Life in Fāṭimid Egypt

Abstract

Egypy was the only land of the once far-flung Fāṭimid domain where the successors of ‘Ubaydullāh al-Mandi impressed the stamp of their cultural characteristics. The precarious relationship that held the several provinces of north-western Africa and Western Asia to Cairo militated against the possibility of leaving in those regions peculiarly Fāṭimid traces. In the cultural history of Egypt the Fāṭimid together with the preceding Ikhshidid and Ṭūlūnid periods may be described as the Arabo-Persian era as distinct from the Perso-Turkish, which covered the Ayyūbid and Mamlūk periods. The pre-Ṭūlūnid period may be described as purely Arabic. The Ayyttbid dynasty, which supplanted the Fāṭimid, introduced to Africa the spirit and culture of the great Saljūq empire, noticeable in its art and industry and its political and intellectual movements. Under the Fāṭimids, however, it is the influence of Persian culture that is paramount. But the backbone of the populace throughout medieval and modern history was composed of Arabicized Copts. This populace remained under the ultra-Shi‘ite régime Sunnite at core, as can be inferred from the facility with which Ṣalāḥ-al-Dīn restored official orthodoxy.