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The Baqliyya was an extremist Shīʿī, probably Carmathian (Qarmaṭī), sect mentioned in Iraq in early ʿAbbāsid times. The Kitāb al-aghānī of Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī (d. 356/967) mentions a figure from the time of the caliph al-Manṣūr (r. 136–58/754–75), a boon companion of the heretic ʿAbdallāh b. Muʿāwiya, a certain al-Baqlī (whose name derived from Arabic baql, “vegetables, greens”), who held that “mankind is like the vegetable: when it dies it never comes back” (Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī 11:231). This may be a literary invention, perhaps based on ver…

Buluggīn (standard Ar., Buluqqīn) b. Zīrī b. Manād (d. 373/984), was the first Zīrid ruler of Ifrīqiya. For distinction in the service of the Fāṭimids as amīr of the Ṣanhāja Berbers against the Zanāta Berbers, he was named governor of Ifrīqiya by the Fāṭimid caliph al-Muʿizz li-Dīn Allāh (r. 341–65/953–75). As he was almost always on campaigns in the central Maghrib, he entrusted the administration of al-Qayrawān and eastern Ifrīqiya to a vice- amīr, ʿAbdallāh b. Muḥammad al-Kātib, son of an Aghlabid prince, whose power grew continuously. Buluggīn founded Algiers, Miliana (Milyāna…

Anūshtakīn al-Bukhārī al-Darzī, called also Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, was one of the first three propagandists of the doctrine of the Druze sect (al-Darziyya, al-Durūz, sing. Durzī), which is named for him. His name indicates that he was a Turk from Central Asia and a tailor (Pers. darzī) by profession; the common vocalisation of his name, Darazī, seems to be incorrect (van Ess, 64f.). According to the Christian author Yaḥyā al-Anṭākī (d. 458/1065) al-Darzī came to Cairo in 408/1017–8, but Yaḥyā sometimes confounds the different Druze protagonists al-Darzī, Ḥamz…

The Fāṭimids were an Islamic dynasty of Ismāʿīlī confession that ruled in North Africa (from 297/909) and Egypt (from 358/969) until 567/1171. The alleged descent of the dynasty from ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib and Muḥammad’s daughter Fāṭima has been called into question by contemporaries from the very beginning and cannot be proven. The dynasty issued from the family of the founders and early leaders of the Ismāʿīlī movement who came from Khūzistān and Iraq in the second half of the third/ninth century an…

The Dār al-Ḥikma (“House of Wisdom,” called also Dār al-ʿIlm, “House of Knowledge”), was an institution of learning in Cairo, founded in 395/1005 by the Fāṭimid caliph al-Ḥākim (r. 386–411/996–1021). It was located north of the Western (or Little) Palace, facing the still extant Aqmar Mosque. The books of the palace libraries were moved there, and public lectures were held by jurists, Qurʾān readers, specialists in prophetic traditions (ḥadīth), astronomers, grammarians, philologists, logicians, and physicians. In Ramaḍān 400/April-May 1010, al-Ḥākim incorporate…

Ḥamdān Qarmaṭ b. al-Ashʿath was the leader of the Qarmatian movement in the sawād (rural district) of Kufa. Al-Ṭabarī (3:2125) has Karmītah, which is supposed to mean “red-eyed.” The diminutive form Qarmāṭūya is used by al-Nawbakhtī and Niẓām al-Mulk. Originally a carrier (who transported goods on oxen) from the village of al-Dūr in the ṭassūj (subdistrict) of Furāt Bādaqlā (east of Kufa), he was converted to the early Ismāʿīlī movement by the dāʿī (propagandist) al-Ḥusayn al-Ahwāzī. The date 264/878 given for his conversion by a much later report may be approximate…

Aḥmad b. ʿAbd al-Malik Ibn ʿAṭṭāsh (d. 500/1107) was the son of the former Ismāʿīlī dāʿī in Isfahan. He ostensibly apostatised from the doctrine of his father and missionised secretly under the cover of a linen seller. He became a teacher and steward of the young male and female palace slaves in the castle of Shāhdiz, which the Saljūq sultan Malikshāh I (r. 465–85/1073–92) had built about eight kilometres south of Iṣfahān. During the conflict between Malikshāh’s sons Barkyāruq (r. 487–98/1094–1105) and Muḥamma…

ʿAbd al-Malik Ibn ʿAṭṭāsh (fl. fifth/eleventh century) was an Ismāʿīlī missionary (dāʿī) and mentor of Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ (r. 483–518/1090–1124 in Alamūt). Originally an adherent of Twelver Shīʿism, he converted later to Ismāʿīlī Shīʿism. He is said to have been arrested during the reign in Iran of Sulṭān Ṭūghril Beg (431–55/1040–63) but to have been released after feigning contrition. In Rayy, he became the son-in-law of the dāʿī Abū ʿAlī al-Naysābūrī. Ibn ʿAṭṭāsh acted as dāʿī in Iraq and later in Iṣfahān, where he held “wisdom sessions” (majālis al-ḥikma) in a “house of the mission” (dār …

