Abu Ali al-Mansur (; 13 August 985 – 13 February 1021), better known by his regnal name al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah (), was the sixth Fatimid caliph and 16th Ismaili imam (996–1021). Al-Hakim is an important figure in a number of Shia Ismaili sects, such as the world's 15 million Nizaris and 1–2 million Musta'lis, in addition to 2 million Druze. (Which page?)
Histories of al-Hakim can prove controversial, as diverse views of his life and legacy exist. Historian Paul Walker writes "Ultimately, both views of him, the mad and despotic tyrant (like Germanic and Roman despots) irrationally given to killing those around him on a whim, and the ideal supreme ruler, divinely ordained and chosen, whose every action was just and righteous, were to persist, the one among his enemies and those who rebelled against him, and the other in the hearts of true believers, who, while perhaps perplexed by events, nonetheless remained avidly loyal to him to the end." Appraisals of the more controversial accounts of al-Hakim's life and rule have earned him such monikers as "the Nero of Egypt", and "the Mad Caliph".
Background and family Born in 985 CE in Cairo, Abu 'Ali al-Mansur was the first Fatimid ruler to have been born in Egypt. Abu 'Ali al-Mansur had been proclaimed as heir-apparent (wali al-'ahd) in 993 CE and succeeded his father Al-Aziz Billah (975–996) at the age of eleven, on 14 October 996, with the caliphal title of al-Hakim Bi-Amr Allah. Al-Ḥākim is reported to have had blue eyes flecked with reddish gold.
Lineage Al-Ḥākim was born on Thursday, 3 Rabi' al-awwal in AD 985 (AH 375). His father, caliph al-'Azīz bil-Lāh, had two consorts. One was an umm al-walad who is only known by the title as-Sayyidah al-'Azīziyyah or al-'Azīzah (d. 385/995). She was a Melkite Christian whose two brothers were appointed patriarchs of the Melkite Church by Caliph al-'Azīz. Different sources say either one of her brothers or her father was sent by al-'Azīz as an ambassador to Sicily.
Al-'Azīzah is considered to be the mother of Sitt al-Mulk, one of the most famous women in Islamic history, who had a stormy relationship with her half-brother al-Ḥākim and may have had him assassinated. Some, such as the Crusader chronicler William of Tyre, claimed that al-'Azīzah was also the mother of Caliph al-Ḥākim, though most historians dismiss this. William of Tyre went so far as to claim that al-Ḥākim's destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 1009 was due to his eagerness to disprove taunts that he was a Christian born of a Christian woman. By contrast, the chronicler al-Musabbihi recounts that in 981, al-Ḥākim's Muslim mother sought the aid of an imprisoned Islamic sage named ibn al-Washa and asked him to pray for her son who had fallen ill. The sage wrote the entire Qur'an in the inner surface of a bowl and bade her wash her son out of it. When al-Ḥākim recovered, she demanded the release of the sage in gratitude. Her request was granted and the sage and his associates were freed from prison.
Druze sources claim that al-Ḥākim's mother was the daughter of 'Abdu l-Lāh, one of al-Mu'izz li-Din Allah's sons and therefore al-'Azīz's niece. Historians such as Delia Cortese are critical of this claim:
Consort and issue The mother of al-Hakim's heir Ali al-Zahir li-I'zaz Din Allah was the umm al-walad Amīna Ruqayya, daughter to the late prince Abd Allah, son of al-Mu'izz. Some see her as the same as the woman in the prediction reported by al-Hamidi which held "that in 390/1000 al-Hakim would choose an orphan girl of good stock brought up [by?] his father al-Aziz and that she would become the mother of his successor." While the chronicler al-Maqrizi claims that al-Hakim's stepsister Sitt al-Mulk was hostile to Amīna, other sources say she gave her and her child refuge when they were fleeing al-Hakim's persecution. Some sources say al-Hakim married the jariya (young female servant) known by the title as-Sayyidah but historians are unsure if this is just another name for Amīna.
Besides al-Zahir, al-Hakim had a daughter named Sitt Misr (d. 455/1063) who was said to be a princess of generous patronage and a noble character.
Reign
In 996, al-Ḥākim's father Caliph al-'Azīz began a trip to visit Syria (which was held by the Fatimids only by force of arms and was under pressure from the Byzantines). The Caliph fell ill at the beginning of the trip at Bilbeis and lay in sickbed for several days. He suffered from "stone with pains in the bowels." When he felt that his end was nearing he charged Qadi Muhammad ibn an-Nu'man and General Abū Muhammad al-Hasan ibn 'Ammar to take care of al-Ḥākim, who was then only eleven. He then spoke to his son. Al-Ḥākim later recalled the event:
On the following day, he and his new court proceeded from Bilbays to Cairo, behind the camel bearing his father's body, and with the dead Caliph's feet protruding from the litter. They arrived shortly before evening prayer and his father was buried the next evening next to the tomb of his predecessor al-Mu'īzz. Al-Ḥākim was sworn in by Barjawan, a "white eunuch whom al-'Azīz had appointed as Ustad 'tutor'."
Because it had been unclear whether he would inherit his father's position, this successful transfer of power was a demonstration of the stability of the Fatimid dynasty. Al-Hakim's father had intended the eunuch Barjawan to act as regent until al-Hakim was old enough to rule by himself. Ibn 'Ammar and Qadi Muhammad ibn Nu'man were to assist in the guardianship of the new caliph.
