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Baha Al-Din Qaraqush
Baha al-Din Qaraqush al-Asadi al-Rumi al-Maliki al-Nasiri () was a eunuch military commander in the service of Saladin. He served as palace chamberlain and gaoler of the deposed Fatimid dynasty, and undertook for his master the construction of the Citadel of Cairo and the fortification of Acre. After Saladin's death, he served as regent of Egypt for the Ayyubid sultans al-Aziz Uthman and al-Mansur, until he was forced to retire. He died in 1201. Although highly esteemed by contemporaries and historians, his posthumous reputation derives chiefly from a satirical pamphlet by a political opponent that lampoons him as a stupid and tyrannical monarch. Life His origin and early life are unknown; not even the name of his father survives, and he was known in Arabic with the patronymic ibn Abdallah (i.e., 'son of a amelessservant of God'). His year of birth is unknown, but in 1189 he was already considered as very old, and is reputed to have known Godfrey of Bouillon, one of the principal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eunuch
A eunuch ( ) is a male who has been castrated. Throughout history, castration often served a specific social function. The earliest records for intentional castration to produce eunuchs are from the Sumerian city of Lagash in the 2nd millennium BCE. Over the millennia since, they have performed a wide variety of functions in many different cultures: courtiers or equivalent domestics, for espionage or clandestine operations, castrato singers, concubines, or sexual partners, religious specialists, soldiers, royal guards, government officials, and guardians of women or harem servants. Eunuchs would usually be servants or slaves who had been castrated to make them less threatening servants of a royal court where physical access to the ruler could wield great influence. Seemingly lowly domestic functions—such as making the ruler's bed, bathing him, cutting his hair, carrying him in his litter, or even relaying messages—could, in theory, give a eunuch "the ruler's ear" and impa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Battle Of The Blacks
The Battle of the Blacks or Battle of the Slaves was a conflict in Cairo, on 21–23 August 1169, between the black African units of the Fatimid army and other pro-Fatimid elements, and Sunni Syrian troops loyal to the Fatimid vizier, Saladin. Saladin's rise to the vizierate, and his sidelining of the Fatimid caliph, al-Adid, antagonized the traditional Fatimid elites, including the army regiments, as Saladin relied chiefly on the Kurdish and Turkish cavalry troops that had come with him from Syria. According to the medieval sources, which are biased towards Saladin, this conflict led to an attempt by the palace majordomo, Mu'tamin al-Khilafa, to enter into an agreement with the Crusaders and jointly attack Saladin's forces in order to get rid of him. Saladin learned of this conspiracy, and had Mu'tamin executed on 20 August. Modern historians have questioned the veracity of this report, suspecting that it may have been invented to justify Saladin's subsequent move against the Fa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hippodrome
The hippodrome ( el, ἱππόδρομος) was an ancient Greek stadium for horse racing and chariot racing. The name is derived from the Greek words ''hippos'' (ἵππος; "horse") and ''dromos'' (δρόμος; "course"). The term is used in the modern French language and some others, with the meaning of "horse racecourse". Hence, some present-day horse-racing tracks also include the word "hippodrome" in their names, such as the Hippodrome de Vincennes and the Central Moscow Hippodrome. In the English-speaking world the term is occasionally used for theatres. Overview The Greek hippodrome was similar to the Roman version, the circus. (The hippodrome was not a Roman amphitheatre, which was used for spectator sports, executions, and displays, or a Greek or Roman semicircular amphitheater used for theatrical performances.) The Greek hippodrome was usually set out on the slope of a hill, and the ground taken from one side served to form the embankment on the other side. One en ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ibn Khallikan
