Pro-Fatimid conspiracy against Saladin

The Fatimid Caliphate was a major medieval Islamic empire that ruled large parts of North Africa, the Levant, and the western Arabian Peninsula from 909 to 1171.

It was faced with invasions by the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, domestic turmoil, and the intervention by the powerful Sunni ruler of Syria, Nur al-Din Zengi, who sent his general Shirkuh into Egypt.

[24][25] Some of the Fatimid troops who survived the massacre in Cairo, and others who were later dismissed by Saladin as he consolidated his power, made for Upper Egypt, where they launched sporadic uprisings, but without much success.

[29][30][31] After al-Adid's death, the still sizeable Isma'ili community was persecuted by Saladin's new Ayyubid regime, while the members of the Fatimid family were placed under arrest in the palace, and later in the Citadel of Cairo, where they lived out their days.

[37][38] The sources differ as to the conspiracy's aims methods: a report sent after the conspiracy's uncovering to Nur al-Din by Saladin's chief secretary, Qadi al-Fadil, which later quoted by the 13th-century historians Ibn Abi Tayyi and Abu Shama, maintains that the conspirators made common cause with the Crusaders,[33][34] using the services of Ibn Qarjalah, who had fled Egypt several years earlier and had helped the Crusaders plan their 1169 invasion.

[39] King Amalric of Jerusalem reportedly sent one of his courtiers, a certain George, to Cairo ostensibly for negotiations with Saladin, but in reality to meet with the conspirators, as well as Christian and Jewish scribes of the former Fatimid chancery who had been taken over by the new regime.

[46] On the other hand, Saladin's championing of Sunnism, and conversely, opposition of Shi'ism of any stripe, as well as his ambition to extend his rule into Zengid Syria, which manifested itself already in summer 1174, made him a clear enemy to Nizari interests as well, even without the appeal from the conspirators in Cairo.

[48] This not only removed a capable general, who had already helped suppress the 1169 uprising, as well as his troops from Egypt, but also the figure around whom the Ayyubid loyalists were most likely to rally around in the case of Saladin's death.

[49] Indeed, according to some accounts, the poet Umara claimed to have deliberately encouraged Turan-Shah in his ambitions away from Egypt, with exhortations such as "in front of you is the conquest of Yemen and of Syria" or "create for yourself a kingdom in which you will not be joined to another".

[52] Despite favourable conditions in 1173, when Saladin was on campaign beyond the Dead Sea and Turan-Shah occupied in Upper Egypt, the conspirators did not make a move, possibly due to the inaction of the King of Jerusalem.

[52] Saladin sought a jurisconsult (fatwa) as to their fate, which was death: beginning on 6 April, with the poet Umara, and ending on 23 May with Ibn Kamil al-Mufaddal, they were executed in public and their bodies crucified on Bayn al-Qasrayn, the main square of Cairo, located between the Fatimid Great Palaces.

[37] The official account of the conspiracy, as reported by Qadi al-Fadil and repeated by most sources after, has been examined critically by modern historians, who have cast doubts on its veracity.

[60] In his 1972 biography of Saladin, Andrew Ehrenkreutz, also gives credence to the plot, but suggests that Turan-Shah's dispatch to Yemen was to remove him from Cairo, and make him unable to shield the executed men, whom he had patronized while in Egypt.

As they put it, "Saladin could not be confident about Nur al-Din's reaction, and a first-hand account of a dangerous conspiracy would help to underline the delicacy of the situation in Egypt as well as to emphasize the difficulties and responsibilities of his own position".

[67] Military historian Michael Fulton likewise rejects the notion of a collusion with the Crusaders, of which there is no evidence in Western sources, while also pointing out the similarity of the allegation with the conspiracy of Mu'tamin in 1169.

[68] He also shares the view of Lyons and Jackson of Saladin "conveniently uncovering the Fatimid plot" just when Nur al-Din's envoy was present and his own relations with his Syrian overlord strained.

It was led by the chieftain of the Rabi'a Bedouin, whose ancestors had held the hereditary position of governor of Aswan on the southern border of Egypt, with the title of Kanz al-Dawla.