The Assassins by Bernard Lewis Read Free Book Online Page B

heartlands of Islam, where alone they could hope to achieve their purpose of ousting the Sunni Abbasid Caliphs and establishing themselves as sole heads of all Islam. Ismaili agents and missionaries were active in all the Sunni lands; Fatimid armies prepared in Tunisia for the conquest of Egypt - the first step on the road to the Empire of the East.
In 969 this first step was duly completed. Fatimid troops conquered the Nile valley, and were soon advancing across Sinai into Palestine and Southern Syria. Near Fustat, the old seat of government, the Fatimid leaders built a new city, called Cairo, as the capital of their Empire, and a new mosque-university, called al-Azhar, as the citadel of their faith. The Caliph, al-Mu'izz, moved from Tunisia to his new residence, where his descendants reigned for the next two hundred years.
The Ismaili challenge to the old order was now closer and stronger, and was maintained by a great power - for a while the greatest in the Islamic world. The Fatimid Empire at its peak included Egypt, Syria, North Africa, Sicily, the Red Sea coast of Africa, the Yemen and the Hijaz in Arabia, with the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. In addition the Fatimid Caliph controlled a vast network of dais and commanded the allegiance of countless followers in the lands still subject to the Sunni rulers of the East. In the great colleges of Cairo, scholars and teachers elaborated the doctrines of the Ismaili faith and trained missionaries to preach them to the unconverted at home and abroad. One of their main areas of activity was Persia and Central Asia, from which many aspirers after the truth found their way to Cairo, and to which in due course they returned as skilled exponents of the Ismaili message. Outstanding among them was the philosopher and poet Nasir-i Khusraw. Converted during a visit to Egypt in 1046, he returned to preach Ismailism in the eastern lands, where he exercised a powerful influence.
The Sunni response was at first limited and ineffectual - security measures against the dais, and political warfare against the Fatimids, who in a manifesto published in Baghdad in iou i were accused, somewhat unconvincingly, of not being Fatimids at all, but descendants of a disreputable impostor.

Yet, despite this imposing strength, and a great effort of political, religious and economic warfare against the Abbasid Caliphate, the Fatimid challenge failed. The Abbasid Caliphate survived; Sunni Islam recovered and triumphed - and the Fatimid Caliphs successively lost their Empire, their authority and their following.
Part of the reason for this failure must be sought in events in the East, where great changes were taking place. The coming of the Turkish peoples interrupted the political fragmentation of South West Asia, and for a while restored to the lands of the Sunni Caliphate the unity and stability which they had lost. The Turkish conquerors were new converts, earnest, loyal, and orthodox; they were imbued with a strong sense of their duty to Islam, and of their responsibility, as the new protectors of the Caliph and masters of the Muslim world, to sustain and defend it against internal and external dangers. This duty they discharged to the full. Turkish rulers and Turkish soldiers provided the political and military strength and skill to withstand, contain, and repel the two great dangers that threatened Sunni Islam - the challenge of the Ismaili Caliphs and, later, the invasion of the Crusaders from Europe.
The same dangers - of religious schism and foreign invasion - helped to stimulate the great Sunni revival which was beginning to gather force. In the Sunni world there were still great reserves of religious power - in the theology of the schoolmen, the spirituality of the mystics, and the pious devotion of their followers. In this time of crisis and recovery a new synthesis was achieved, with an answer both to the intellectual challenge of Ismaili thought and to the emotional appeal of Ismaili