants that had succeeded Badr al-Jamali had been a source of legitimacy to the viziers and ministers that commanded the palace and the government in his very name. Now, none of them held any better or more satisfiable claim to power; they were preying upon one another, and upon the hapless population of Lower Egypt, like jackals, drooling and gnawing for the pieces of a cadaveric kingdom.
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To succeed al-Malik al-Ghazi, his sons, who had been born free - and were thus not ghilman - attempted to claim the position, but they were immediately sidelined and then quietly murdered by his second-in-command, another Turkoman born as Tegin al-Sivasri, but who became better known by the honorifics which he assumed, also as King of Kings and Emir of Emirs, al-Azhar and al-Mansour [5] [Latinized Lalazarus Almanzor]. Like his predecessor, al-Azhar laid a claim to the whole of Egypt and thus made war against the remnant of the Caliphal army and against the other rivals such as the Yemeni raiders and the Banu Kanz in Aswan.
His first act, however, was to turn against al-Malik’s latest ally Sheik Abū Ḥafṣ, and thus the Mamluks once again made war against the Berbers. The alliance with their former enemies, who were hated with passion, had been al-Malik’s most unpopular act during his tenure, and al-Azhar, who knew and shared of this hostile sentiment, happily obliged to his men upon ascension to power by attacking the Berber encampment constructed near Fustat during the dark of night. Sheik Abū Ḥafṣ, who distrusted the Ismaelites, and correctly predicting that al-Azhar was making a fool of him, was prepared and, before the assault, he had abandoned the camp and quickly ventured into the desert. Believing that al-Azhar would not follow pursuit, aware that the Rayhāniyya and Juyūshiyya under Grand Vizier Husayn were approaching Fustat, the Berbers established themselves in the oasis of Bahariya, where they erected a fortress to serve as a headquarters.
Despite their strong position holding Alexandria, Fustat and Cairo, which in turn allowed them to secure the dominion over the prosperous and populous center of Egypt, from Gizeh to Fayyum, after the death of al-Malik, the Mamluks saw their hold over the more distant provinces dissipate entirely. Even worse to them, and to the stability of the realm, was the fact that al-Azhar al-Mansour launched yet another persecution against the citizens of those cities, under the pretext of purging the Assassins from Egypt, but which targeted mainly the rich merchants and the aristocrats, whose properties were unscrupulously confiscated upon their grisly executions.
Realizing that Husayn was unwilling to commit to a pitched battle, having become entrenched with his army in Bilbeis, al-Azhar made the first move and attacked them, but his assault was unsuccessful. Once again, the remnant of the Caliphal army capitalized on its far superior numerical advantage, while the Mamluks, in spite of their proficiency in battle, had trouble to replenish whatever losses they suffered, and had to rely in conscripts to bolster their numbers. The Emir of Emirs, after the failed attack on Bilbeis, reached to the leaders of the Cumans and Turkomans who had come to Egypt under the payroll of the Rhõmaîoi and hired them as mercenaries, a decision that proved to be as unpopular as that of his predecessors in enlisting the Berbers, because these bandoliers were undisciplined and hostile to everyone, and had wrought immense suffering in the Egyptian peasantry, whom the Mamluks were supposedly defending.
As it happened, these events inspired the rebellion of Faris Nasir ad-Din ibn Umar in 1178 A.D., centered in Ushmunayn [ancient Hermopolis] and al-Bahnasa. Unfortunately to Historians, he is an obscure character of which we know only that he, originated from a wealthy aristocratic family of Bedouin descent, had been placed as governor of the region by al-Malik al-Ghazi in expectation of the financial support from the Egyptian nobility, to whom Nasir ad-Din was well connected. He, however, had an ambition of his own, and thus, proclaiming himself Malik, he proclaimed his allegiance firstly to Husayn, and then to Kanz al-Dawla. Later in that year, a Bedouin army with Christian Makurian mercenaries defeated a detachment of Cumans sent by al-Azhar to retake al-Bahnasa, and thus Kanz al-Dawla unexpectedly became the master of the whole of Upper Egypt, from Aswan in the border of the realm to al-Bahnasa, which lay in just a couple days’ march to Fustat.
In Cyrenaica, the Sunni Berbers affiliated to the Almohads once again began to prey upon the rural communities, to disrupt the already deserted trade routes, and to attempt to take the coastal cities, which had been left mostly undefended by the Mamluks. Sheik Abū Ḥafṣ in early 1179 A.D. succeeded in capturing Barqa for the second time, thus securing the western littoral of Egypt to the inimical Caliphate.
So, as it came to pass, in the [Christian] year of 1179, the formerly proud and prosperous Shia Caliphate finally collapsed under the weight of its own decadence and the land, which had been languishing under the tyranny of self-serving warmongers for more than a century, was now wholly dilacerated. The fairer part of the realm was engulfed by war, pestilence and famine, and the exhaustion of the belligerents impeded one another to obtain a decisive triumph, necessary to restore stability and peace to the land, hence perpetuating this miserable state of warlordism.
