Nasir al-Dawla ibn Hamdan

Nasir al-Dawla Abu Muhammad al-Husayn ibn Hamdan (Arabic: ناصر الدولة بن حمدان) was a descendant of the Hamdanid dynasty who became a general of the Fatimid Caliphate, ruing Egypt as a de facto dictator in 1071–1073.

Abu Muhammad al-Husayn was a grandson of Abu Abdallah al-Husayn ibn Nasir al-Dawla, a Hamdanid prince who had fled to the Fatimid Caliphate when Mosul had been taken over by the Uqaylid dynasty in 990.^[1] He served as governor of Damascus from 1041 to 1048, succeeding Anushtakin al-Dizbari.^[2]^[3]

He played a leading role in the civil war of 1067 to 1073 between the Fatimids' Turkish and Nubian troops as the leader of the former. In this struggle, he requested the assistance of the Seljuks and even tried to abolish the Fatimid caliph al-Mustansir and restore allegiance to the Abbasids. He succeeded in becoming master of Cairo and reduced al-Mustansir to a powerless puppet, while his Turks plundered the palace and the treasury. These actions were blamed for the subsequent Mustansirite Hardship. His increasingly tyrannical regime led to a split and he was ousted for a time, but was able to regain control of Cairo in 1071/2. His rule was ended with the murder of himself and his family in March/April 1073. The anarchic conditions in the country continued until al-Mustansir called upon the governor of Palestine, Badr al-Jamali, for aid in late 1073.^[3]

References

^ Canard 1971, pp. 128–129.
^ Canard 1971, p. 129.
^ ^a ^b Lev 1991, pp. 44–45.

Sources

Canard, Marius (1971). "Ḥamdānids". In Lewis, B.; Ménage, V. L.; Pellat, Ch. & Schacht, J. (eds.). The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Volume III: H–Iram. Leiden: E. J. Brill. pp. 126–131. OCLC 495469525.
Halm, Heinz (2003). Die Kalifen von Kairo: Die Fāṭimiden in Ägypten, 973–1074 [The Caliphs of Cairo: The Fatimids in Egypt, 973–1074] (in German). Munich: C. H. Beck. ISBN 3-406-48654-1.
Lev, Yaacov (1987). "Army, Regime, and Society in Fatimid Egypt, 358–487/968–1094". International Journal of Middle East Studies. 19 (3): 337–365. doi:10.1017/S0020743800056762. JSTOR 163658. S2CID 162310414.
Lev, Yaacov (1991). State and Society in Fatimid Egypt. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 9789004093447.