Despite opposition from the established Isma'ili clergy, Hamza persisted, apparently being tolerated or even patronized by al-Hakim himself, and set up a parallel hierarchy of missionaries in Egypt and Syria.
[4][5] According to al-Kirmani, al-Akhram preached the imminence of the end times, when formal religion and religious law (the sharīʿa) would be abolished and replaced with the pure, original paradisical worship of God.
[8][9] The most explosive of al-Akhram's views, however, was that the line of the imams was at an end, and that God was made manifest in the person of Caliph al-Hakim, who accordingly was the expected messiah, the al-Qāʾim.
Al-Hakim's reaction to the event—the murderer was swiftly executed, and the victim buried in rich clothes brought from the palace—only served to deepen suspicion that he sympathized with al-Akhram's views.
[2] Hamza also followed similar teachings: he established himself at a mosque on the Raydan Canal, outside the city gate of Bab al-Nasr, and there expounded the view that in al-Hakim, God had become incarnate.
According to the medieval chroniclers, he too enjoyed signs of favour from al-Hakim: when he complained to the Caliph that his life was in danger, he was given weapons, which he demonstratively hung on every entrance to the Raydan Mosque.
In it, they pledged to abandon every previous allegiance and swear obedience to "our Lord al-Hakim, the One, the Unique, the Sole One" and to place themselves at his disposal body and soul, including all their possessions and even their children.
[19][20] Although Hamza was the real founder of the Druze religion,[21][22] it received its name by another like-minded propagandist—and soon to become rival—the Turk al-Darazi (probably derived from the Persian word for tailor).
[24] This thesis was rejected by Bryer,[25] and al-Darzi is now considered by historians as a particularly zealous adherent of al-Hakim's divinity, writing letters to senior Fatimid officials and commanders urging them to join him.
[29] The conflict between the two parties came to a head at the Amr ibn al-As Mosque at Fustat (Old Cairo) on 19 June 1019 (12 Ṣafar 410 AH), known in Druze tradition as the "Day of al-Kāʾina", a name whose meaning is unknown.
When the Sunni chief judge (qāḍī al-quḍāt) learned of events, he went to the mosque, where Hamza's men tried to have him read out a statement affirming the divinity of al-Hakim.
[33] This only served to provoke the populace and the troops: on 29 June, the Turkish soldiers surrounded al-Darzi's house and, after a brief battle with his followers who had barricaded themselves there, stormed it.
The Turks then assembled before the palace gates, demanding that he be delivered to them for punishment; the historical sources are silent on al-Darzi's fate, but Hamza's epistles report that he was executed by al-Hakim.
[1][34][35] Robbed of their original target, the Turkish troops turned on Hamza and his followers, attacking the Raydan Mosque and setting its gate on fire.
[36][28] Hamza places this miracle on the day of the Islamic new year (1 Muharram 410 AH/9 May 1019 CE), which thus marked the resumption of the Druze's missionary activity (the "divine call").
Chroniclers hostile to al-Hakim, like Yahya of Antioch or later Sunni historians, saw in this a deliberate attempt by the Caliph to punish the Cairenes for opposing the Druze teachings.
The Sharif hesitated—according to Heinz Halm, likely waiting to see whether the new regime in Egypt would last—but after a series of supposed signs of divine displeasure, he had Hamza and one of his slaves beheaded in front of one of the gates of the Kaaba.
[1] The doctrine propagated by Hamza in his epistles reflects ideas current among Iranian Isma'ilis in the 10th century, particularly in the work of Abu Ya'qub al-Sijistani.
[1] Both Hamza and his assistant, Isma'il al-Tamimi, ascribed to and elaborated on neoplatonic ideas on the world soul and the universal intellect that had been absorbed by Isma'ili doctrine.
[51] According to Bryer, the core of Hamza's motivation was the divinity of al-Hakim, and an increasingly pronounced hatred to organized religion, as expressed in both the Isma'ili daʿwa and the traditional Sunni religious establishment.
[53] Early Isma'ilism regarded history as a sequence of cycles, each inaugurated by a prophetic figure like Noah or Muhammad, followed by seven imams and culminating in the appearance of a messiah (the Mahdī or al-Qāʾim) who would usher in a golden age or the last judgment.
[1] Since God was no longer manifest in the world, he instead sent prophets—Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and finally Muhammad—to create religious law (sharīʿa) in order to punish mankind.
[1][41] Notably, Hamza does not count the first Fatimid caliph, al-Mahdi Billah (r. 909–934), among these incarnations, but starts only with his successor, al-Qa'im (r. 934–946); according to the historian Heinz Halm, this is probably an echo of the doubts about his legitimacy.