Читать книгу A Short History of the Fatimid Khalifate онлайн

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Elsewhere Maqrizi defends the Fatimid claims by saying that the ʿAlids were always suspected by the ʿAbbasid Khalifs, and so “they had no resort but to conceal themselves and were scarcely known, so that Muhammad b. Ismaʿil, the Imam ancestor of ʿUbayd Allah, was called the ‘concealed’” (Maq. i., 349). But this tells the other way: it admits that the ʿAlid genealogy was not well known: and the mere fact that ʿAbdullah was sought for by the Khalif simply shows that his pretensions were known to be dangerous, as a Mahdi with a body of followers would necessarily be, and is no proof of the validity of the descent afterwards claimed by ʿAbdullah’s descendants. The obscurity of the ʿAlid genealogy afterwards favoured the Fatimid claims, but it does not seem that that claim was part of their original programme. The first idea was to support the claims of the vanished Imam, claims selected in all probability because of the convenient fact that he had vanished, and to represent ʿAbdullah and his descendants simply as Mahdis, viceroys to guide and direct the people of Islam until the day came for the concealed Imam to be revealed again.