Al-Afdal

Shahanshah

Al-Afdal Shahanshah (Arabic: ‫األفضل‬

‫شاهنشاه‬, romanized: al-Afḍal Shāhanshāh;
Latin: Lavendalius/Elafdalio; 1066 – 11
December 1121), born Abu al-Qasim
Shahanshah bin Badr al-Jamali was a
vizier of the Fatimid caliphs of Egypt.
According to a later biographical
encyclopedia, he was surnamed al-Malik
al-Afdal ("the excellent king"),[1] but this is
not supported by contemporary sources.
 al-Afdal Shahanshah

Vizier of the Fatimid Caliphate

In office
1094–1121

Monarchs al-Mustansir Billah, al-

Musta'li Billah, al-Amir
bi-Ahkam Allah

Preceded by Badr al-Jamali

Succeeded by al-Ma'mun al-Bata'ihi

Personal details

Born 1066

Died 11 December 1121

(aged 54–55)
Ascent to power
He was born in Acre, the son of Badr al-
Jamali, an Armenian mamluk who became
Muslim.[2] Badr was vizier for the Fatimids
in Cairo from 1074 until his death in 1094,
when al-Afdal succeeded him. Caliph Al-
Mustansir Billah died soon afterwards, and
al-Afdal appointed as caliph al-Musta'li, a
child, instead of al-Mustali's much older
brother Nizar ibn al-Mustansir. Nizar
revolted and was defeated in 1095; his
supporters, led by Hassan-i Sabbah, fled
east, where Sabbah established the Nizari
Isma'ili sect, known also as the order of
Assassins.
At this time Fatimid power in Palestine had
been reduced by the arrival of the Seljuk
Turks. In 1097 he captured Tyre from the
Seljuks, and in 1098 he took Jerusalem,
expelling its Artuqid governor Ilghazi in
place of the Fatimid Iftikhar al-Dawla. Al-
Afdal restored most of Palestine to
Fatimid control, at least temporarily.

Conflict with the Crusaders

Al-Afdal misunderstood the Crusaders as
Byzantine mercenaries; this misperception
caused al-Afdal to conclude that the
Crusaders would make for natural allies,
as each were enemies of the Seljuk Turks.
Fatimid overtures for an alliance with the
crusaders were rebuffed, and the
crusaders continued southward from
Antioch to capture Jerusalem from
Fatimid control in 1099.

When it became apparent that the

Crusaders would not rest until they had
control of the city, al-Afdal marched out
from Cairo, but was too late to rescue
Jerusalem, which fell on 15 July 1099. On
12 August 1099, the Crusaders under
Godfrey of Bouillon surprised al-Afdal at
the Battle of Ascalon and completely
defeated him. Al-Afdal would later reassert
Fatimid control of Ascalon, as the
Crusaders did not attempt to retain it, and
utilize it as a staging ground for later
attacks on the Crusader states.

When al-Musta'li died in December 1101,

al-Afdal raised the five-year-old al-Amir bi-
Ahkam Allah to the throne as imam and
caliph. To further strengthen the familial
ties with the young caliph, he married him
to his own daughter.[3] As the vizier, father-
in-law, and uncle of the young ruler, al-
Afdal placed the caliph before him on his
own horse during al-Amir's inaugural
procession. A decree, dictated by al-Afdal,
renewed his appointment as vizier with
plenipotentiary powers and ensured his
ascendancy over the child-caliph.[3]
Al-Afdal marched out every year to attack
the nascent Kingdom of Jerusalem, and in
1105 attempted to ally with Damascus
against them, but was defeated at the
Third Battle of Ramla. Al-Afdal and his
army enjoyed success only so long as no
European fleet interfered, but they
gradually lost control of their coastal
strongholds; in 1109 Tripoli was lost,
despite the fleet and supplies sent by al-
Afdal, and the city became the centre of
the Crusader state of the County of Tripoli.
In 1110 the governor of Ascalon, Shams
al-Khilafa, rebelled against al-Afdal with
the intent of handing over the city to
Jerusalem (for a large price). Al-Khilafa
was assassinated by his Berber troops,
sending his head to al-Afdal.

Al-Afdal also introduced tax (iqta') reform

in Egypt, which remained in place until
Saladin took over Egypt. Al-Afdal was
nicknamed Jalal al-Islam ("Glory of Islam")
and Nasir al-Din ("Protector of the Faith").
Ibn al-Qalanisi describes him as "a firm
believer in the doctrines of Sunnah, upright
in conduct, a lover of justice towards both
troops and civil population, judicious in
counsel and plan, ambitious and resolute,
of penetrating knowledge and exquisite
tact, of generous nature, accurate in his
intuitions, and possessing a sense of
justice which preserved him from
wrongdoing and led him to shun all
tyrannical methods."

