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Abu Muhammad al-Hasan al-Yazuri (or al-Husayn) ibn Ali ibn Abd al-Rahman (died 1058) was a vizier of the Fatimid Caliphate, holding office from 1050 to 1058.
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Abu Muhammad al-Hasan al-Yazuri (or al-Husayn) ibn Ali ibn Abd al-Rahman (died 1058) was a vizier of the Fatimid Caliphate, holding office from 1050 to 1058.
Al-Yazuri was born in Yazur where he later worked as a judge, before traveling to Ramla. When faced with the governor of Ramla, al-Yazuri fled to Cairo and entered service as a eunuch servant to the princess mother of al-Mustansir Billah called Rasad.
In 1050, relations between the Fatimids and the Zirid dynasty were strained after the Zirids adopted Sunni Islam and subsequently recognized the Abbasid caliph. In 1052, Al-Mu'izz ibn Badis, ruler of the Zirids, put his own name before the name of the caliph in an official letter and came to the Arab tribes Banu Riyah and Banu Zughba who were plundering Egypt and sent requests for alliances to the tribes of Ifriqiya as well as the Banu Sulaym tribe of Cyrenaica.
The Byzantine Empire and Egypt were at peace for some time, and had an agreement to lead each other aid in the event of famine due to lack of wheat in one of the two territories. In 1055, Fatimid exile al-Muayyad fi l-Din Abu Nasr Hibat Allah was able to intercept Byzantine reports that Seljuk sultan Tughril had made a pact with the Greeks against the Fatimids, before coming into contact with the Turkish forces who subsequently promised the help the Fatimid conquest of Baghdad. Shortly after al-Muayyad was sent to Iraq as a Fatimid delegation, and the Fatimid caliph agreed to send troops against Tughril to prevent the conquest of Syria and then Egypt.
In 1058, al-Yazuri was arrested and accused of corresponding with Tughril and supporting Fatimid rivals and enemies of the state. He was taken to Tinnis where he was executed.
The Fatimid Caliphate was a caliphate extant from the tenth to the twelfth centuries AD under the rule of the Fatimids, an Isma'ili Shi'a dynasty. Spanning a large area of North Africa and West Asia, it ranged from the western Mediterranean in the west to the Red Sea in the east. The Fatimids trace their ancestry to the Islamic prophet Muhammad's daughter Fatima and her husband, ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib, the first Shi‘a imam. The Fatimids were acknowledged as the rightful imams by different Isma‘ili communities as well as by denominations in many other Muslim lands and adjacent regions. Originating during the Abbasid Caliphate, the Fatimids conquered Ifriqiya and established the city of al-Mahdiyya. The Fatimid dynasty ruled territories across the Mediterranean coast and ultimately made Egypt the center of the caliphate. At its height, the caliphate included—in addition to Egypt—varying areas of the Maghreb, Sicily, the Levant, and the Hejaz.
Following the Islamic conquest in 639, Lower Egypt was ruled at first by governors acting in the name of the Rashidun Caliphs and then the Umayyad Caliphs in Damascus, but in 747 the Umayyads were overthrown. Throughout Islamic rule, Askar was named the capital and housed the ruling administration. The conquest led to two separate provinces all under one ruler: Upper and Lower Egypt. These two very distinct regions were governed by the military and followed the demands handed down by the governor of Egypt and imposed by the heads of their communities.
The Zirid dynasty, Banu Ziri, was a Sanhaja Berber dynasty from what is now Algeria which ruled the central Maghreb from 972 to 1014 and Ifriqiya from 972 to 1148.
The Banu Hilal was a confederation of Arab tribes from the Najd region of the central Arabian Peninsula that emigrated to the Maghreb region of North Africa in the 11th century. Masters of the vast plateaux of the Najd, they enjoyed a somewhat infamous reputation, possibly owing to their relatively late conversion to Islam and accounts of their campaigns in the borderlands between Iraq and Syria. When the Fatimid Caliphate became the rulers of Egypt and the founders of Cairo in 969, they hastened to confine the unruly Bedouin in the south before sending them to Central North Africa and then to Morocco.