ʿAbdallāh b. Aḥmad Ibn al-Sulaym al-Aswānī (fl. fourth/tenth century) was an Egyptian traveller. When Egypt was occupied by the Fāṭimid general Jawhar (d. 382/992) in 358/969, al-Aswānī was sent to establish contact with the Christian Nubian kingdoms south of the First Cataract of the Nile and to renew the bakṭ (from Latin pactum) of the year 31/652, by which Arabs and Nubians had agreed upon a peaceful exchange of goods. After his return, he composed a report for the Fāṭimid caliph al-ʿAzīz (365–86/975–96), of which al-Maqrīzī has preserved seve…

Abū Saʿīd al-Ḥasan b. Bahrām al-Jannābī (d. 300/913) founded the Ismāʿīlī Qarmaṭian communities on the Persian Gulf. He was of Persian origin, from the port of Jannāba (present-day Ganāva), on the Iranian coast. In the sawād (rural district) of Kufa, he married into a family that had been converted to the Ismāʿīlī daʿwa (mission), which was then headed by Ḥamdān Qarmaṭ and his brother-in-law Abū Muḥammad ʿAbdān (murdered 286/899). Abū Saʿīd was eventually won over to the daʿwa. Becoming a dāʿī (missionary) himself, he was initially active in his home region—Jannāba, Sīnīz, …

Abū Ṭāhir Sulaymān b. Abī Saʿīd al-Jannābī (d. 332/944) was the son and successor of Abū Saʿīd al-Jannābī, the founder of the Qarmaṭian community in al-Baḥrayn. Born in Ramaḍān 294/June–July 906, he was still a minor when his father was murdered in 300/913, and, with his five brothers, he remained under the tutelage of his uncle, the dāʿī (missionary) al-Ḥasan b. Sanbar. When he reached his majority, in Ramaḍān 310/December 922–January 923, he took over the leadership and soon terrorised the population of southern Iraq. Every year from 310 to 314/923 …

Ibn Zūlāq, Abū Muḥammad al-Ḥasan b. Ibrāhīm al-Laythī (306–86/919–96), was an Egyptian historian and the author of a number of biographical, historical, and topographical works on Egypt in the time of the Ikhshīdids (323–58/935–69) and early Fāṭimids (297–567/909–1171). These works, though almost entirely lost, underlie a good deal of subsequent historiography relating to this period. His continuation of Muḥammad b. Yūsuf al-Kindī’s (d. 350/961) Umarāʾ Miṣr (“The book of Egyptian governors”) ends in the year 302/915 and his additions to the same author’s Akhbār quḍāt Miṣr (“The …

Maʿadd al-Muʿizz li-Dīn Allāh (r. 341–65/953–75) was the fourth caliph of the Fāṭimid dynasty in Ifrīqiya. He acceded to the throne on 29 Shawwāl 341/19 March 953 at the age of 21, having been born on 11 Ramaḍān 319/26 September 931. One of the main sources on his personality is al-Nuʿmān’s (d. 363/974) Kitāb al-majālis wa-l-musāyarāt (“Audiences and companionable rides”), which in 292 episodes gives a detailed panorama of court life, ceremonial, religious disputes, family intrigues, foreign policy, and so forth. His first concern was to pacify the Awrās mountains, refuge of…

Al-Manṣūra (the victorious) is a town in Lower Egypt near Damietta (Dimyāṭ) and capital of the province (mudīriyya) of Daqahliyya. The town was founded in 616/1219 by the Ayyūbid sultan al-Malik al-Kāmil (r. 615–35/1218–38) as a camp fortified against the Crusaders, who had conquered Damietta in Shaʿbān 616/November 1219. Situated at the fork of the branches of the Nile near Damietta and Ushmūm Ṭannāḥ (present-day Ushmūm al-Rummān), the town dominated the two most important waterways of the eastern Nile Delta an…

The Qarmaṭians (Qarāmiṭa, sing. Qarmaṭī) were a subsect of the Ismāʿīlī Shīʿī branch of Islam. The name is derived from that of one of the earliest propagandists (dāʿī) of the sect in Lower Iraq, Ḥamdān b. al-Ashʿath, called Qarmaṭ, whose nickname was said to mean “short-legged, of short stature” in the local Aramaic dialect (Ibn al-Nadīm, 238). Other variants of the name are Qarmaṭūya (al-Nawbakhtī, 61) and Karmīta, said to mean “red-eyed” (al-Ṭabarī, 3:2125). The conversion of this former ox-driver by a wandering Ismāʿī…