Aḥmad bin Muḥammad bin Ibrāhīm bin Abū Bakr ibn Khallikān) ( ar, أحمد بن محمد بن إبراهيم بن أبي بكر ابن خلكان; 1211 – 1282), better known as Ibn Khallikān, was a 13th century Shafi'i Islamic scholar who compiled the celebrated biographical encyclopedia of Muslim scholars and important men in Muslim history, ''Wafayāt al-Aʿyān wa-Anbāʾ Abnāʾ az-Zamān'' ('Deaths of Eminent Men and History of the Sons of the Epoch'). Life Ibn Khallikān was born in Erbil on September 22, 1211 (11 Rabī’ al-Thānī, 608), into a respectable family that claimed descent from Barmakids, an Iranian dynasty of Balkhi origin. Other sources describe him as Kurdish. His primary studies took him from Arbil, to Aleppo and to Damascus, before he took up jurisprudence in Mosul and then in Cairo, where he settled. He gained prominence as a jurist, theologian and grammarian. An early biographer described him as "a pious man, virtuous, and learned; amiable ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
City Of The Dead (Cairo)
The City of the Dead, or Cairo Necropolis, also referred to as the Qarafa ( ar, القرافة, al-Qarafa; locally pronounced as ''al-'arafa''), is a series of vast Islamic-era necropolises and cemetery, cemeteries in Cairo, Egypt. They extend to the north and to the south of the Cairo Citadel, below the Mokattam, Mokattam Hills and outside the historic city walls, covering an area roughly 4 miles long. They are included in the UNESCO World Heritage Site of "Islamic Cairo, Historic Cairo". The necropolis is separated roughly into two regions: the Northern Cemetery to the north of the Citadel (also called the Eastern Cemetery or ''Qarafat ash-sharq'' in Arabic because it is east of the old city walls), and the older Southern Cemetery to the south of the Citadel. There is also another smaller cemetery north of Bab al-Nasr (Cairo), Bab al-Nasr. The necropolis that makes up "the City of the Dead" has been developed over many centuries and contains both the graves of Cairo's common p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Al-Afdal Ibn Salah Ad-Din
Al-Afdal ibn Salah ad-Din ( ar, الأفضل بن صلاح الدين, "most superior"; c. 1169 – 1225, generally known as Al-Afdal (), was one of seventeen sons of Saladin, Sultan of Egypt and Syria, and thus of Kurdish descent. He succeeded his father as the second Ayyubid emir of Damascus. His career as a ruler was chequered and punctuated by repeated armed conflict with other prominent members of his family. He was eventually politically marginalised by his uncle, al-Adil, and given a number of less important towns to rule. He also converted to Shia Islam later on in his life as indicated by the poems that he wrote that were quoted by Al-Dhahabi where he said, "Abu Bakr committed oppression against Ali." Biography Early life Al-Afdal was one of the Ayyubid commanders at the Battle of Arsuf, when Saladin was defeated by Richard I of England and the forces of the Third Crusade. When Saladin died in 1193, al-Afdal inherited Damascus, but not the rest of his father's terri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ibn Mammati
Al-As'ad ibn Muhadhdhab ibn Zakariyya ibn Kudama ibn Mina Sharaf al-Din Abu'l-Makarim ibn Sa'id ibn Abi'l-Malih ibn Mammati, better known simply by the family name Ibn Mammati, was an Egyptian official who served as head of the government departments under Saladin and his successor, al-Aziz Uthman, as well as being a noted poet and prolific writer. Origin Al-As'ad ibn Mammati hailed from a family of Coptic Christians from Asyut. He was born in 1149 in Egypt. His grandfather, Abu'l-Malih, entered the service of the then ruling Fatimid Caliphate and rose to become head secretary during the vizierate of Badr al-Jamali in the late 11th century. His father, Muhadhdhab, served as secretary of the army department () under the last Fatimid caliphs, and continued in office under Saladin (), until his death in 1182. Due to the anti-Christian policies imposed by Saladin's uncle, Shirkuh, Muhadhdhab and his family converted to Islam, as did a number of other Fatimid-era officials at the time, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Atabeg
Atabeg, Atabek, or Atabey is a hereditary title of nobility of Turkic origin, indicating a governor of a nation or province who was subordinate to a monarch and charged with raising the crown prince. The first instance of the title's use was with early Seljuk Turks who bestowed it on the Persian vizier Nizam al-Mulk It was later used in the Kingdom of Georgia, first within the Armeno-Georgian family of Mkhargrdzeli as a military title and then within the house of Jaqeli as princes of Samtskhe. Title origins and meanings The word ''atabeg'' is a compound of the Turkic word ''ata'', "ancestor", or "father" and the word ''beg'' or ''bey'', "lord, leader, prince". ''Beg'' is stated in some sources as being of Iranian origin (as in the compound Baghdad from ''bag/beg'' and ''dad'', "lord" given). However, according to Gerhard Doerfer, the word ''beg'' may have possibly been of Turkic origin – the origin of the word still remains disputed to this day. The title ''Atabeg'' was co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gold Dinar
