Qadi al-Fadil
'the Excellent Judge';[1] 3 April 1135 – 26 January 1200) was an official who served the last Fatimid caliphs, and became the secretary and chief counsellor of the first Ayyubid sultan, Saladin.
In the early 1160s, he was patronized by the viziers Ruzzik ibn Tala'i and Shawar, rising to become head of the fiscal department supervising the army, and receiving the name by which he is known.
[5] Qadi al-Fadil received his basic education at his home town,[6] before moving to Cairo in c. 1148/49, where, at the initiative of his father, he entered the chancery (diwan al-insha) of the Fatimid Caliphate as a trainee.
[7] According to the 13th-century encyclopaedist Yaqut al-Hamawi, at this time Qadi al-Fadil's father fell into disgrace because he failed to inform Cairo of the release of an important hostage by the governor of Ascalon.
The only available information comes from the later writer al-Mundhiri, who reports that during his stay in Alexandria, Qadi al-Fadil studied under the two eminent jurists Abu Tahir al-Silafi and Ibn Awf.
[2][12] As a partisan of Shawar, Qadi al-Fadil had originally opposed Shirkuh, the Kurdish general who had invaded Egypt on behalf of his Syrian King, Nur al-Din.
Modern historians generally consider the truthfulness of these reports doubtful, as they are at pains to exculpate Qadi al-Fadil for his sudden change of allegiance from the Fatimids to the Ayyubids.
The official sect of Isma'ilism had lost its appeal and was weakened by disputes and schisms, and the dynasty's legitimacy was increasingly challenged by a Sunni resurgence that was partly sponsored by the Fatimids' own viziers.
[2][20] When Saladin deposed the Fatimid regime outright following the death of caliph al-Adid in September 1171, Qadi al-Fadil played a leading role in carrying out the subsequent changes in the military and fiscal administration of Egypt.
Qadi al-Fadil's account of the extent of the conspiracy is at odds with the limited reprisals, and the affair was likely a settling of old rivalries within the former Fatimid administrative elites.
After he left Egypt, Qadi al-Fadil successfully lobbied for al-Adil's replacement by his friend, Saladin's nephew Taqi al-Din.
[26] At the same time, however, Qadi al-Fadl sponsored a number of Jewish physicians, among them the celebrated philosopher Maimonides, whom he defended from charges of apostasy,[27][28] and who dedicated his book On Poisons and Antidotes to his patron.
[1] From his prominent post, Qadi al-Fadil became a wealthy man: he reportedly received an annual salary of 50,000 gold dinars, and became a successful merchant, trading with India and North Africa.
Due to al-Afdal's erratic leadership, he quickly returned to Egypt, where he entered the service of al-Aziz, Saladin's second son, who had seized power there.
[29] Already during his lifetime, Qadi al-Fadil was highly esteemed, chiefly due to the "exceptional quality of his private and official epistolary style", which was praised, held up as a model, and emulated by subsequent generations of writers.
[3] This style was similar to that of Imad al-Din al-Isfahani, and "combines richness (perhaps a little less prolix) and suppleness of form with a realistic treatment of the facts, a lesson too often forgotten by later writers, which makes his correspondence a valuable historical source".
[27] As a result, many of his chancery epistles were included in the works of other authors, from chroniclers such as al-Isfahani and Abu Shama to compilers of insha literature, most notably al-Qalqashandi.
[27][32] A famous bibliophile, Qadi al-Fadil amassed a large library, much of which he donated to the Fadiliyya, a madrasah for Maliki and Shafi'i jurisprudence that he founded in 1184/85 at Cairo.
