
The Fatimid Empire
Tom Verde
Michael Brett.
2017, Edinburgh UP, 978-0-74864-0-775, £90.00 hb.
For nearly three centuries from 910–1171 CE, Fatimid power stretched from the Atlantic coast of North Africa to the shores of India, with governors and client kings ruling various cities and fortified provinces. This comprehensive volume, part of The Edinburgh History of the Islamic Empires series, is a close examination of an era that
was critical in the evolutionary development of the Muslim community “from a conquering army into a civilian population,” writes Brett. He studies the dynasty from
its inception as “a means to displace … [its] ‘Abbasid rivals as the legitimate rulers of a Muslim commonwealth centred upon Cairo,” to its mad, albeit enlightened ruler
(al-Hakim, 10th and 11th centuries), to its burgeoning economy, “heightened by the trading and manufacturing of agricultural produce,” such as flax for linen and
Sugarcane, “to supply an export as well as an internal market.”
was critical in the evolutionary development of the Muslim community “from a conquering army into a civilian population,” writes Brett. He studies the dynasty from
its inception as “a means to displace … [its] ‘Abbasid rivals as the legitimate rulers of a Muslim commonwealth centred upon Cairo,” to its mad, albeit enlightened ruler
(al-Hakim, 10th and 11th centuries), to its burgeoning economy, “heightened by the trading and manufacturing of agricultural produce,” such as flax for linen and
Sugarcane, “to supply an export as well as an internal market.”
You may also be interested in...
Umayyad Family Dynasty Creates Unprecedented Empire
Explore the development and history of the Umayyad Caliphate, one of the most consequential empires the world has ever known.Child's Play: Reconstructing Everyday Life of Youth in Ancient Egypt
Egyptologist Amandine Marshall observes how the depictions of children created by Ancient Egyptians seldom illustrated their actual lives.Nomadic Chieftain’s Biography Unveils Dynamics of Colonial Expansion
Historian Tetsu Akiyama challenges the narrative that the Kyrgyz were a “static and monotonous ‘traditional’ society’” destined to be subsumed.