2 The Advent of the Fatimids

with it a new era. A largely conservatively Sunni province of

the once unified 'Abbasid caliphate almost overnight became
Shi'i and would no longer pay allegiance in any form to the
supreme ruler in Baghdad.'
The even$ just recalled occurred in early Rajab zg6/late
of his caliphate
March gog. Theand the which
victory right of hisbrought Aba 'Abdallih and
had
his Berber army to power gave him instant dominion over the
whole ofAghlabid territory, including the areas of modem Tu-
nisia, Algeria, portions of Libya, and Sicily. In realizing this
achievement, however, he was not acting for himself but on
behalf of an Imam who was at that triumphant moment still
though athouse
under last inarrest, two months'
possession of a vast march away,
political in the
domain distant
with its
Maghribi
attendant town of Sijilmisa.
resources, was thus The revolution~ought
incomplete. Without its by the da'i,
Imam it

i lacked the real reason for its existence; the appeal, the da'wa,
l
I on which it was based, and for which it was created, depended
I on the safe arrival of the Imam and the eventual proclamation
Fatimid ancestors and de-
/
/ scendants to rule the Islamic world. But that was not to happen
1)
I! for almost another ten months. Only in late Rabi' I1 zgy/Janu-
I# ary of 910. did the Imam finally reach Raqqida where he was
111
proclaimed caliph with the messianic regnal name of al-MahdL2
)i The interveningmonths were, however, critically important for
111 the new government. Abfi 'Abdallih, though long accustomed
IIIII

I . For the broad general background to the Fatimid victory, see in

particularMohamedTalbi, LEmirat Aghlabi&(r84-296/8oo-gog) (Paris,
1966); Farhat Dachraoui, Le Calijat Fafimidc au Maghreb, 296-364909-
973: hutoire, politique et institutions (Tunis, 1981). and most especially
Heinz Halm, Das Rdch dw Mahdi: Der Auptieg der Fatimiden (875-973)
(Munich, l g g ~ )Eng.
, trans. M. Bonner, TheEmfireoflheMahdi: TheRise
of theFaiimids (Leiden, 1996).
e. The most recent general study of the beginning of the Ismaili
movement and its relationship to the advent of al-Mahdi as imam-caliph
is Halm's Reich des Mahdi but see also the important article by W.
Madelung, 'Das Imamat in der fnihen ismailitischen Lehre,' Derlslem,
37 (1961): 43-135, and Farhad Daftary, The Ismli'ib: Their Histoly and
Doctriner (Cambridge, iggo), especially 91-145.