Prophetic Parallels in Abu ʿAbd Allah Al-Shiʿi's Mission Among the Kutama Berbers, 893–910

The foundation of Abu ʿAbd Allah's movement was that which God Almighty had ordained concerning the victory of His friends' cause, the strengthening of His True Religion and the exaltation of His Word. Abu ʿAbd Allah al-Shiʿi was an Ismaʿili dāʿĪ and the architect of the Fatimid revolution in North Africa. Mobilizing support among the Kutama Berbers, he was able ultimately to overthrow the Aghlabid house and proclaim ʿAbd Allah as the Mahdi and first Fatimid imam in 909.1 Our primary source for Abu ʿAbd Allah's career is al-Qadi al-Nuʿman's Kitāb iftitāḥ al-daʿwa, completed in 957.2 As the official account of the Fatimid rise to power, it is an excellent source for understanding the ideology and propagands of the North African phase of the Fatimid daʿwa. Although the Iftitāḥ is not devoted explicitly to religious/theological questions in the manner of al-Qudi al-Nuʿ man's other writings, an attempt to establish the historical validity of the Fatimid claim to the imamate is implicit throughout the work.The Iftitah is a text of religious significance precisely because it is a historical account of God's action through His human agents to restore the original Islamic community of the Prophet and a righteous political order governed according to God's will, a theme not uncommon in medieval Islam and one to which we shall return later in our discussion. The Iftitah is thus a superb document for ascertaining the Fatimids' perceptions of themselves and how they wanted to appear to a literate audience. Marius Canard, Farhat Dachraoui, and Tilman Nagel have discussed these subjects thoroughly in several works dealing with the Fatimids' North African propaganda.3 My intent here is not to discuss the specific vocabulary of Abu cAbd Allah's daFwa anew, but rather the environment which Abu cAbd Allah proclaimed his "summons to the truth," an environment which enabled him, both by accident and by design, to pattern his career after that of the Prophet.