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The Ismailians regarded Obaid himself as the Mahdi, and they also believed in incarnations of the "universal soul," which in former ages had appeared as the Hebrew Prophets, but which to the Muhammedan manifested itself as imans. The iman is properly the leader of public worship, but it is not so much an office as a seership with mystical attributes.
Musa ibn Isa, however, held the appointment of Governor of Egypt on three separate occasions, and of his third period Said ibn Batrik tells the following anecdote: "While Obaid Allah ibn el-Mahdi was ruling in Egypt," he relates, "he sent a beautiful young Koptic slave to his brother, the caliph, as a gift. The Egyptian odalisk so charmed the caliph that he fell violently in love with her.
The Fatimite caliph Obaid Allah and his son Abu'l Kasim cherished designs not only upon Egypt, but even aimed at the destruction of the Abbasid caliphate, these plans being so far successful as to leave the Fatimites in secure possession of Alexandria, and more or less in power in Fayum. The Fatimite caliphs had lofty and pretentious claims to the allegiance of the Moslem world.
Hippocrates, Galen, Sydenham, Auenbrugger, Morgagni, these are representatives of this great class, and Maimonides must be considered one of them. Moses Ben Maimum, whose Arabic name was Abu Amran Musa Ben Maimum Obaid Alla el-Cordovi, who was called by his Jewish compatriots Ramban or Rambam, was born at Cordova in Spain, on the 30th of March in 1135 or 1139, the year is in doubt.
Critics are not wanting who dispute the family origin of Obaid Allah, but his claim appears to have been unhesitatingly admitted by his own immediate followers.
Some accounts trace the descent of Obaid from Abd Allah ibn Maimun el-Kaddah, the founder of the Ismailian sect, of which the Carmathians were a branch.
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