Fatimid invasion of Egypt (914–915)
A risky affair even at the outset, the arrival of Abbasid reinforcements from Syria and Iraq under Mu'nis al-Muzaffar doomed the invasion to failure, and al-Qa'im and the remnants of his army abandoned Alexandria and returned to Ifriqiya in May 915.
In contrast to their predecessors, who were content to remain a regional dynasty on the western fringes of the Abbasid Caliphate, the Fatimids held ecumenical pretensions.
As imams of the Isma'ili Shi'a sect, and claiming descent from Fatima, the daughter of Muhammad and wife of Ali, they regarded the Sunni Abbasids as usurpers and were determined to overthrow and replace them.
[1] In line with this imperial vision, following the establishment of their rule in Ifriqiya, the Fatimids' next objective was Egypt, the gateway to the Levant and Iraq, the old heartlands of the Islamic world and seat of their Abbasid rivals.
After Tripoli, Libya capitulated in June 913, al-Qa'im left one of the principal Kutama generals, Habasa ibn Yusuf, there, to prepare the further eastward expansion of the Fatimid empire.
Although both died shortly after, their conflict weakened the Fatimid position in the Yemen, allowing the pro-Abbasid Yu'firids to regain much lost ground, and thwarted any hopes of a simultaneous attack on Egypt from the southeast.
[6] The 15th-century Isma'ili (and thus pro-Fatimid) historian, Idris Imad al-Din, provides the most detail about the expedition against Egypt, and is complemented by Sunni sources such as al-Tabari and al-Kindi, who write from the opposite side.
The Abbasid garrisons of Sirte and Ajdabiya abandoned these towns without battle, and on 6 February Habasa entered Barqa, the capital of Cyrenaica and the "gateway of Egypt".
[9] He urged the members of the local Arab militia (the jund) to enroll in the Fatimid army, while imposing considerable financial levies on the town's population.
[12] He furthermore executed two chieftains of the Mazata, who nine years before had waylaid and robbed al-Mahdi during his journey to Ifriqiya; their sons were also killed, while their womenfolk were sold into slavery and their possessions confiscated.
[14] At the head of a force comprising numerous Kutama as well as members of the Arab jund of Ifriqiya, al-Qa'im set out from al-Mahdi's residence at Raqqada on 11 July.
The Egyptian forces pursued the Kutama into the night, but during the pursuit the inexperienced levies fell into an ambush, saving the Fatimid army from a complete rout.
[14][16] Unable to cross the river to Fustat, al-Qa'im moved, with a large part of his army, around Takin's defences and into the fertile Fayyum Oasis, where they could find provisions.
[18] Dhuka occupied the city and installed a strong garrison under his son al-Muzzafar, before returning to Fustat to mete out punishment to those elements suspected of corresponding with al-Qa'im.
Habasa repeatedly acted without consulting al-Qa'im, and committed several atrocities against civilians; his abandonment of the battlefield doomed the expedition, and on his return to Ifriqiya, he was executed.
[29] According to Michael Brett, the Fatimid invasion failed chiefly "because the expedition found itself deep in the interior of the country, on the desert bank of the Nile across the river from the Egyptian capital, confronted by a garrison which had been able to call upon the forces of the empire at its back".
[31] Based on a passage in the history of Ibn Khaldun, the Dutch orientalist Michael Jan de Goeje, who first studied the Qarmatians of Bahrayn, an offshoot branch of the same movement that gave rise to the Fatimids, suggested the existence of a covert alliance between the two, and of a coordinated plan of attack against the Abbasids, with the Qarmatians attacking from their bases close to the Abbasid metropolitan region of Iraq, and the Fatimids from the west.
Furthermore, more recent analysis of the origins of the Fatimid–Qarmatian schism has demonstrated the deep-seated doctrinal differences and hostility between the two Isma'ili branches, and the fundamentally anti-Fatimid disposition of the Qarmatians.
[33] 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.
[37] By then, the Abbasid Caliphate, weakened by constant power struggles between rival bureaucratic, court, and military factions, and deprived of its outlying provinces to ambitious local dynasts, had ceased to exist as a political entity, with the Abbasid caliphs a powerless pawn of the Buyids;[38] while the Fatimid regime had grown stronger and far more wealthy, and now disposed of a large and disciplined army.
