The Theocrat: A Modern Arabic Novel (Modern Arabic Literature) (6 page)

    So, in the name of prevention, start with the Church of the Holy Sepulchre; reduce it to rubble and bring its roof to the ground. Then maybe …

In the margins we find:

To Copts and those Muslims who join in their festivals: From now on you will not celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany.

    Anyone caught playing by jumping into the Nile will find himself consigned to the bottom of the river in chains.

    From now on you will not celebrate the Feast of Norouz.

    No water may be thrown on the streets, no fires lit at night, no boat trips, and no tents set up by the Nile or near the Nilometer. You may not throw wine or eggs at each other. Spare me such scandals.

In the same year decrees of the same import were issued regarding Christmas, Shrove Tuesday, and Palm Sunday. In this year, Ya’qub ibn Nastas, the personal physician of al-Hakim, died drunk in a water pool.

Just a week later an additional codicil was appended to the above decree, saying:

The Muslim is a Muslim, and the Jew is a Jew. They will not intermingle The Muslim is a Muslim, and the Christian is a Christian. They will not intermingle.

    O people of the religion of Unity, in such a critical period I am not content merely to forbid you marrying Jews and Christians and eating their meat. Beyond that I have determined that the faiths cannot be equal or co-exist. The Islam of my community is either the faith that seals the prophetic progression and abrogates other faiths that oppose it, or else it does not exist.

    And so all Jews and Christians under our protection must wear a mark.

    For Jews, that means wooden stars around their neck and black turbans; for Christians, crosses.

    Every mark must be fully visible.

    Jews and Christians will have their own baths where they can be cleansed of their particular contaminations.

    They may not ride horses, but only mules and donkeys with wooden saddles.

    Anyone who does not wish to wear the mark can renounce his error and become a Muslim, released thereby from all suspicion and taxation.

In this same year a decree was announced forbidding people to meddle in matters that did not concern them. They were ordered to pray at the proper times, to encourage what is good and forbid what is bad. They were also forbidden to interfere in the sultan’s affairs and decrees or in the secret matters of authority.

Al-Maqrizi tells us that in this year, “Many diseases spread among the populace, and death was widespread. People were scared of al-Hakim, so he penned a number of assurances of protection to a variety of people.”
¹⁰

During the fourteenth year of al-Hakim’s quarter century, i.e.
A.H.
400, the caliph’s religious sensitivities became increasingly perturbed and extreme. The following comes from accounts of historians for this year:

In this year al-Hakim sent someone to the home of Ja‘far al-Sadiq in al-Madina with word to open it up and bring back everything inside; this included a copy of the Qur’an, a bed, and some utensils. The person who opened the house was one of al-Hakim’s devotees, named Khatkin al-‘Adudi. He also took with him registers of the Prophet’s own family. With all this he returned to Egypt, accompanied by a group of ‘Alawite shaykhs. When they arrived, al-Hakim gave them a small payment, let them have the bed, but kept the rest for himself. “I deserve it the most,” he said. They all left muttering imprecations against him. Word of what he had perpetrated spread abroad, and people started cursing his name at the end of prayers without any attempt to conceal it. That made him relent, and he became scared. He ordered a House of Learning to be constructed and furnished, then had the most precious volumes sent there. He ordered two Sunni shaykhs to reside there, one of whom was Abu Bakr al-Antaki. He bestowed on them robes of honor, granted them frequent audiences, and charged them with attendance at his council sessions and convening jurisconsults and hadith scholars. He also ordered that the righteous deeds of the Prophet’s Companions were to be recited there (in so doing, he lifted the prohibition on such acts). At the same time, he again permitted the Ramadan and noon prayers and altered the call to prayer, replacing the phrase “Come to the best of works” with “Prayer is better than sleep.” He himself rode to the Mosque of ‘Amr ibn al-‘As and prayed the noon prayer there. He began to show a preference for the doctrines of the Maliki school; in the mosque he placed a silver stove lit by 1,100 wicks inside and two others underneath. The procession consisted of guards, trumpets, and cries of joy and praise to God, all accompanied by drums; this all took place on the night of mid-Sha’ban. On the first day of Ramadan he
attended the grand mosque in Cairo; all kinds of furnishing were brought there, including gold and silver chandeliers. The populace prayed devoutly for him. That year on the tenth day of Ramadan he wore a woolen garment, rode on a donkey, made a public display of his self-denial and filled his arms with notebooks. On Friday he preached the sermon and led the prayer. He prevented anyone from addressing him as “My Lord,” or from kissing the ground in front of him. He gave contributions to the poor. Qur’an reciters, strangers, and travelers who sought refuge in mosques. He had a large niche [mihrab] of silver made for the mosque; it had ten candle holders and was encrusted with jewels. For three years he continued this way, carrying perfumes, incense, and candles to mosques, things no one had ever done before. Then suddenly he had a change of heart: he killed the jurisconsult. Abu Bakr al-Antaki, and the other shaykh with him, along with a great number of other Sunnis. and for no justifiable reason. All this he carried out in a single day. In addition, he closed the doors of the House of Learning, revoked everything he had done, and went back to his old ways, killing scholars and jurisconsults and so on. He continued this way until he was murdered.
¹¹

