e
at the beginning of the year 1021 was due to the resentment of his
outraged subjects, or, as the historians say, to his sister's fear that
he would bequeath the caliphate to a distant relative to the exclusion
of his own son, will never be known. In spite of his caprices he appears
to have shown competence in the management of external affairs;
enterprises of pretenders both in Egypt and Syria were crushed with
promptitude; and his name was at times mentioned in public worship in
Aleppo and Mosul.

His son _Abu'l-Hasan 'Ali_, who succeeded him with the title _al-Zahir
li'i'zaz din allah_, was sixteen years of age at the time, and for four
years his aunt Sitt al-Mulk acted as regent; she appears to have been an
astute but utterly unscrupulous woman. After her death the caliph was in
the power of various ministers, under whose management of affairs Syria
was for a time lost to the Egyptian caliphate, and Egypt itself raided
by the Syrian usurpers, of whom one, Salih b. Mirdas, succeeded in
establishing a dynasty at Aleppo, which maintained itself after Syria
and Palestine had been recovered for the Fatimites by Anushtakin
al-Dizbari at the battle of Ukhuwanah in 1029. His career is said to
have been marked by some horrible caprices similar to those of his
father. After a reign of nearly sixteen years he died of the plague.

His successor, _Abu Tamim Ma'add_, who reigned with the title
_al-Mostansir_, was also an infant at the time of his accession, being
little more than seven years of age. The power was largely in the hands
of his mother, a negress, who promoted the interests of her kinsmen at
court, where indeed even in Hakim's time they had been used as a
counterpoise to the Maghribine and Turkish elements in the army. In the
first years of this reign affairs were administered by the vizier
al-Jarjara'i, by whose mismanagement Aleppo was lost to the Fatimites.
At his death in 1044 the chief influence passed into the hands of Abu
Sa'd, a Jew, and the former master of the queen-mother, and at the end
of four years he was assassinated at the instance of another Jew
(Sadakah, perhaps Zedekiah, b. Joseph al-Falahi), whom he had appointed
vizier. In this reign Mo'izz b. Badis, the 4th ruler of the dependent
Zeirid dynasty which had ruled in the Maghrib since the migration of the
Fatimite Mo'izz to Egypt, definitely abjured his allegiance (1049) and
returned to Sunnite principles and subjection to the Bagdad caliphate.
Th