Fatimid Caliphate

A Shia caliphate that ruled Sunni Egypt for two centuries and founded the oldest continuously operating university in the world. The Fatimids were Ismaili Shia claiming descent from the Prophet's daughter, and they took power in Tunisia in 909 before conquering Egypt in 969 and founding a new capital beside the existing town, naming it al-Qahira, the victorious - which English renders as Cairo. Al-Azhar was built there in 970 as a mosque and teaching institution and has operated ever since, though it became a Sunni centre after the dynasty fell. At its height the caliphate held North Africa, Sicily, the Levant and the Red Sea trade, and it was one of three rival caliphates claiming universal authority at the same time. Rule was notably tolerant of the Coptic majority and of Jews for most of the period, with a marked exception under al-Hakim, who ordered the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 1009. Administration ran on a professional bureaucracy and a slave-soldier army. Saladin abolished the caliphate in 1171 and restored Sunni authority. Its treasury and libraries were dispersed. The caliphate lasted from 909 to 1171. Cairo's walls and gates from the period still stand, and the historic city is a World Heritage site. The Fatimids minted a gold dinar of unusually reliable purity that circulated widely. Ibn al-Haytham, who established the modern method of optics, worked under their patronage. The Druze faith emerged from a movement around al-Hakim and survives in Lebanon, Syria and Israel.

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