Final years and assassination

Foundational inscription from Sidon, in the name of al-Afdal

In 1115, an assassin tried to kill al-Afdal,

but he was saved by his bodyguards.[4]
While he was not harmed, his health
deteriorated from that time, leading to
assigning his brother Ja'far the task of
adding the official, calligraphic signature to
documents, while in 1115, he designated
his son, Sama al-Mulk, as his deputy (and
thus heir-apparent).[5] Following another
failed attack by three assassins in 1118,
al-Afdal suspected his own sons, and had
them deprived of their positions and
incomes.[5]

On 13 December 1121, during a

procession on the last day of Ramadan, al-
Afdal was assassinated. The deed was
commonly attributed to (and claimed by)
the Nizari Order of Assassins. However,
the contemporary Syrian chronicler Ibn al-
Qalanisi states that the murder was the
work of the Caliph al-Amir, and of al-Afdal's
chief of staff, al-Ma'mun al-Bata'ihi, who
would succeed him as vizier.[6] Modern
scholars commonly accept the Assassins'
responsibility for the deed, apparently as
revenge for Nizar's death,[7][6] but whatever
his true role in his master's death, al-
Bata'ihi moved quickly to take control of
the situation. He took his master's body to
the vizieral palace and delayed the
announcement of his death until al-Amir
could be notified. On the morning of the
next day, Eid al-Fitr, al-Amir appointed al-
Bata'ihi as vizier and publicly reasserted
his position as head of the state by
presiding at the day's ceremony. Al-Afdal's
adult sons were imprisoned, but the other
members of al-Afdal's family, to whom
after all the caliph himself was related,
were allowed to partake in the ceremony,
and al-Afdal received a funeral and burial
appropriate to his station.[6] At the same
time, al-Amir moved quickly to confiscate
al-Afdal's enormous wealth, houses, and
estates, and brought the moveable items
to his own palace. So great was the
treasure amassed by al-Afdal that
chroniclers describe it as larger than that
of any previous king, and it took forty days
to move it to the caliph's palace.[8]

References
b h ll k ( ) " l fd l h h h h"
 1. Ibn Khallikan (1843). "Al-Afdal Shahanshah"
(https://books.google.com/books?id=D9jd7
0CULyYC&pg=PA612) . Ibn Khallikan's
Biographical Dictionary. Translated by Mac
Guckin de Slane. Paris. pp. 612–615.

2. Lev, Yaacov (1997). War and Society in the

Eastern Mediterranean, 7th–15th centuries.
p. 122. ISBN 90-04-10032-6.

3. Brett 2017, p. 234.

4. Brett 2017, p. 251.
5. Brett 2017, pp. 251–252.
6. Brett 2017, p. 252.
7. Lewis 1969, p. 118.
8. Walker 2011.

Sources
Biography
portal
Fatimid
Caliphate
portal
Egypt
portal

Brett, Michael (2017). The Fatimid

Empire. The Edinburgh History of the
Islamic Empires. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press. ISBN 978-0-7486-4076-
8.
Daftary, Farhad (2007). The Ismāʿı̄lı̄s:
Their History and Doctrines (https://book
s.google.com/books?id=cSO9zh61AGE
C) (Second ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-61636-
2.
Halm, Heinz (2014). Kalifen und
Assassinen: Ägypten und der vordere
Orient zur Zeit der ersten Kreuzzüge,
1074–1171 [Caliphs and Assassins:
Egypt and the Near East at the Time of
the First Crusades, 1074–1171] (in
German). Munich: C.H. Beck. ISBN 978-
3-406-66163-1.
Lewis, Bernard (1969) [1955]. "The
Ismāʿīlites and the Assassins" (http://dig
icoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/History/His
tory-idx?type=article&did=History.CrusO
ne.i0019&id=History.CrusOne) . In
Setton, Kenneth M.; Baldwin, Marshall W.
(eds.). A History of the Crusades, Volume
I: The First Hundred Years (http://digital.li
brary.wisc.edu/1711.dl/History.CrusOn
e) (Second ed.). Madison, Milwaukee,
and London: University of Wisconsin
Press. pp. 99–133. ISBN 0-299-04834-9.
Steven Runciman, A History of the
Crusades, vol. I: The First Crusade and
the Foundation of the Kingdom of
Jerusalem. Cambridge University Press,
1951.
Stern, S. M. (1951). "The Succession to
the Fatimid Imam al-Āmir, the Claims of
the Later Fatimids to the Imamate, and
the Rise of Ṭayyibī Ismailism". Oriens. 4
(2): 193–255. doi:10.2307/1579511 (htt
ps://doi.org/10.2307%2F1579511) .
JSTOR 1579511 (https://www.jstor.org/
stable/1579511) .
William of Tyre. A History of Deeds Done
Beyond the Sea. Edited and translated by
E. A. Babcock and A. C. Krey. Columbia
University Press, 1943.
The Damascus Chronicle of the
Crusades: Extracted and Translated from
the Chronicle of Ibn al-Qalanisi. H.A.R.
Gibb, London, 1932.
Walker, Paul E. (2011). "al-Āmir bi-
Aḥkām Allāh" (https://referenceworks.bri
llonline.com/search?s.q=al-%C4%80mir
+bi-A%E1%B8%A5k%C4%81m+All%C4%
 81h&s.f.s2_parent=s.f.book.encyclopae
dia-of-islam-3&search-go=Search) . In
Fleet, Kate; Krämer, Gudrun; Matringe,
Denis; Nawas, John; Stewart, Devin J.
(eds.). Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE.
Brill Online. doi:10.1163/1573-
3912_ei3_COM_23060 (https://doi.org/1
0.1163%2F1573-3912_ei3_COM_2306
0) . ISSN 1873-9830 (https://www.world
cat.org/issn/1873-9830) .

Vizier of the
Preceded by Succeeded by
Fatimid
Badr al- al-Ma'mun al-
Caliphate
Jamali Bata'ihi
1094–1121
Retrieved from
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Afdal_Shahanshah&oldid=1133806615"

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