Abū Tamīm Maʿad al-Mustanṣir biʾllāh was the eighth Fatimid Caliph from 1036 until 1094. He was one of the longest reigning Muslim rulers. His reign was the twilight of the Fatimid state. The start of his reign saw the continuation of competent administrators running the Fatamid state, overseeing the state's prosperity in the first two decades of al-Mustansir's reign. However, the break out of court infighting between the Turkish and Berber/Sudanese court factions following al-Yazuri's assassination, coinciding with natural disasters in Egypt and the gradual loss of administrative control over Fatamid possessions outside of Egypt, almost resulted in the total collapse of the Fatamid state in the 1060s, before the appointment of the Armenian general Badr al-Jamali, who assumed power as vizier in 1073, and became the de facto dictator of the country under the nominal rule of al-Mustansir.
Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥākim, better known with his regnal name al-Ẓāhir li-Iʿzāz Dīn Allāh, was the seventh caliph of the Fatimid dynasty (1021–1036). Al-Zahir assumed the caliphate after the disappearance of his father al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah.
Abu Mansur Nizar, known by his regnal name as al-Aziz Billah, was the fifth caliph of the Fatimid dynasty, from 975 to his death in 996. His reign saw the capture of Damascus and the Fatimid expansion into the Levant, which brought al-Aziz into conflict with the Byzantine emperor Basil II over control of Aleppo. During the course of this expansion, al-Aziz took into his service large numbers of Turkic and Daylamite slave-soldiers, thereby breaking the near-monopoly on Fatimid military power held until then by the Kutama Berbers.
The Banu Kalb was an Arab tribe which mainly dwelt in the desert and steppe of northwestern Arabia and central Syria. It was involved in the tribal politics of the Byzantine Empire's eastern frontiers, possibly as early as the 4th century. By the 6th century, the Kalb had largely adopted Christianity and came under the authority of the Ghassanids, leaders of the Byzantines' Arab allies. During the lifetime of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, a few of his close companions were Kalbites, most prominently Zayd ibn Haritha and Dihya, but the bulk of the tribe remained Christian at the time of Muhammad's death in 632. They began converting in large numbers when the Muslims made significant progress in the conquest of Byzantine Syria, in which the Kalb stayed neutral. As a massive nomadic tribe with considerable military experience, the Kalb was sought as a key ally by the Muslim state. The leading clans of the Kalb forged marital ties with the Umayyad family, and the tribe became the military foundation of the Syria-based Umayyad Caliphate (661–750) from the reign of Mu'awiya I to the early reign of Abd al-Malik.
The Banu Sulaym is an Arab tribe that dominated part of the Hejaz in the pre-Islamic era. They maintained close ties with the Quraysh of Mecca and the inhabitants of Medina, and fought in a number of battles against the Islamic prophet Muhammad before ultimately converting to Islam before his death in 632. They took part in the Muslim conquest of Syria, and established themselves in the Jazira, while part of the tribe remained in the Hejaz. During the early Muslim period, the tribe produced notable generals such as Safwan ibn Mu'attal, Abu'l-A'war and Umayr ibn al-Hubab. Those who remained in Arabia were largely absorbed by the Banu Harb of Yemen beginning in the 9th century, while those in Syria and the Jazira were expelled to Upper Egypt by the Fatimid Caliphs in the late 10th century for supporting the Qarmatians. In the mid-11th century, a prolonged famine in Egypt prompted the tribe to migrate westward with the Banu Hilal into Libya. There, the Sulaym and its sub-tribes established themselves mainly in Cyrenaica, where until the present day, many of the Arab tribes of that region trace their descent to the Sulaym.
Abu Ulwan Thimal ibn Salih ibn Mirdas, also known by his laqabMu'izz al-Dawla, was the Mirdasid emir of Aleppo jointly with his elder brother Shibl al-Dawla Nasr in 1029–1030 and then solely in 1042–1057 and 1061–1062.
The Jarrahids were an Arab dynasty that intermittently ruled Palestine and controlled Transjordan and northern Arabia in the late 10th and early 11th centuries. They were described by historian Marius Canard (1888–1982) as a significant player in the Byzantine–Fatimid wars in Syria who "created for themselves, in their own best interests, a rule of duplicity, treason and pillage". They were the ruling family of the Tayy tribe, one of the three powerful tribes of Syria at the time; the other two were Kalb and Kilab.
