2
The Advent of the Fatimids
with it a new era. A largely conservatively Sunni province of the once unified 'Abbasid caliphate almost overnight became Shi'i and would no longer pay allegiance in any form to the supreme ruler in Baghdad.' The even$ just recalled occurred in early Rajab zg6/late of his caliphate the which right of hisbrought Aba 'Abdallih and March gog. Theand victory had his Berber army to power gave him instant dominion over the whole ofAghlabid territory, including the areas of modem Tunisia, Algeria, portions of Libya, and Sicily. In realizing this achievement, however, he was not acting for himself but on behalf of an Imam who was at that triumphant moment still under two months' away, in the distant though athouse last inarrest, possession of a vast march political domain with its revolution~ought the da'i, Maghribi town of Sijilmisa. attendant resources, was thus The incomplete. Without its by Imam it i
l I
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1)
I! I#
111
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111 IIIII
lacked the real reason for its existence; the appeal, the da'wa, on which it was based, and for which it was created, depended on the safe arrival of the Imam and the eventual proclamation Fatimid ancestors and descendants to rule the Islamic world. But that was not to happen for almost another ten months. Only in late Rabi' I1 zgy/January of 910. did the Imam finally reach Raqqida where he was proclaimed caliph with the messianic regnal name of al-MahdL2 The interveningmonths were, however, critically important for the new government. Abfi 'Abdallih, though long accustomed I . For the broad general background to the Fatimid victory, see in particularMohamedTalbi, LEmirat Aghlabi&(r84-296/8oo-gog) (Paris, 1966); Farhat Dachraoui, Le Calijat Fafimidc au Maghreb, 296-364909973: hutoire, politique et institutions (Tunis, 1981). and most especially Heinz Halm, Das Rdch dw Mahdi: Der Auptieg der Fatimiden (875-973) (Munich, l g g ~ )Eng. , trans. M. Bonner, TheEmfireoflheMahdi: TheRise of theFaiimids (Leiden, 1996). e. The most recent general study of the beginning of the Ismaili movement and its relationship to the advent of al-Mahdi as imam-caliph is Halm's Reich des Mahdi but see also the important article by W. Madelung, 'Das Imamat in der fnihen ismailitischen Lehre,' Derlslem, 37 (1961): 43-135, and Farhad Daftary, The Ismli'ib: Their Histoly and Doctriner (Cambridge, iggo), especially 91-145.
