Ayyubid
The Sunni Restoration in Cairo
Egypt returns to the Abbasid khutba, 567 AH
Muharram 567 AH / 1171 CE
Educational historical reconstructionWhere
Cairo, the mosque of al-Azhar
30.0459, 31.2625 · View on OpenStreetMap
Background
In Muharram 567 AH (September 1171 CE) the Ayyubid commander Salah al-Din (rahimahu Allah), known in the West as Saladin, brought the Fatimid caliphate of Egypt to an end and returned the country to Sunni Islam. The Fatimids were an Isma'ili Shi'i dynasty who had ruled Egypt for about two centuries, had founded Cairo (al-Qahira) as their walled capital and al-Azhar as their congregational mosque and the chief centre of Isma'ili teaching, and had set their own caliph against the Abbasid caliph of Baghdad. Salah al-Din, sent to Egypt as a Sunni officer in the service of Nur al-Din of Syria, gradually took control of the country, and when the last Fatimid caliph al-Adid lay dying he had the Friday sermon pronounced in the name of the Abbasid caliph instead. With that act, simple in form but momentous in meaning, the Fatimid caliphate ended without a battle in the streets, and Egypt was restored to the Sunni fold and to the nominal allegiance of Baghdad. The change was not only verbal: the official creed, the law taught in the mosques, and the colours of the state all turned from Fatimid Shi'ism to Sunnism, the Shafi'i and Maliki schools returning to prominence. At al-Azhar itself the Friday congregational prayer was suspended for about a century, and the mosque was gradually refitted for Sunni teaching; over the following centuries it would become the foremost centre of Sunni learning in the world. Salah al-Din went on to found the Ayyubid dynasty and, in 583 AH, to recover Jerusalem from the Crusaders. The restoration is recorded by the Egyptian historian al-Maqrizi in his al-Khitat and Itti'az al-Hunafa, by the historians of Saladin such as Abu Shama in Kitab al-Rawdatayn and Ibn al-Athir in al-Kamil, and in the biographical notices of Ibn Khallikan. This scene depicts the institution at the turn: a great Cairene mosque of Fatimid build, its keel-arched arcades and carved stucco around an open courtyard, study circles of scholars and students at work over their manuscripts, craftsmen repairing the fabric for its new use, the law and creed taught here passing from Isma'ili doctrine to Sunni jurisprudence. The framing is careful and non-partisan: the official return of Egypt to Sunni Islam, told through a name read from the pulpit and a school quietly changing hands.
What you see
An open paved courtyard (sahn) is ringed on every side by arcaded galleries carried on slender columns and keel-shaped arches with carved stucco hoods, the distinctive Fatimid building idiom of Cairo: this is the great congregational mosque the Fatimids raised, its fabric Shi'i in origin and now passing into Sunni use.
Across the courtyard floor sit small study circles (halaqat) of robed scholars and students, manuscripts and loose folios open on low stands and on the paving before them, the teaching life of a mosque-college rather than a single act of prayer.
The instruction in these circles is turning from Isma'ili doctrine to Sunni jurisprudence, the law of the Shafi'i and Maliki schools, the slower scholarly side of a restoration that would in time make this mosque the foremost centre of Sunni learning in the world.
The name now read in the Friday sermon and struck on the coin is that of the Abbasid caliph of Baghdad, restored to Egypt after the long Fatimid interval, the black of the Abbasids replacing the colours of the Fatimid house.
The change is the work of the Ayyubid commander Salah al-Din, a Sunni officer sent into Egypt, who ended the Fatimid caliphate and returned the country to Sunni Islam, the same leader who would later recover Jerusalem from the Crusaders.
At one side stand timber scaffolding and a draped hanging where craftsmen work on the fabric, the mosque being repaired and re-fitted for its new use, a building handed from one creed to another rather than torn down.
A domed canopy on columns rises near the centre of the courtyard and the galleries run unbroken in early Fatimid form, without the heavy carved stone, the great gateways, or the tall later minarets that the Mamluk and Ottoman centuries would add to al-Azhar.
Primary sources
Ibn al-Athir, al-Kamil fi al-Tarikh (early 13th c.): Sunni historical synthesis. Used for the end of the Fatimid caliphate, the death of al-Adid, and the rise of the Ayyubids in Egypt. Confidence high.
Further reading & cross-references
al-Maqrizi, al-Khitat and Itti'az al-Hunafa (15th c.): The great Sunni Egyptian historian's topography of Cairo and his history of the Fatimid dynasty. Principal source for al-Azhar, Fatimid Cairo, the end of the Fatimid caliphate, and the suspension of the Friday prayer at al-Azhar. Confidence high.
Abu Shama, Kitab al-Rawdatayn (13th c.): Sunni history of the reigns of Nur al-Din and Saladin. Used for Salah al-Din's takeover of Egypt and the restoration of the Sunni khutba in the name of the Abbasid caliph. Confidence high.
Ibn Khallikan, Wafayat al-A'yan (13th c.): Sunni biographical dictionary. Used for Salah al-Din, the last Fatimid caliph al-Adid, and the figures of the Ayyubid transition. Confidence high.
M. C. Lyons and D. E. P. Jackson, Saladin: The Politics of the Holy War (1982): Modern non-confessional academic biography, cross-reference only for the political detail and chronology of Salah al-Din's takeover and the dismantling of the Fatimid state. Does not frame the religious tone. Confidence high.
Guess places like this in GeoSiyer
Drop into a 360° scene from Islamic history and pin where — and when — it happened.
Play GeoSiyer