Al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAmmār al-Kalbī, usually called simply Ibn Ammar in the Arabic sources, was an Arab commander for the Fatimid Caliphate. A member of the Kalbid family, he was active in the wars with the Byzantine Empire in Sicily in the 960s, leading the capture of Taormina and Rometta, which completed the Muslim conquest of Sicily.
Abu'l-Hasan Ali ibn Muhammad al-Iyadi al-Tunisi was a 10th-century Maghrebi Arabic poet in the service of the Fatimid caliphs al-Qa'im, al-Mansur, and al-Mu'izz.
Makīn al-Dawla al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī ibn Mulhim ibn Dīnār al-ʿUqaylī, also known as Ibn Mulhim, was a Fatimid general who led the Fatimid reconquest of Ifriqiya and expeditions in Syria. He served as the governor of Aleppo in 1058–1060 and military governor of Jund al-Urdunn in 1062.
The Fatimid conquest of Egypt took place in 969 when the troops of the Fatimid Caliphate under the general Jawhar captured Egypt, then ruled by the autonomous Ikhshidid dynasty in the name of the Abbasid Caliphate.
The vizier was the senior minister of the Fatimid Caliphate for most of the Egyptian period of its existence. Originally it was held by civilian officials who acted as the chief civilian ministers of the caliphs, analogous to the original model established by the Abbasids. When a vizier was not appointed, an "intermediary" was designated instead. The enfeeblement of the caliph's power and the crisis of the Fatimid regime under Caliph al-Mustansir, however, led to the rise of military strongmen, who dominated the post from the 1070s until the caliphate's end. These "viziers of the sword" were also commanders-in-chief of the army who effectively sidelined the caliphs and ruled in their stead, often seizing power from their predecessors. The last vizier, Saladin, abolished the Fatimid Caliphate in 1171.
Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUbayd Allāh al-Ḥusaynī, better known as Akhu Muslim, was a Husaynid sharif and governor of Palestine for the Ikhshidids. He opposed the takeover of the province by al-Hasan ibn Ubayd Allah ibn Tughj and joined the Qarmatians, fighting with them against the Fatimids until 974. After the defeat of the second Qarmatian invasion of Egypt in that year, Akhu Muslim fled to Arabia, pursued by Fatimid agents. He was betrayed in the end by his Qarmatian allies, who poisoned him near Basra.
Abu Ali al-Hasan al-A'sam ibn Ahmad ibn Bahram al-Jannabi was a Qarmatian leader, chiefly known as the military commander of the Qarmatian invasions of Syria in 968–977. Already in 968, he led attacks on the Ikhshidids, capturing Damascus and Ramla and extracting pledges of tribute. Following the Fatimid conquest of Egypt and the overthrow of the Ikhshidids, in 971–974 al-A'sam led attacks against the Fatimid Caliphate, who began to expand into Syria. The Qarmatians repeatedly evicted the Fatimids from Syria and invaded Egypt itself twice, in 971 and 974, before being defeated at the gates of Cairo and driven back. Al-A'sam continued fighting against the Fatimids, now alongside the Turkish general Alptakin, until his death in March 977. In the next year, the Fatimids managed to overcome the allies, and concluded a treaty with the Qarmatians that signalled the end of their invasions of Syria.
Rasad, also known as Sayyida Rasad, was a politically active Egyptian Caliph mother. She was the de facto regent of Fatimid Egypt as the influential mother of her son, the Fatimid caliph al-Mustansir Billah, between 1044 and 1071. The name Rasad literally means "observed".
Sinān ibn ʿUlayyān or Sinān ibn al-Bannā, also known by his laqabṢamṣām al-Dawla, was a preeminent emir of the Banu Kalb tribe in Syria under early Fatimid rule. He was an ally of the Fatimids in several campaigns, until rebelling against them in alliance with the chiefs of the Arab tribes of Tayy and Kilab in 1025. Sinan attempted to take over Damascus from its Fatimid ruler, but died in 1028. His nephew Rafi ibn Abi'l-Layl reverted to allying with the Fatimids against the Tayy and Kilab.