Nevertheless, the Kutama Berbers seized the chance to recover their dominant position in the state, which had eroded under al-Aziz due to the influx of Turkish and Daylamite mercenaries from the Islamic East (the Mashāriqa, "Easterners"). They compelled the underage al-Hakim to dismiss the Christian vizier 'Īsa ibn Nestorius (who was executed shortly after) and appoint their leader Ibn Ammar to head the government, with the title of wāsiṭa ("intermediary") rather than full vizier. At the time the office of sifāra "secretary of state" was also combined within that office. Ibn 'Ammar then took the title of Amīn ad-Dawla "the one trusted in the empire". This was the first time that the term "empire" was associated with the Fatimid state. Ibn Ammar's rule quickly descended into a Berber tyranny: he immediately began staffing the government with Berbers, who engaged in a virtual pillaging of the state coffers. The Berbers' attempts to exclude the other interest groups from power—not only the Turks and the other ethnic contingents of the army, but also the civilian bureaucracy, whose salary was cut—alienated not only the Mashāriqa, but alarmed Barjawan as well. Barjawan contacted the Fatimid governor of Damascus, the Turk Manjutakin, and invited him to march onto Egypt and depose Ibn Ammar. Manjutakin accepted, but was defeated by Ibn Ammar's troops under Sulayman ibn Ja'far ibn Falah at Ascalon and taken prisoner. Barjawan however soon found a new ally, in the person of the Kutama leader Jaysh ibn Samsam, governor of Tripoli, whom Ibn Falah dismissed and replaced with his own brother. Jaysh and Barjawan gathered a following of other dissatisfied Berber leaders, and launched an uprising in Cairo in October 997. Ibn Ammar was forced to flee, and Barjawan replaced him as wāsiṭa.
During his predominance, Barjawan managed to balance the two factions, fulfilling the demands of the Mashāriqa while taking care of the Kutama as well. In this vein, he pardoned Ibn Ammar and restored him his monthly salary of 500 gold dinars. After Bajarwan's murder on 26 March 1000, however, Caliph al-Hakim assumed the reins of government and launched a purge of the Fatimid elites, during which Ibn Ammar and many of the other Kutama leaders were executed. To ensure his own power, Hakim limited the authority and terms of office of his wasitas and viziers, of whom there were more than 15 during the remaining 20 years of his caliphate.
Internal unrest and groups
Al-Hakim's reign was characterized by a general unrest. The Fatimid army was troubled by a rivalry between two opposing factions, the Turks and the Berbers. Tension grew between the Caliph and his viziers (called wasītas), and near the end of his reign, the Druze movement, a religious sect that deified al-Hakim as God manifest, began to form. Members of that sect were reported to address prayers to al-Hakim, whom they regarded as "a manifestation of God in His unity."Mortimer, Edward, Faith and Power: The Politics of Islam, Vintage Books, 1982, p. 49
The Baghdad Manifesto Alarmed by the expansion of the Fatimid dominion, the 'Abbasid caliph al-Qadir of Baghdad adopted retaliatory measures to halt the spread of Ismailism within the very seat of his realm. In particular, in 1011 he assembled a number of Sunni and Twelver Shiite scholars at his court and commanded them to declare in a written document that Hakim and his predecessors lacked genuine descent from Ali and Fatima. This so-called Baghdad Manifesto was read out in Friday mosques throughout the 'Abbasid domains accusing the Fatimids of Jewish ancestry. In addition, because of al-Hakim's alleged Christian mother, he was accused of being over-sympathetic to non-Muslims, giving them more privileges than they should have been given under Islamic rule. Such accusations were manifested through poetry criticizing the Fatimids. Qadir also commissioned several refutations of Ismaili doctrines, including those written by the Mu'tazili 'Ali b. Sa'id al-Istakri (1013).
Foreign affairs Hakim confronted numerous difficulties and uprisings during his relatively long reign. While he did not lose any important territories in North Africa, the Ismaili communities there were attacked by Sunni fighters led by their influential Maliki jurists. Relations between the Fatimids and the Qarmatians also remained hostile. On the other hand, Hakim's Syrian policy was successful as he managed to extend Fatimid hegemony to the emirate of Aleppo.
Al-Hakim upheld diplomatic relations between the Fatimid Empire and many different countries. Skillful diplomacy was needed in establishing friendly, or at least neutral relations with the Byzantine Empire, which had irredentist goals in the early 11th century.
The geographically farthest-reaching diplomatic mission of al-Hakim was to Song dynasty China. The Fatimid Egyptian sea captain known as Domiyat traveled to a Buddhist pilgrimage site in Shandong in AD 1008. It was on this mission that he sought to present to the Chinese emperor Zhenzong of Song gifts from his ruling Caliph, al-Hakim. This reestablished diplomatic relations between Egypt and China that had been lost during the collapse of the Tang dynasty in 907.
Disappearance and succession In the final years of his reign, al-Hakim displayed a growing inclination toward asceticism and withdrew for meditation regularly. On the night of 12/13 February 1021 at the age of 35, al-Hakim left for one of his regular nocturnal meditation journeys to the Mokattam hills on the outskirts of Cairo but failed to return. A search found only his horse and bloodstained garments. His disappearance has remained a mystery.
Modern historians have assessed whether al-Hakim's sister Sitt al-Mulk may have had a hand in his disappearance, but no historic evidence has emerged that would implicate her. Al-Mulk would lead moves to declare her nephew al-Zahir li-I'zaz Din Allah as his father's successor as imam-caliph. The heir al-Hakim had designated was removed from court and al-Mulk was appointed regent for her 16-year-old nephew. After al-Zahir came of age, al-Mulk assumed positions within his administration until her death in 1023.
al-Hakim and Ismailism