This twenty-three min interview with Dr Shainool Jiwa provides an overview of theFatimidsMajor Muslim dynasty of Ismaili caliphs in North Africa (from 909) and later in Egypt (9731171) More, a Shii Ismaili dynasty whose two and a half-century rule extended from the shores of the Atlantic across the southern Mediterranean into Palestine, Syria and along the Red Sea coast, providing the first sustained experience of Shii rule in the region.
Focusing on the reign of the fourth FatimidImam–Caliphal-Muizz li-DinAllah (953 – 975 CE), Dr Jiwa reflects on the principles of Fatimid governance and the creation of institutions that enabled the transformation of the Fatimid dynasty from a North African state into an expansive Mediterranean empire.
Dr Jiwas study on the reign of Imam-Caliph al-Muizz is based on the magisterial work of the 15thcentury Ismaili餃硃iIdris Imadal-Dins (d.1468 CE)Uyunal-akhbar wa funun al-athar, the fountainheads of history. As the chief餃硃iof the Yemeni Tayyibi IsmailisAdherents of a branch of Shi’i Islam that considers Ismail, the eldest son of the Shi’i Imam Ja尪far al-廜〢diq (d. 765), as his successor., Idris composed the Uyunas a record of the IsmailiImamatfrom its inception up to his own time, drawing upon a rich repertoire of Ismaili and non-Ismaili sources that had been part of the Fatimid literary tradition.
TheU聆喝紳is the only surviving medieval Ismaili work available to us that documents the history of the Fatimid dynasty. Dr JiwasThe Founder of Cairois the first annotated English translation of the chapter on al- Muizz from theU聆喝紳.
