[25] As the historian Michael Brett comments, "the Mahdist expectations [...] were focused upon the coming of a more and more mysterious, increasingly supernatural, ultimately eschatological figure in the form of a second Muhammad destined to complete the history of the world".

[32][31] It is exactly this period which saw the Isma'ili message of the imminent return of Muhammad ibn Isma'il as the mahdi gain traction, aided by dissatisfaction among the Twelver adherents with the political quietism of their leadership, and above all the vacuum left by the occultation, that removed a visible and accessible imam as a source of loyalty and religious guidance.

[36][37][38] In medieval sources as well as modern accounts building on them, all this activity is attributed to a single unified movement, a "secret revolutionary organization carrying on intensive missionary efforts in many regions of the Muslim world" according to Wilferd Madelung.

[40] Brett however cautions that this "grand conspiracy theory of Fatimid origins" reflects mostly the bias of later sources, pro-Fatimid as well as anti-Fatimid, and that it obscures a reality of multiple, separately evolving millennarian movements that existed at the time, and whose political or doctrinal relation to one another is now difficult to reconstruct.

In the most common version, Abdallah al-Akbar was proclaimed to be the son of Muhammad ibn Isma'il, but even in pro-Isma'ili sources, the succession line and names of the hidden imams who supposedly preceded Sa'id are not the same, partly due to the Isma'ili practice of using codenames and hiding their identity (taqiya) to avoid persecution.

[70] In the meantime, Zakarawayh's sons had made for Salamiya to pay homage to their master, according to pro-Fatimid sources, or because the town had been settled with Hashemite families related to the Abbasid dynasty, as al-Tabari claims.

The da'i Abu Abdallah al-Shi'i had converted the Kutama Berbers to his cause, and by 905 had achieved some first victories against the autonomous Aghlabid dynasty that ruled Ifriqiya (modern Tunisia and eastern Algeria) under nominal Abbasid suzerainty.

[107][110] Abu'l-Abbas Muhammad, who had escaped from prison and emerged from hiding after his brother's victory, began to spread the Isma'ili doctrine, holding disputations with the local Sunni jurists in the Great Mosque of Kairouan.

[116] As the historian Michael Brett explains, the occasion had double meaning: on the one hand, it acknowledged Sa'id's caliphate, but on the other, it recognized the Kutama soldiery as 'faithful' (mu'minin) or 'friends of God' (awliya), an elite distinct from the mass of ordinary Muslims.

Not only did al-Mahdi, a 35-year old former merchant accustomed to an easy life, wine, and rich clothing, not match these expectations, but his luxurious lifestyle clashed with the austere doctrines propagated by Abu Abdallah al-Shi'i and hitherto followed by the Kutama.

[151] Brett further suggests that the events of 911, with the questions raised about al-Mahdi's identity and the murder of Abu Abdallah, are the origins for the story of the schism of 899 and the death of the missionary Abdan, via a garbled transmission in later anti-Fatimid sources.

[153] Early Isma'ili doctrine preached that all previous revealed religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam itself—and their scriptures were but veils: they imposed outer (zahir) forms and rules that were meant to conceal the inner (batin), true religion as it had been practised in Paradise.

[153] Official Fatimid doctrine henceforth insisted on the continued validity of the shari'a and the outer strictures of Islamic law, even for those Isma'ili faithful who had been be initiated into the inner truths; but the latent antinomian tendencies of Isma'ilism would re-emerge in the future, in movements such as the Druze and the Order of Assassins.

[160] The letters sent by Abu Abdallah, first from Sijilmasa, and then from Ikjan, about the success of his mission and the imminent arrival of "the Imam, our lord and master, the Mahdi, and his son" were read publicly in Kairouan and sent to all cities of the realm, to discourage opposition.

[161] Al-Mahdi also tried to reconcile the Malikis, at least at first, but also did not hesitate to impose Isma'ili ritual practices against their vehement objection; leading to constant tensions between the citizens of Kairouan and the Fatimid governors of the city, who were responsible for their implementation.

