In the tenth century, the nominal unity of the Islamic world was split as several competing political entities arose and claimed the legitimacy to lead. The Buyids and the Fatimids are often presented as ruling in isolation from each other during this period, as merely regional leaders. Further, there has been almost no study of their relationship. While they exchanged two official missions during the reigns of the Fatimid Caliph al-‘Aziz (r. 975-996) and the Buyid Amir 'Adud al-Dawla (r. 978-983), each dynasty is often viewed independently, depicted as ruling over its respective territories from Cairo or Baghdad without consideration of their rival Shi’i state. This paper, however, will take a different approach and argue that these two dynasties were acutely aware of the other as rivals and made deliberate attempts to undermine each other’s legitimacy to rule. Through a rhetorical analysis of two Buyid-sponsored histories, al-Miskawayh’s Tajarab al-Umam and the surviving fragments of Abu Ishaq al-Sabi’s Kitab al-Taji, this paper will focus on the Buyid side of this exchange and explain how 'Adud al-Dawla attempted to emulate successful Fatimid policies while minimizing the legitimacy of the Fatimid Caliphs. 'Adud al-Dawla had a complicated game to play in articulating his own right to rule. The Buyids emerged out of the ninth century Zaydi states in Tabaristan and Gilan, but the Buyids later declared their allegiance to Ithna’ashari Shi’ism. Despite this, they maintained the symbolic position of the Sunni ‘Abbasid Caliph while harkening back to pre-Islamic Persianate forms of legitimacy by declaring themselves “Shahanshahs” and linking their rule with Sassanid kings. At the same time, the Buyids also styled themselves as Shi’i leaders through sponsoring Shi’i scholarship, ritual, and practice. When this led to Sunni riots in Baghdad, however, 'Adud al-Dawla began, in the model of the Fatimid Caliph al-‘Aziz, styling himself as a more universal Muslim leader. He pursued accomodationist policies towards the Sunnis and cultivated a closer relationship with the ‘Abbasid Caliph (which led to new religious privileges). Further, he made deliberate attempts to minimize the power and prestige of the Fatimid Caliphs, emphasizing his unprecedented knowledge of events in Fatimid territories while presenting the Fatimid Caliph as a merely regional ruler (“Sahib al-Maghrib”). Examining the interactions between these two dynasties will show how the Buyids began to make broader claims to universal Muslim leadership during the reign of ‘Adud al-Dawla.

This paper will examine the commercial regulation of Egypt under the Fatimid caliphate from 969 to 1171 AD. Building upon Islamic doctrine, pre-existing Egyptian administrative policy, and a desire to promote local and interregional trade, the Fatimid caliphal bureaucracy developed a number of successful economic regulatory mechanisms that aided merchants of various class and creed in Egypt. Despite this relatively strong bureaucratic presence, the Fatimid administration avoided much of the corruption that plagued the administrative ranks of their successors, the Ayyubids and Mamluks. I argue that the Fatimid caliphs and their administrators were able to avoid significant levels of corruption and mismanagement due to their desire to project an image of piety. The legitimacy of the caliphate was based substantially on religiosity and therefore a projection of piety was essential to the government’s mandate. The muhtasib, charged with commanding the good and forbidding the wrong as well as with overseeing the marketplace, rose in prominence during the Fatimid era in connection with this emphasis on pious behavior. Many of the mechanisms used during the Fatimid era remained in use by Egyptian traders and administrators into the Ottoman era and beyond. Fatimid law created a flexible contract system which allowed for nearly any stipulation that did not defy Islamic legal norms. It also developed an open court system to which followers of various religious sects could appeal. Christian and Jewish merchants were sometimes explicitly protected by royal decree. In addition to pious concerns, administrative oversight by different departments in the Fatimid bureaucracy kept corruption, and therefore the cost of trading, relatively low. Lastly, Fatimid administrators minted high-quality coinage which was used throughout the Mediterranean region, creating an underlying system of trust in Egyptian currency, which also allowed for paper bills to be drawn and redeemed inside and outside of Egypt. These factors caused Cairo to emerge as a major commercial center in the Mediterranean during the Fatimid era.

The medieval history of the 'Alawis of Syria, like that of other heterodox minorities, is often treated within a "persecution paradigm", whereby its relations with mainstream society are seen to be defined entirely by religious dissent, discrimination and state oppression. This image is largely determined, however, by the narrative quality of the available contemporary sources, which were for the most part composed by the urban literate (and thus essentially Sunni) scholarly class and/or focus exclusively on salient events such as instances of brigandage or forceful tax collection which are then covered with a religious-moral interpretation. As Kamal Salibi has argued with respect to the Druze and Maronite minorities of Lebanon, however, there were in fact very few historically documented instances of actual religious persecution, the notion of their retreat into a "mountain refuge" to escape persecution being deployed only in modern times to serve the construction of a common historical identity. This paper seeks to deconstruct the analogous myth that the 'Alawi or Nusayri Shi'i sect found refuge and constituted itself as a discrete confessional community in what is now western Syria and adjoining regions in reaction to systematic persecution by the Sunni Muslim state. It will briefly discuss the handful of references to the 'Alawis in medieval (essentially Ayyubid and Mamluk) chronicles and Damascene biographical dictionaries to show that even the inherently rare cases of violence against the community were motivated by fiscal or police considerations rather than religious intolerance. More important, it will draw on an unpublished and still little-known 'Alawi biographical dictionary from the early twentieth century, the Kitab Khayr al-Sani'a fi Mukhtasar Tarikh Ghulat al-Shi'a, and argue that the 'Alawi community's day-to-day concerns were very different than what outside chronicle sources suggest: On the one hand, 'Alawi individuals maintained regular, occasionally even cordial relations with the state authorities; on the other, their domestic relations were marked by scholarly disputes and tribal conflicts far more important and determinant of their social organisation than their dealings with non-'Alawi society. Away from the spotlight of histoire événementielle, a look at the more mundane social and intellectual history of the community, we will argue in conclusion, not only provides a better framework for understanding its internal history but also calls into question the supposed policies of restoring or imposing religious orthodoxy as are often imputed to the Ayyubid and Mamluk regimes.