This barbarous anarchy would last until the end of the decade of 1180 A.D., when the cross-bearing armies of the *Third Crusade would come to vanquish the final remnants of the Ismaelite monarchy and to restore the Christian domination in Egypt after half a millennium of Islamic rule.
In the next installment: In the Frankish Levant, Robert of Emèse will play his ace against Prince Raymond III and make a bid for a greater ambition.
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Notes:
[1] Manuel historically did resurrect the defunct practice of using imperial victory titles, five hundred years after Heraclius, who had been the latest one to adopt them; and then Manuel was the last Roman Emperor to do so. In a 1166 inscription, he referred to himself as Isauricus, Cilicius, Armenicus, Dalmaticus, Ugricus, Bosniacus, Chrobaticus, Lazicus, Ibericus, Bulgaricus, Serbicus, Zikhicus, Azaricus, Gothicus, in celebration of his campaigns. ITTL, had he successfully conquered Egypt, he would add Aegyptiacus to the roster. This is an interesting tidbit from our History which demonstrates Manuel's conscious celebration and imitation of the classics as an element of legitimacy to the Byzantine claim to the preeminence in Christendom.
[2] Here I'll render to the Wikipedia's description because it is fairly concise and useful. The AIMA prophecy “[it] claimed to foretell that the initial letters of the names of the emperors of the Komnenos dynasty would spell aima (αἶμα), the Greek word for "blood". The emperors of the dynasty had been, in order, Alexios I Komnenos (r. 1081–1118) (alpha), Ioannes II Komnenos (r. 1118–1143) (iota), and Manuel I (mu) (whose succession was unexpected since he was the fourth son of Ioannes). (...) Manuel also gave the name to at least one and perhaps two of his own illegitimate sons.”
[3] The Zurayids and the Hamdanids are historical Shia/Ismaili Yemeni dynasties which prospered during this timeframe. IOTL, both of them were deposed by Saladin during the 1170s and the whole of Yemen was annexed to the Ayyubid Sultanate (whose existence here, however, has been entirely butterflied). ITTL, as foreshadowed in the chapter, they will thrive as the new center of Shia Islam after the fall of the Fatimids, and will likely play a more relevant role as preservers of the Fatimid/Egyptian culture in south Arabia.
[4] The Assassins are much less relevant in this TL in comparison to OTL because they never quite established a secure holdout in Syria, even though they remained very much active in northern Persia and Azerbaijan, where they are still a thorn in the side of the Seljuks as well as in the Sinai. Whereas historically they took advantage of the chaotic patchwork of conflict in Syria to entrench themselves firstly in Aleppo, then in Masyaf, in this alternate timeline they were thwarted from doing so by the early annexation of northwestern Syria to the Crusader State, and by the conquest of Aleppo during the *Second Crusade by the Byzantines. I figure that they still played their usual assassination shenanigans over the decades, but, since they are more active in Iraq and Persia, their actions went off-screen. In Chapter 49 I give a briefing about their origins and their role in Fatimid Egypt.
[5] Qalat ar-Rumi means literally the Castle of the Romans.
[6] al-Azhar means “the shining” or “the radiant one”, and al-Mansour means “the victorious one”.
Author Comment: The narrative leading to the current Chapter was conceived and modified many times before I decided for this final version. Even then, I have some doubts sometimes, which, I think, is understandable considering the scope of the TL. One constant has been the concept of Egypt being conquered in the course of the Third Crusade, after a long period of decline and internecine warfare. I don’t believe that, before that, the Franks had the manpower nor the resources to topple the Fatimid Caliphate. So I had to devise, from a narrative POV, a way to weaken it enough, from a military standpoint so that it can be liable to a foreign conquest. Manuel’s wars played this card well, even though I recognize the merit of the criticism not a few readers raised about the unfolding of events, and the fact that both of his expeditions failed due to completely unforeseen events: the appearance of the Almohads and later Manuel’s own death. On the other hand, I think that, in hindsight, the narrative, albeit fictional, is coherent with the character and the aspirations of Manuel Komnenos. I tried to portray his ambitious attempt of conquering Egypt in a plausible way according to the image I have of his persona. Then, again, this TL is focused on the Crusades, and thus I made the conquest of Egypt ending as an “alternate Myriokephalon” of sorts.
For those who are familiar with OTL, you'll realize that the fall of the Fatimids occurred in roughly the same period that it historically did - al-Adid here being also the last Caliph to reign in Egypt - but the circumstances of this collapse are very much different, and come to demonstrate how far the alliance between the Byzantines and the Franks could have achieved, IMHO.
