A secret movement's leader hid as a merchant, then founded a caliphate
For years the head of a clandestine religious network lived as an ordinary trader in Sijilmasa, on the edge of the Sahara, hiding from Abbasid agents. Then one of his missionaries led Berber tribesmen to overthrow the rulers of Ifriqiya, and in 910 the fugitive was proclaimed caliph al-Mahdi, founder of the Fatimid dynasty.
Even his name is uncertain. He was most likely born Sa'id ibn al-Husayn, probably in Askar Mukram in Khuzistan on 31 July 874, though other traditions place his birth in Iraq or Syria, and later he insisted his true name was Ali. Orphaned young, he was raised in Salamiya, on the edge of the Syrian Desert, by an uncle who appeared to be a wealthy merchant but secretly led the Isma'ili mission, or da'wa. The movement, a branch of Shi'a Islam, awaited the return of a hidden imam descended from Ja'far al-Sadiq as the mahdi, a messiah who would overthrow the Abbasid Caliphate, weakened in those decades by turmoil and revolt.
Sa'id took over the growing network in the mid-890s. His claim that he and his ancestors were not mere stand-ins for the hidden imam but imams themselves split the movement in 899, and those who rejected it became the Qarmatians. Over-eager Bedouin supporters then rose in Syria in 902 and 903 to force him into the open. The Abbasids crushed them and began hunting him, so he fled via Ramla and Fustat to Sijilmasa, in today's Morocco. There he waited until his missionary Abu Abdallah al-Shi'i, leading the Kutama Berbers, toppled the Aghlabid dynasty in 909.
Proclaimed caliph in January 910, he claimed a divine right to conquer the world. Yet some of his own missionaries were disappointed that he was no semi-divine messiah; he purged them, including Abu Abdallah, and faced revolts from followers let down by unfulfilled promises and from subjects resentful of the Kutama's demands.
His state ran on conventional lines, staffed by former Aghlabid officials and defended by Kutama warriors. Two invasions of Egypt failed, leaving him only Cyrenaica; raids in Byzantine southern Italy brought plunder but no lasting gains; and the Umayyads of al-Andalus frustrated his grip on the Berbers. In 921 he moved to his fortified new city of Mahdiya on the Tunisian coast, where he died on 4 March 934, succeeded by his only son, al-Qa'im.
Source: Abd Allah al-Mahdi Billah
