ABSTRACT
In the tenth century the immediate challenge came from the Umayyads of Spain, who in response to the claims of the Fatimids turned their state from an Amirate into a Caliphate. The Caesaropapist model of monarchy adopted by the Caliphate at Cordoba set the seal on the restoration of central government in al-Andalus. By way of contrast, the Fatimids’ ambition to rule the Islamic world produced a different history, one of evolution dictated by circumstance. The context in which this religious and political evolution of the Fatimid empire took place, all-important for its success and ultimate failure, was the final phase of the ‘Abbasid empire, and its mid-tenth-century disintegration into what Hugh Kennedy has called the Muslim commonwealth. In this pattern of regional states, the Fatimids were conspicuous by their success in rising to prominence in the collection, and by their failure to overthrow it.
