al-Dawla al-fatimyya fi Misr: Tafsir jadid.

• Author: Walker, Paul E.
• Position: Book Review

al-Dawla al-fatimyya fi Misr: Tafsir jadid. 2nd ed. By AYMAN FU'AD SAYYID Cairo: AL-DAR AL-MISRIYYA AL-LUBNANIYYA, 2000. Pp. 817.

The first edition of Ayman Fuad Sayyid's The Fatimid State in Egypt: A New Interpretation, which appeared in 1992, was at the time the most important new general study of the Fatimids in Arabic, especially on Egypt and in Egypt. Nothing as comprehensive had been published for many years. An older generation of Egyptian scholars was more active in Fatimid studies, but in the present Ayman Fuad Sayyid is one of only a few and is clearly far and away the leading authority. For the past two decades he has edited or re-edited most of the basic sources. Those editions have often been models of erudition, with a wealth of detail in the explanatory notes along with numerous citations to additional sources. His Fat mid State is, however, a work of synthesis, what he calls in the subtitle tafsir jadid, "a new interpretation." "New" here...