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A new dynasty of Mohammedan adventurers, the Fatimites, had arisen on the coast of Northern Africa and had made themselves masters of Egypt . Five years before that event they had already occupied Sicily; in 976 they turned their attention to Italy.
The respect of nations still waited on the successors of the apostle, the oracles of the law and conscience of the faithful; and the weakness or division of their tyrants sometimes restored the Abbassides to the sovereignty of Bagdad. But their misfortunes had been imbittered by the triumph of the Fatimites, the real or spurious progeny of Ali.
Under his reign the Fatimites were attacked by Abu Yazid, a Berber, who gathered around him the Sunnites, and the revolutionaries succeeded in taking the Fatimite capital Kairwan. El-Mansur, however, soon defeated Abu Yazid in a decisive battle and rebuilt a new city, Mansuria, on the site of the modern Cairo, to commemorate the event. Dying in 953, he was succeeded by Muiz ad-Din.
At the termination of that period, they were despoiled of their power by the Tartar posterity of Gengis Khan, after having witnessed the establishment of a race of Egyptian caliphs named Fatimites, the pretended descendants of Fatima, the daughter of Mohammed.
The Fatimites indeed sprang from the same movement, and their founder professed the same political and irreligious philosophy as Hasan himself; but this did not stand in his way, and his knowledge of their origin made him the less disposed to render homage to the sacred pretensions of the new imams, whom he contemptuously designated as the spawn of the quacks, charlatans, and the enemies of Islam.
The haughty Bagdad, once so mighty, sank into the dust before her. "But the Fatimites were neither wiser nor more fortunate than the Abbassites, of whom I told you yesterday, had been.
Their downfall was due to their own decline into imbecility, through which they fell into the hands of Turkish viziers who, keeping their nominal masters in subserviency, themselves assumed the actual rule. For several generations the caliphs of Bagdad, under whose sway the Fatimites were now reduced, had attracted to their capital slaves from Turcoman and Mongol hordes.
In every close onset, or single combat, the despair of the Fatimites was invincible; but the surrounding multitudes galled them from a distance with a cloud of arrows, and the horses and men were successively slain; a truce was allowed on both sides for the hour of prayer; and the battle at length expired by the death of the last companions of Hosein.
The rivals were known as the Fatimites and the Abassides. The Fatimites claimed the caliphate as being the heirs of Ali, Mahomet's son-in-law, and established their throne at Cairo. The Abassides, who were Mahomet's male heirs, maintained their state at Bagdad.
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