A literary history of Persia

THE FATIMID CALIPHS 399temporal rulers were or were not descended from the Prophetthrough his daughter Fatima. But, as we shall see in a laterchapter, one of their most talented missionaries in Persia, thepoet and traveller Nasir-i-Khusraw, who held the high titleof Hujjaty or "Proof," of Khurasan a zeal andman of fierytransparent sincerity certainly believed in the genuinenessof the Fatimid pedigree.As regards the rule of the Fatimids,it was on the whole,despite occasional acts of cruelty and violence inevitable inthat time and place, liberal, beneficent, and favourable tolearning."Tbf. 4Isma!lli) doctrines/' says Guyard, 1 "were publicly taughtat Cairo in universities richly endowed and provided with libraries,where crowds assembled to listen to the most distinguished professors.The principle of the sect being that men must.be convertedby persuasion, the greatest tolerance was shown towards othercreeds. Mu'izz (the fourth Fatimid Caliph, reigned A.D. 952-975)permitted Christians to dispute openly with his doctors, a thinghitherto unheard of ;and Severus, the celebrated bishop ofUshmunayn, availed himself of this authorisation. Out of thefunds of the Treasury Mu'izz rebuilt the ruined church of St.Mercurius at Fystat.which the Christians had never hitherto beenpermittedto restore. Certain Musulman fanatics endeavoured toprevent this, and on the day when the first stone was laid a Shaykh,leaping down amongst the foundations, swore that he would dierather than suffer the church to be rebuilt. Mu'izz, being informedof what was taking place, caused this man to be buried under thestones, and only spared his life at tfte instance of the PatriarchEphrem.' Had the Isma'ili doctrine been able to maintain itselfin Egypt in its integrity, it would have involved the civilisationof the Muslim world. Unfortunately, as an actual consequence ofthis doctrine, a serious change was about to take place in the sect *;1Un grand m&itre des Assassins, pp. 14-15 of the tirage-a-part.'Guyard refers here to Quatremere's Vie du khalife fdtimite Moezzli-din-Alldh (extract from the Journal Asiatique), pp. 118 ct. seqq., and toan article by Defremery (Nouvelles Recherches sur les Ismailicns) in thesame Journal, Ser. V, vol. iii, p. 404.3 Allusion is here made to the monstrous pretensions advanced byal-Hakim, the grandson of al- Mu'izz, who claimed to be an Incarnation