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Al-Afdal Shahanshah (Template:Lang-ar; Template:Lang-la; 1066 – 11 December 1121), born Abu al-Qasim Shahanshah bin Badr al-Jamali and surnamed al-Malik al-Afdal ("the excellent king"), was a vizier of the Fatimid caliphs of Egypt.

Ascent to power

He was born in Acre, the son of Badr al-Jamali, an Armenian mamluk who became Muslim. Badr was vizier for the Fatimids in Cairo from 1074 until his death in 1094, when al-Afdal succeeded him. Caliph Al-Mustansir Billah died soon afterwards, and al-Afdal appointed as caliph al-Musta'li, a child, instead of al-Mustali's much older brother Nizar ibn al-Mustansir. Nizar revolted and was defeated in 1095; his supporters, led by Hassan-i Sabbah, fled east, where Sabbah established the Nizari Isma'ili sect, known also as the order of Assassins.

At this time Fatimid power in Palestine had been reduced by the arrival of the Seljuk Turks. In 1097 he captured Tyre from the Seljuks, and in 1098 he took Jerusalem, expelling its Artuqid governor Ilghazi in place of the Fatimid Iftikhar al-Dawla. Al-Afdal restored most of Palestine to Fatimid control, at least temporarily.

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Final years and assassination

In 1115, an assassin tried to kill al-Afdal, but he was saved by his bodyguards. While he was not harmed, his health deteriorated from that time, leading to assigning his brother Ja'far the task of adding the official, calligraphic signature to documents, while in 1115, he designated his son, Sama al-Mulk, as his deputy (and thus heir-apparent). Following another failed attack by three assassins in 1118, al-Afdal suspected his own sons, and had them deprived of their positions and incomes.

On 13 December 1121, during a procession on the last day of Ramadan, al-Afdal was assassinated. The deed was commonly attributed to (and claimed by) the Nizari Order of Assassins. However, the contemporary Syrian chronicler Ibn al-Qalanisi states that the murder was the work of the Caliph al-Amir, and of al-Afdal's chief of staff, al-Ma'mun al-Bata'ihi, who would succeed him as vizier. Modern scholars commonly accept the Assassins' responsibility for the deed, apparently as revenge for Nizar's death, but whatever his true role in his master's death, al-Bata'ihi moved quickly to take control of the situation. He took his master's body to the vizieral palace and delayed the announcement of his death until al-Amir could be notified. On the morning of the next day, Eid al-Fitr, al-Amir appointed al-Bata'ihi as vizier and publicly reasserted his position as head of the state by presiding at the day's ceremony. Al-Afdal's adult sons were imprisoned, but the other members of al-Afdal's family, to whom after all the caliph himself was related, were allowed to partake in the ceremony, and al-Afdal received a funeral and burial appropriate to his station. At the same time, al-Amir moved quickly to confiscate al-Afdal's enormous wealth, houses, and estates, and brought the moveable items to his own palace. So great was the treasure amassed by al-Afdal that chroniclers describe it as larger than that of any previous king, and it took forty days to move it to the caliph's palace.

References

1. Ibn Khallikan (1843). "Al-Afdal Shahanshah". Ibn Khallikan's Biographical Dictionary. Translated by Mac Guckin de Slane. Paris. pp. 612–615.
2. Lev, Yaacov (1997). War and Society in the Eastern Mediterranean, 7th–15th centuries. p. 122. ISBN 90-04-10032-6.
3. Brett 2017, p. 251.
4. ^ Brett 2017, pp. 251–252.
5. ^ Brett 2017, p. 252.
6. Lewis 1969, p. 118.
7. Walker 2011.

Sources

• Brett, Michael (2017). The Fatimid Empire. The Edinburgh History of the Islamic Empires. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-0-7486-4076-8.
• Daftary, Farhad (2007). The Ismāʿı̄lı̄s: Their History and Doctrines (Second ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-61636-2.
• Halm, Heinz (2014). Kalifen und Assassinen: Ägypten und der vordere Orient zur Zeit der ersten Kreuzzüge, 1074–1171 [Caliphs and Assassins: Egypt and the Near East at the Time of the First Crusades, 1074–1171] (in German). Munich: C.H. Beck. ISBN 978-3-406-66163-1.
• Lewis, Bernard (1969) . "The Ismāʿīlites and the Assassins". In Setton, Kenneth M.; Baldwin, Marshall W. (eds.). A History of the Crusades, Volume I: The First Hundred Years (Second ed.). Madison, Milwaukee, and London: University of Wisconsin Press. pp. 99–133. ISBN 0-299-04834-9.
• Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades, vol. I: The First Crusade and the Foundation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Cambridge University Press, 1951.
• Stern, S. M. (1951). "The Succession to the Fatimid Imam al-Āmir, the Claims of the Later Fatimids to the Imamate, and the Rise of Ṭayyibī Ismailism". Oriens. 4 (2): 193–255. doi:10.2307/1579511. JSTOR 1579511.
• William of Tyre. A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea. Edited and translated by E. A. Babcock and A. C. Krey. Columbia University Press, 1943.
• The Damascus Chronicle of the Crusades: Extracted and Translated from the Chronicle of Ibn al-Qalanisi. H.A.R. Gibb, London, 1932.
• Walker, Paul E. (2011). "al-Āmir bi-Aḥkām Allāh". In Fleet, Kate; Krämer, Gudrun; Matringe, Denis; Nawas, John; Rowson, Everett (eds.). Encyclopaedia of Islam (3rd ed.). Brill Online. doi:10.1163/1573-3912_ei3_COM_23060. ISSN 1873-9830.

• 1066 births
• 1121 deaths
• 11th-century people of the Fatimid Caliphate
• 12th-century people of the Fatimid Caliphate
• Assassinated heads of government
• Egyptian Shia Muslims
• Ethnic Armenian Shia Muslims
• Muslims of the First Crusade
• People from Acre, Israel
• Viziers of the Fatimid Caliphate
• Victims of the Order of Assassins