The gold dinar ( ar, ﺩﻳﻨﺎﺭ ذهبي) is an Islamic medieval gold coin first issued in AH 77 (696–697 CE) by Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan. The weight of the dinar is 1 mithqal (). The word ''dinar'' comes from the Latin word denarius, which was a silver coin. The name "dinar" is also used for Sasanid, Kushan, and Kidarite gold coins, though it is not known what the contemporary name was. The first dinars were issued by the Umayyad Caliphate. Under the dynasties that followed the use of the dinar spread from Islamic Spain to Central Asia. Background Although there was a dictum that the Byzantine solidus was not to be used outside of the Byzantine empire, there was some trade that involved these coins which then did not get re-minted by the emperors minting operations, and quickly became worn. Towards the end of the 7th century CE, Arabic copies of solidi – dinars issued by the caliph Abd al-Malik (685–705 CE), who had access to supplies o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Siege Of Acre (1189–1191)
The siege of Acre was the first significant counterattack by Guy of Jerusalem against Saladin, leader of the Muslims in Syria and Egypt. This pivotal siege formed part of what later became known as the Third Crusade. The siege lasted from August 1189 until July 1191, in which time the city's coastal position meant the attacking Latin force were unable to fully invest the city and Saladin was unable to fully relieve it with both sides receiving supplies and resources by sea. Finally, it was a key victory for the Crusaders and a serious setback for Saladin's ambition to destroy the Crusader states. Background Egypt was ruled by the Shi'ite Fatimid dynasty from 969, independent from the Sunni Abbasid rulers in Baghdad and with a rival Shi'ite caliph—that is ''successor'' to the Muslim prophet Mohammad. Governance fell to the caliph's chief administrator called the vizier. From 1121 the system fell into murderous political intrigue and Egypt declined from its previous afflue ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Third Crusade
The Third Crusade (1189–1192) was an attempt by three European monarchs of Western Christianity (Philip II of France, Richard I of England and Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor) to reconquer the Holy Land following the capture of Jerusalem by the Ayyubid sultan Saladin in 1187. For this reason, the Third Crusade is also known as the Kings' Crusade. It was partially successful, recapturing the important cities of Acre and Jaffa, and reversing most of Saladin's conquests, but it failed to recapture Jerusalem, which was the major aim of the Crusade and its religious focus. After the failure of the Second Crusade of 1147–1149, the Zengid dynasty controlled a unified Syria and engaged in a conflict with the Fatimid rulers of Egypt. Saladin ultimately brought both the Egyptian and Syrian forces under his own control, and employed them to reduce the Crusader states and to recapture Jerusalem in 1187. Spurred by religious zeal, King Henry II of England and King Philip II of F ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fustat
Fusṭāṭ ( ar, الفُسطاط ''al-Fusṭāṭ''), also Al-Fusṭāṭ and Fosṭāṭ, was the first capital of Egypt under Muslim rule, and the historical centre of modern Cairo. It was built adjacent to what is now known as Old Cairo by the Rashidun Muslim general 'Amr ibn al-'As immediately after the Muslim conquest of Egypt in AD 641, and featured the Mosque of Amr, the first mosque built in Egypt. The city reached its peak in the 12th century, with a population of approximately 200,000.Williams, p. 37 It was the centre of administrative power in Egypt, until it was ordered burnt in 1168 by its own vizier, Shawar, to keep its wealth out of the hands of the invading Crusaders. The remains of the city were eventually absorbed by nearby Cairo, which had been built to the north of Fustat in 969 when the Fatimids conquered the region and created a new city as a royal enclosure for the Caliph. The area fell into disrepair for hundreds of years and was used as a rubbish dump ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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