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Bishop Severus attended his court, and Coptic churches were rebuilt. Throughout the Fatimid period we constantly find Christians and Jews, and especially Armenians, advanced to the highest offices of state. This was partly due, of course, to their special qualifications as scribes and accountants, for Arabs and Turks were no hands at "sums." The land had rest under this wise and tolerant caliph.
It was a question whether Egypt would fall to the Christian king of Jerusalem or the Moslem king of Damascus; but, after several invasions by both, Nur-ed-din settled the problem by sending his Syrian army to Cairo in 1169, when the Crusaders withdrew without offering battle, and the Fatimid caliphate came to an end in 1171.
These, in general, were the means employed by Saladin to win all back to the true faith; in time he was successful, and Kâhira no longer rested under the stigma of heresy. The dignity of the Fatimid age was lowered by Saladin's quartering the officers of his army in the magnificent palaces, while he occupied the house of the Viziers.
In the tenth century they had established a caliph among the Berbers at Kayrawan . They had thence invaded Egypt with temporary success in 914 and 919. When the death of Kafur in 968 left the country a prey to rival military factions, the fourth of the caliphs of Kayrawan called the Fatimid caliphs, because they claimed a very doubtful descent from Fatima sent his army into Egypt.
Compared to this irreparable disintegration of the empire, temporary schisms such as the Omayyad Khalifate in Spain, the Fatimid Khalifate in Egypt, and here and there an independent organization of the Kharijites were of little significance.
The bulk of the Egyptian Moslems apparently preserved their orthodoxy and suffered an heretical caliphate for two centuries with traditional composure. The Christian Copts found the new régime a marked improvement. Mysticism finds kindred elements in many faiths, and the Fatimid caliphs soon struck up relations with the local heads of the Christian religion.
The Fatimid rulers outvied each other in embellishing Kâhira with artistic structures; this seems surprising because, on account of the charge of heresy, Kâhira was cut off from the Arabian centres of art and learning, from Bagdad, Damascus, and Cordova, and of course the artists and students, who formerly frequented the mosques, could not do so when they were in the hands of heretics.
The Fatimid period alone allowed them some measure of toleration; their religious forms are similar to those of the Greek church, but their discipline is more severe, their Lenten fast covering a period of fifty-five days, with abstinence from sunrise to sunset. The Church of St. George will illustrate the peculiar arrangement of their religious edifices.
Shortly every monument of the brilliant Fatimid period had vanished, with the exception of four mosques and the three gates previously alluded to. Saladin, however, inaugurated a new era of building, and during his nominal reign of twenty-four years three mosques and sixteen colleges attest his zeal to the "cause."
The people, who had never been really converted to the Fatimid creed, accepted the latest reformation with their habitual nonchalance. This was really the greatest achievement of Saladin and his house. Cairo succeeded to Baghdad and Cordova as the true metropolis of Islam, and Egypt has remained true to the most narrow school of orthodoxy ever since.
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