Fatima.Mernessi_The-Forgotten-Queens-of-Islam-EN

The Lady of Cairo 175
scribbled on public walls. Al-Hakim's palace was inundated with
insulting letters, and the authorities had their hands full cleaning
the walls of the messages ridiculing the Fatimid's claim to divine
status. Mad with rage that the Egyptians dared to cover the walls
of the medina with messages of insubordination and disobedience,
al-Hakim gave the order to set the city on fire, 66 and some chroniclers
say that he found a cynical pleasure in watching its destruction.
67 With the city in flames, the decision of Sitt al-Mulk to take
action is scarcely surprising. But although virtually all the historians
agree in making her the murderer of al-Hakim and thus a fratricide,
only one suggests that the murderer was someone else. According
to the distinguished historian Maqrizi, who produced the most vivid
pictures of Fatimid Cairo in his Khitat, a book that is still one of
the most respected sources on the Fatimid regime, the assassin of
al-Hakim was a man of the Bani Husayn, who publicly declared in
415 that it was he who had killed the caliph with the complicity of
three other men. When he was asked to explain how he did it, 'the
man drew out a knife and plunged it into his heart saying, "That's
how I killed him," and he committed suicide before the people.' 68
Why did he kill him? He answered that he acted to defend the
honour of Islam and Allah. 69
But Maqrizi's anonymous assassin carries little weight compared
to the unanimity of all the other historians, who point to Sitt al-
Mulk as the instigator of the murder. She had good reason to do
away with him: he had wounded her pride by sending her humiliating
letters accusing her of zina (fornication) and threatening her with
death. 70 She then wrote to Ibn Daws, a great general in al-Hakim's
retinue, whom the latter had imagined to be her lover, and she
arranged a meeting with him: 'In the course of this meeting she
concluded a bargain with this military man and promised to share
power with him in exchange for his doing away with the caliph.'
When Ibn Daws's mission had been carried out and al-Hakim killed,
Sitt al-Mulk discovered to her great surprise that once you embark
on the course of political murder, you cannot put an end to it. What
was she to do with Ibn Daws, who knew everything, and with the
servants who had helped him? But there was something more
pressing to be done: the enthronement of al-Hakim's son, who was
still a child, something banned by the shar'ia, since to be caliph it
was required that one be an adult. And who better than Ibn Daws,
the strong man of the empire, to reason with the qadis and persuade
the religious authorities to collaborate?
Once the son of al-Hakim was crowned with the royal turban and