r
this Obeid-Allah was really a descendant of Ali or not, he had been
carefully prepared for the role, and reached Barbary in disguise, with
the greatest mystery and some difficulty, pursued by the suspicions of
the Bagdad caliph, who, in great alarm, sent repeated orders for his
arrest. Indeed, the victorious missionary had to rescue his spiritual
chief from a sordid prison at Sigilmasa. Then humbly prostrating himself
before him, he hailed him as the expected mahdi, and in January, 910, he
was duly prayed for in the mosque of Kayrawan as "the Imam 'Obeid-Allah
el-Mahdi, Commander of the Faithful.'"

The missionary's Berber proselytes were too numerous to encourage
resistance, and the few who indulged the luxury of conscientious
scruples were killed or imprisoned. El-Mahdi, indeed, appeared so secure
in power that he excited the jealousy of his discoverer.

Abu-Abdallah, the missionary, now found himself nobody, where a month
before he had been supreme. The Fatimite restoration was to him only a
means to an end; he had used Obeid-Allah's title as an engine of
revolution, intending to proceed to the furthest lengths of his
philosophy, to a complete social and political anarchy, the destruction
of Islam, community of lands and women, and all the delight of
unshackled license. Instead of this, his creature had absorbed his
power, and all such designs were made void. He began to hatch treason
and to hint doubts as to the genuineness of the Mahdi, who, as he truly
represented, according to prophecy, ought to work miracles and show
other proofs of his divine mission. People began to ask for a "sign." In
reply, the Mahdi had the missionary murdered.

The first Fatimite caliph, though without experience, was so vigorous a
ruler that he could dispense with the dangerous support of his
discoverer. He held the throne for a quarter of a century and
established his authority, more or less continuously, over the Arab and
Berber tribes and settled cities from the frontier of Egypt to the
province of Fez (Fas) in Morocco, received the allegiance of the
Mahometan governor of Sicily, and twice despatched expeditions into
Egypt, which he would probably have permanently conquered if he had not
been hampered by perpetual insurrections in Barbary. Distant governors,
and often whole tribes of Berbers, were constantly in revolt, and the
disastrous famine of 928-929, coupled with the Asiatic plague which his
troops had brought back with the