Скачать или смотреть The FATIMID CALIPHATE: ENTIRE History Of The Fatimid Dynasty From Hidden Daggers To Saladin’s Coup

Cairo is one of the most important cities in the Islamic world. But few people remember that it was not built for Sunni Islam. It was founded as the capital of a rival Shia empire that history quietly erased.

That empire was the Fatimid Caliphate.

For over two hundred years, the Fatimids ruled North Africa, Egypt, and parts of the eastern Mediterranean. They claimed direct descent from Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad, and used that claim to challenge the legitimacy of the Abbasid Caliphs in Baghdad.

They did not conquer through massive armies alone. They expanded through belief. Through underground missionary networks. Through promises of justice to the marginalized. Entire cities changed allegiance before soldiers ever arrived.

When the Fatimids entered Egypt, Cairo fell almost without resistance. A new city was founded beside the Nile, designed not just as a capital, but as a statement. This was to be the heart of a new Islamic order.

They built Al-Azhar, which would become one of the most influential centers of learning in the Muslim world. They sponsored science, philosophy, libraries holding hundreds of thousands of manuscripts. At their height, the Fatimids ruled a wealthy, cosmopolitan empire connected by trade routes stretching from the Atlantic to the Red Sea.

But the same religious authority that made them powerful also made them fragile.

As time passed, caliphs lost real control. Military strongmen and viziers ruled in their place. Court conspiracies replaced foreign wars. Power shifted behind closed doors. The empire began to consume itself.

Then came one of the strangest rulers in medieval history: Caliph al-Hakim. He banned foods, destroyed churches, declared himself divine, and then disappeared into the night without leaving a body behind. His reign left the Fatimid state unstable, feared, and deeply divided.

While the Fatimids weakened, the world around them changed. Crusader states carved up the Levant. Sunni powers regrouped. And a Kurdish general named Saladin was sent to Cairo, not to seize the throne, but to stabilize a dying regime.

He did something far more decisive.

He removed the Fatimid caliph’s name from the Friday sermon.

No siege. No coronation. No dramatic execution.

Just silence.

And with that silence, an empire ended.

The question is not why the Fatimid Caliphate collapsed. The real question is how a dynasty that built Cairo, ruled millions, and shaped Islamic thought for centuries could be almost completely erased from popular memory.

That is the story we begin today.
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