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Medieval Egypt Domination
A new era began in Egypt with the arrival of Ahmad ibn Tulun as governor in Al Fustat in 868. He inaugurated the autonomy of Egypt and, with the succession of his son, Khumarawayh, to power, established the principle of locally based hereditary rule. Autonomy greatly benefited medieval Egypt because the local dynasty halted or reduced the drain of revenue from the country to Baghdad. The Tulinid state ended in 905 when imperial troops entered Al Fustat (modern day Islamic Cairo). For the next thirty years, Egypt was again under the direct control of the central government in Baghdad.
The Mosque of Ibn Tulun, Cairo
The Ikhshidid State The Tulinids and the Ikhshidids brought Egypt peace and prosperity:
Neither the Tulinids nor the Ikhshidids sought to withdraw Egypt from the Islamic empire headed by the caliph in Baghdad. The Fatimid State Under the Fatimids, Egypt became the centre of a vast empire, which at its peak comprised North Africa, Sicily, Palestine, Syria, the Red Sea coast of Africa, Yemen, and the Hijaz in Arabia, including the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. Control of the holy cities conferred enormous prestige on a Muslim sovereign, and the power to use the yearly pilgrimage to Mecca to his advantage. Cairo was the seat of the Shia caliph, who was the head of a religion as well as the sovereign of an empire. The Fatimids established Al Azhar in Cairo as an intellectual centre where scholars and teachers elaborated the doctrines of the Ismaili Shia faith.
Al Azhar, Cairo
The first century of Fatimid rule represents a high point for medieval Egypt. The administration was reorganized and expanded. It functioned with admirable efficiency: tax farming was abolished, and strict probity and regularity in the assessment and collection of taxes was enforced. The revenues from its medieval Egypt domination were high and were then augmented by the tribute of subject provinces. This period was also an age of great commercial expansion and industrial production. The Fatimids fostered both agriculture and industry and developed an important export trade. The two great harbours of Alexandria in Egypt and Tripoli in present-day Lebanon became centres of world trade. In the east, the Fatimids gradually extended their sovereignty over the ports and outlets of the Red Sea for trade with India and Southeast Asia and tried to win influence on the shores of the Indian Ocean. In the end, however, the Fatimid bid for world power failed. A weakened and shrunken empire was unable to resist the crusaders, who in July 1099 captured Jerusalem from the Fatimid garrison after a siege of five weeks. Saladin and the Ayyubid Empire Saladin abolished the Fatimid caliphate, which by this time was dead as a religious force, and returned medieval Egypt to Sunni orthodoxy. He restored and tightened the bonds that tied Egypt to eastern Islam and reincorporated Egypt into the Sunni fold represented by the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad. At the same time, Egypt was opened to the new social changes and intellectual movements that had been emerging in the East. Saladin introduced into Egypt the madrasah, a mosque-college, which was the intellectual heart of the Sunni religious revival. Even Al Azhar, founded by the Fatimids, became in time the centre of Islamic orthodoxy. After Saladin's death in 1193, his dominions split up into a loose dynastic empire controlled by members of his family, the Ayyubids. Within this empire, the Ayyubid sultans of Egypt were paramount because their control of a rich, well-defined territory gave them a secure basis of power for their medieval Egypt domination. Economically, the Ayyubid medieval Egypt domination period was one of growth and prosperity. Egyptian products, including alum, for which there was a great demand, were exported to Europe. Egypt also profited from the transit trade from the East. Culturally, too, the Ayyubid medieval Egypt domination period was one of great activity. Egypt became a centre of Arab scholarship and literature and acquired a cultural primacy that it has retained through the modern period. The prosperity of the cities, the patronage of the Ayyubid princes, and the Sunni revival made the Ayyubid period another cultural high point in Medieval Egypt Domination and Arab history.
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