Writing History in the Medieval Islamic World by Fozia Bora;

Author:Fozia Bora;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781786726056
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK

The caliphate of al-Fā’iz and the vizierates of Ṭalā’i‘ b. Ruzzīk and al-‘Ādil Ruzzīk. The rise of the vizier Shāwar

[sub annis 556/1160–1, 558/1162]

Ibn al-Furāt covers the al-Fā’iz/Ṭalā’i‘ era and the subsequent eighteen-month tenure of Ruzzīk over almost thirty pages, through four as yet unidentified reports and another five on the authority of the following:

• Nuzhat al-muqlatayn by Ibn Ṭuwayr

• al-Muntaẓam fī ta’rīkh al-umam by Ibn al-Jawzī (1114-1201)

• Ma‘ādin al-dhahab by Ibn Abī Ṭayy

• Wafayāt al-a‘yān by Ibn Khallikān

The number and range of Fatimid-era reports available for the Ṭalā’i‘-Ruzzīk stage of Fatimid history are comparable to those available for the assassinations of al-Ẓāfir and his family, but for the newer phase, the sources do not differ except in relatively inconsequential details. Unlike the spectrum of early views on al-Ẓāfir’s death dispersed through the later sources, which sustain and perpetuate the controversy as Ibn al-Furāt and Ibn Taghrībirdī elaborate, for this troubled period of Fatimid political history, some consensus emerges in the early sources, even in those at variance with one another on preceding events of Fatimid history. Several questions arise from this: to what extent do the sources agree on the outline for this eight-year period of Fatimid history, and how and why did the consensus, such as it is, materialize in the earliest contemporary sources?

To establish this relative consensus, one may observe the similarity of detail to be found in the following early sources on the issue of how Ṭalā’i‘ came to Cairo during the ‘Abbās vizierate and the resulting departure, capture and death of ‘Abbās and Naṣr: Ibn Ṭuwayr (1130–1220), Usāma b. Munqidh (1095–1188), the late twelfth-century Bustān al-jāmi‘, Ibn Ẓāfir (1171–1216 or 1226) and Ibn Muyassar (d. 1287), who preserves extracts from earlier Fatimid-era historiography to take us to two years before the death of al-Fā’iz in 1160.24 All mention that Ṭalā’i‘ came to Cairo from Upper Egypt to answer pleas for help from the Fatimid house against ‘Abbās, murderer of the caliph al-Ẓāfir. Each describes the defeat of Abbās at the hands of Ṭalā’i‘. Most accounts also allude to his discovery of the former caliph’s body, interred under the house of Naṣr, and his arrangement of a state funeral and burial for him, all using similar wording. The main discernible exception to this agreement of reportage is that Usāma, writing his experiences many decades after they took place, recalls a battle between Ṭalā’i‘ and ‘Abbās outside Cairo before the latter flees.25 Yet the other sources, including the book of Ibn Ṭuwayr, who was in Cairo at this juncture and offers the temporally closest account, describe a bloodless coup.26 The disparity between reports by Usāma and Ibn Ṭuwayr is easily explained: the tendency towards hyperbole in Usāma’s memoirs, as he tries to magnify and embellish the rectitude or heroism of both himself and those whom his allegiance – and therefore narrative – favours, is self-evident. On the other hand, Ibn Ṭuwayr, though a Ḥafiẓī author, appears a more reliable narrator with an unsentimental style of both observation and presentation, whose account was written well after the Fatimids fell.

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