On the other hand, according to Halm, the tales in Maliki sources of thousands of martyrs perishing in the dungeons of the caliphal palace are very likely a gross exaggeration: al-Mahdi was willing to tolerate dissent as long as it did not break out into public opposition.

The revolt, led by men associated with the previous regime, subsided after a few clashes with the Kutama, but after enough time had passed, al-Mahdi launched purges of the uprising's leaders, which encompassed his minister Ibn al-Qadim.

[179] In response, in April/May 912, al-Mahdi officially proclaimed his son, Abu'l-Qasim Muhammad, as heir-apparent (wali al-ahd), gave him the regnal name al-qa'im bi-amr Allah ('He who executes God's command'), and placed him in nominal charge of the army sent to quell the revolt.

[181] A rocky peninsula of about 1.4 kilometres (0.87 mi) length and only 175 metres (574 ft) wide at its base, it was eminently defensible from a land-based attack, and included an ancient Punic artificial harbour cut into the rock.

[193] This meant military operations in three directions at once, against three political and ideological powers that dominated the Mediterranean world: the Muslim "usurpers", the Abbasid Caliphate in the east and the Umayyad Emirate of Córdoba in the west; and the main Christian enemy, the Byzantine Empire, in the north, in Sicily and southern Italy.

Not only did this contradict all previous Isma'ili propaganda, which emphasized that the legitimate imamate had followed the line of al-Sadiq's younger son Isma'il, but the claimed genealogy was patently false: Abdallah al-Aftah died young, and was commonly known to not have had any offspring.

The Abbasid government had paid little attention to the affairs of Ifriqiya and the claims of al-Mahdi—al-Tabari refers to him vaguely as al-Khariji ('the Kharijite') or Ibn al-Basri ('Son of the Basran')[209]—but now urgent inquiries were made as to his origin and intentions.

[214] His eventual capture and imprisonment led to the revolt of his brother Ghazwiyya, who had played a crucial role in securing al-Mahdi's regime up to that point, and who had recently been given charge of the entire Kutama country to the west of Ifriqiya.

[237] Al-Mahdi's old slave Su'luk, now known as the chamberlain Ja'far ibn Ubayd, subdued the Kiyana tribe in the Hodna Mountains, whereupon al-Qa'im established a new city, named al-Muhammadiya (modern M'Sila) after himself, to cement Fatimid control over the area.

[245] Al-Mahdi's campaigns in the western Maghreb, in what is now Morocco, were in part meant to "spread fear on the threshold of the Iberian Peninsula", according to historian Farhat Dachraoui, but the restiveness of the Berber tribes limited the ability of the Fatimid ruler to project power beyond Tahert and seriously contemplate an invasion of al-Andalus.

[245] During the first two decades of his rule, Abd al-Rahman was occupied with suppressing revolts, most notably that of Ibn Hafsun;[246] but as his power grew, in 927 an Umayyad fleet captured Melilla, establishing it as a military base in the Moroccan coast,[247] followed by Ceuta in 931.

[260] Sicily was the centre of a perennial war with the Byzantines, which was important from an ideological and propaganda perspective, allowing the Fatimids to "appear as champions of the jihad" against the old Christian enemy of the Muslim world, as the historian Yaacov Lev puts it.

[2][261] At the same time, Lev stresses that the Fatimids were interested more in raiding than outright conquest, that for the Byzantines this was a secondary front, that the fleets involved were small, and that periods of hostility frequently alternated with truces and "a practical policy of modus vivendi".

Medieval as well as modern scholars have pointed out the problems in the claims put forth by al-Mahdi or on his behalf by later Isma'ili writers,[280][281][282] but his achievement is undeniable: as the orientalist Marius Canard summarized, "Whoever ʿUbayd Allah-Saʿīd may have been, he laid the foundations of the dynasty in North Africa.

[283] Brett points out that al-Mahdi's emphasis on constructing a state and dealing with the realities of its governance, left him little time to adapt the Isma'ili doctrine to the new situation and "develop this Caliphate of God into a full-blown creed of the Imamate".