The Rise of the Fatimids: The World of the Mediterranean and the Middle East in the Tenth Century CE.

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

The Rise of the Fatimids: The World of the Mediterranean and the Middle East in the Tenth Century CE. By MICHAEL BRETT. The Medieval Mediterranean: Peoples, Economies and Cultures, 400--1453. Leiden: BRILL, 2001. Pp. xi + 497. $160.

Michael Brett, professor (reader) of North African history at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, has already published well over a dozen major individual articles and book chapters on various aspects of the subject of this new book. Of scholars who write in English on the period in question, he is one of the leading experts. It is therefore a pleasure to find now in one volume the sum of all his reflections on the implications of the rise of the Fatimids, of what their revolution meant to Islam in general when it first occurred, and how to understand it not only in its own realm but around and across the medieval Mediterranean world as a whole. Despite Brett's many previous efforts and those of others, most notably Heinz Halm's The Empire of the Mahdi, this study adds both new detail and fresh analysis and it thus represents an important step forward.

Nevertheless, even while it is essential to recognize its undeniable value, it must be admitted also that, although written with admirable skill and intelligence, it is not an easy book to approach, nor, often, to follow. It is not, for example, a conventional history of the Fatimids but rather an interpretation of the dynasty's messianic foundation and the meaning of such an origin, particularly as expressed through its versions of its own sacred history, and what that came to mean either by virtue of imperial propaganda and design or as a consequence of subsequent historical events such as the conquest of Egypt. Brett, moreover, confines himself in this instance to the period of the first five Fatimid Imam-caliphs: al-Mahdi, al-[Qa.sup.[contains]]im, alMansur, al-[Mu.sup.[subset]]izz, and al-[Aziz.sup.[subset]]--that is, to the tenth century as the book's subtitle indicates. It closes, somewhat abruptly, with the death of al-[Aziz.sup.[subset]] and the accession of al-Hakim in the year 386/996. The reason why it should end at that point is not clear, especially a s it gets better and better as it goes along. More would have been nice to have. Nevertheless , given that Hakim's Empire stops with the Fatimid conquest of Egypt, Brett's work is the best we have in several ways for the reign of alCAziz and for the Fatimid move to the east...