[6][7] 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.

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.

[15] 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.

[15] 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.

[15]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).

When I descended he placed on my head the turban adorned with jewels, kissed the ground before me, and said: "Hail to the Commander of the faithful, with the mercy of God and his blessing."

"[16] 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.

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").

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.

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.

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.

"[23] 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.

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.

Skillful diplomacy was needed in establishing friendly, or at least neutral relations with the Byzantine Empire, which had expansionary goals in the early 11th century.

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.

"[30] Historian Michael Foss also notes this contrast: "For more than three hundred and fifty years, from the time when the Caliph Omar made a treaty with the Patriarch Sophronius until 1009, when mad al-Hakim began attacks on Christians and Jews, the city of Jerusalem and the Holy Land were open to the West, with an easy welcome and the way there was no more dangerous than a journey from Paris to Rome....

As one prominent journal has noted, al-Hakim has attracted the interest of modern historians more than any other member of the Fatimid dynasty because: "His eccentric character, the inconsistencies and radical shifts in his conduct and policies, the extreme austerity of his personal life, the vindictive and sanguinary ruthlessness of his dealing with the highest officials of his government coupled with an obsession to suppress all signs of corruption and immorality in public life, his attempted annihilation of Christians and call for the systematic destruction of all Christian holy places in the middle east culminating in the destruction of the most holy Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem, his deification by a group of extremist Isma'ili missionaries who became the forerunners and founders of the Druze religion, [which] all combine to contrast his reign sharply with that of any of his predecessors and successors and indeed of any Muslim ruler....

"[32]The claim that al-Hakim was mad and the version of events around him is disputed as mere propaganda by some scholars, such as Willi Frischaue, who states: "His enemies called him the 'Mad Caliph' but he enhanced Cairo's reputation as a centre of civilization.

"[1] The writing of historian Heinz Halm attempts to dispel "those distorted and hostile accounts, stating that the anti-Fatimid tradition tried to make a real monster of this caliph",[2] while P.J.

In Iraq, the da'is now concentrated their efforts on a number of local amirs and influential tribal chiefs with whose support they aimed to uproot the Abbasids.

The activities of Kirmani and other da'is soon led to concrete results in Iraq: in 1010 the ruler of Mosul, Kufa and other towns acknowledged the suzerainty of Hakim.

In the 1970s, the Dawoodi Bohras, an Ismaili Shia sect, under the leadership of Mohammed Burhanuddin, restored the then-dilapidated mosque, using new building methods and materials while maintaining as many of the architectural and artistic features as possible.

[24] For more than 100 years, Dār al-ʿIlm distinguished itself as a center of learning where astronomers, mathematicians, grammarians, logicians, physicians, philologists, jurists and others conducted research, gave lectures and collaborated.

The private 'wisdom sessions' (majalis al-hikma) devoted to esoteric Ismaili doctrines and reserved exclusively for initiates, now became organized so as to be accessible to different categories of participants.

[citation needed] Al-Hakim is a central figure in the history of the Druze religious sect, whose eponymous founder ad-Darazi proclaimed him as the incarnation of God in 1018.

In 1005, al-Hakim ordered that Jews and Christians follow ghiyār "the law of differentiation" – in this case, the mintaq or zunnar "belt" (Greek ζωνάριον) and imāmah "turban", both in black.

Al-Hakim ultimately allowed the unwilling Christian and Jewish converts to Islam to return to their faith and rebuild their ruined houses of worship.

[50][51][52][53][54] Other scholars disagree with this assertion of direct divinity, particularly the Druze themselves, noting that its proponent was ad-Darazi, who (according to some resources) al-Hakim executed for shirk.

[55][56] The mother of al-Hakim's heir 'Alī al-Zāhir was the umm al-walad Amīna Ruqayya, daughter to the late prince Abd Allah, son of al-Mu'izz.