ABSTRACT
The history of Islam remains a prisoner of its sources, not only in the obvious sense of dependence upon them for information but to a large extent in its approach to the subject. The missing factor is the Armenian element. Badr al-Jamali came to power in Egypt on the strength of his past ten years as Fatimid governor of Syria, first at Damascus, then at Acre. The question of ‘the Fatimid Armenians’ and their history has attracted considerable interest in Armenian circles, and has most recently been addressed in English by Seta B. Dadoyan in The Fatimid Armenians. Whatever the religion of Badr’s Armenians, as troops they were apparently quartered in the Husayniyya district to the north of the palaces of al-Qahira, outside the great gates of Bab al-Futuh and Bab al-Nasr built by Badr in 1087–91 in the course of his fortification of the Fatimid city.
