Of Armenian origin but a convert to Islam, Badr had been brought up as a military slave (mamluk) by the ruler of Tripoli, Jamal al-Dawla ibn Ammar.

In the 1060s, he was appointed twice as governor of Damascus in Syria, at a time when Fatimid authority there was disintegrating, and the central government in Egypt was on the verge of collapse as a result of the Mustansirite Hardship.

Badr was unable to prevent the loss of most of Syria to local potentates and Turkoman warlords, but managed to hold on to the coastal cities, making Acre his base.

Badr landed in Egypt in late 1073, rapidly eliminated his rivals, and was appointed vizier with plenipotentiary powers, making him a quasi-sultan or military dictator, with the caliph relegated to his religious duties as Isma'ili imam.

[6] However, the historian Seta Dadoyan suggests that he may be identifiable with a namesake Abu'l-Najm Badr, a young Armenian ghulam who briefly ruled over Aleppo on behalf of the Fatimids in 1022.

[8] Badr's career begins to be documented in April 1063, when he was appointed military governor of Damascus and its province in succession to al-Mu'ayyad Mu'tazz al-Dawla Haydara ibn al-Husayn.

Badr is recorded at this point as bearing the honorific titles of 'Crown of Commanders' (Taj al-Umara), 'Commander of the Armies' (Muqaddam al-Juyush), and 'Honour of the Realm' (Sharaf al-Mulk).

[15][16] On 3 July 1066, Badr returned to Damascus, not only as its governor, but of all of Syria, with the additional honorific of 'Sword of Islam' (Sayf al-Islam), and took possession of the Qasr al-Saltana fortress, located just outside the city walls, as his seat.

[20] Abu Tahir went to Cairo to lodge complaint with Nasir al-Dawla Ibn Hamdan, who then held power in Egypt and was a declared rival of Badr.

Ibn Hamdan released Humayd and Hazim, two imprisoned members of the Banu'l-Jarrah, the leading family of the Tayy, gave them 40,000 gold dinars to kill Badr, and sent Abu Tahir along with them to Syria.

Badr was instructed to bring Mahmud to heel, and turned to the latter's deposed uncle, Atiyya ibn Salih, promising him assistance to regain control of Aleppo.

Atiyya marched on Aleppo, but the two Mirdasids were reconciled by Ibn Ammar of Tripoli, dividing the emirate between themselves and confirming their nominal allegiance to the Fatimid caliph.

[24] When Atiyya went to Damascus to join Badr, however, his stronghold, Rahba, was seized by the Uqaylid emir of Mosul, Muslim ibn Quraysh, who had the Friday prayer read in the name of the Abbasid caliph.

A letter from May 1068 at any rate describes Damascus as deprived of all government authority, the Qasr al-Saltana ransacked by the populace, and Badr having fled to Ascalon.

In the end, Qutb al-Dawla and Abu Tahir fled Damascus for Egypt after a few weeks, but were captured by the Tayy in Amman and sold to Badr for 12,000 dinars, rich vestments, and the grant of estates.

[1] In Egypt, poor harvests from a series of low Nile floods coupled with the anarchy and the depradations of the Turkish soldiery created a financial crisis and widespread famine.

Caliph al-Mustansir was forced to sell his treasures to meet the Turks' extortionate demands, which did not prevent them from looting the Fatimid palaces and libraries and destroyeing much of the capital [29][30] When one part of the Turks accused Nasir al-Dawla of not distributing the loot fairly, he was forced to flee to the Nile Delta, from where he appealed for aid to the Seljuk sultan, Alp Arslan (r. 1063–1072), and promised to restore Egypt to Abbasid and Sunni allegiance.

[36] In central Syria, Damascus was held by Abu Tahir's brother Muhtass al-Dawla,[35] before power was seized by the Fatimid officer Mu'alla al-Kutami, whose father Haydara had served briefly as governor in 1064.

Al-Kutami managed to hold on to power through a series of clashes involving the Maghrebi and Eastern contingents of the Fatimid garrison, the Damascenes, and the Banu Kalb.

[40] Badr aimed to subdue Tyre, which by virtue of its position cut his territories in half, but his first attack on the city was thwarted by the presence of al-Kutami's troops.

While Badr was engaged with besieging Tyre, Ibn Hamdan encouraged rebellions among the Bedouin tribes of the Banu Sanbas and Banu Tayy, installing his own brother Fakhr al-Arab as governor in Ramla to rally the opposition to Badr, as well as sending encouraging messages to al-Kutami, and even to Alp Arslan himself, inviting him to invade Syria and conquer it from the Fatimids.

[43][44] On 19 January 1071, the Seljuk ruler Alp Arslan crossed the river Euphrates into Syria to campaign against the Fatimids, before being hastily diverted north to fight the Byzantines at Manzikert.

[8][48][49] This may have initially been done at Badr's request, to root out the opposition being gathered there by Ibn Hamdan,[8][48] but soon—possibly as the result of quarrels over the payments he received—Atsiz began acting as an independent ruler, and in late 1072/early 1073 acknowledged the suzerainty of the Abbasid caliph and the Seljuk sultan Malikshah in Baghdad.

[61] The historian Heinz Halm argues that to all intents and purposes, Badr's position was analogous to that of sultan, adopted a few decades earlier by the Seljuk ruler Tughril Beg to frame his authority vis-à-vis the Abbasid caliph.

[54][62] Michael Brett on the other hand points out that the amplitude of powers vested in Badr was unprecedented, and included matters of religion, which properly belonged to al-Mustansir's sphere of authority as imam, as well as the dispensation of justice, a core attribute of sovereignty.

[2][66] The re-establishment of Fatimid control over Upper Egypt proved more difficult, as the local Bedouin tribes defended the virtual independence they had gained over the previous years.

[66] By 1076, Badr had restored the authority of the central government over Egypt, and the Caliph al-Mustansir was reduced to the purely ritual role as head of the Isma'ili community.

[69] Emboldened by his success, Atsiz gathered his forces and invaded Egypt in December 1076, raiding and laying waste to the area of the Nile Delta.

Badr, who had been campaigning in Upper Egypt, returned in haste north and busily recruited as many men as he could—including 3,000 Hajj pilgrims and defectors from Atsiz' army.

[77][60] In this Badr also set the tone for his successors: until the end of the Fatimid regime in 1171, the vizierate was held mostly by military strongmen, who sidelined the caliphs and were the de facto rulers of the state.