In the eighteenth year of al-Hakim’s quarter century, a number of decrees were issued aimed at Egyptians and. in particular, women, singers, and astrologers, which had a debilitating effect. There follows a sample selection of them:

Decree against astrologers and singers:

I have come only to refute the stars and disrupt their purity and predictive power. My method involves filling my kingdom with incidents and exceptional circumstances and thwarting the power of principles and expectations.

    On such a basis, anyone who practices astrology or predicts by the stars sets himself in opposition to me. I will exile anyone who opposes me, or else I shall cause his star to fall from the skies. Did not ‘Ali, the Prophet’s own trustee, say: “Beware of the science of astrology, except whatever may guide you through the dark regions of earth and sea. The astrologer is like the magician; magicians are soothsayers, unbelievers roasting in hellfire.”

    My decision is irrevocable, even for those astrologers who strive to convert the pearls of heaven to my benefit and service.

    Singers should be banished from my sight.

    My people are innate dancers. What need do they have of people to play instruments or sing?

    I have proclaimed all-out war against all kinds of debauched transvestitism and effeminate behavior. Singing belongs in that category, since it tempts and corrupts the body. As long as I live and am your pastor, singing is forbidden.

In this same year astrologers left the country, except for those who claimed to be blind or mad and a few others who took refuge in deserted towers or underground storehouses.

All musical instruments were collected and burned. No one was allowed to ride boats to the Canal; all gates leading to it and all balconies and windows looking out on it were closed.

Decree concerning the proper cloistering of women:

By Fatima the radiant, what I have to say about women is nothing but good!

    How can I possibly despise them or defame them when beneath the feet of my mother lies my own paradise. My own state gets its name and its foundation from a blessed
woman, Fatima, daughter of the Prophet and wife of Ali, His own trustee and legatee of their secrets?

    I have indeed commanded that all cloistered women should remain inside their houses. They are to be prevented from going outside or looking out of windows or balconies. I have given orders that any cobbler who makes them shoes, any bath-owner who opens his doors to them, is to be punished. This is not a cruel act on my part, but is meant to prevent the anti-Christ from involving himself in a war of sexual provocation. Such a conflict will be futile and accursed, since it only serves to make men and women alike forget the real war that we have all to fight against that enemy who is ever on the watch for our foibles and slips.

In this same year the chancellery was inundated with requests from women for special dispensations: maidservants, women with grievances, midwives, washers of corpses, widows, yarn-sellers, and those who needed to travel.

Some women were locked up inside public baths and suffocated.

That year a pregnant sheep was sacrificed, and, when the inside was opened up, historians are prepared to swear on the most solemn of oaths that the foetus inside had human features.

In this year, and, some say, the year before as well, “Al-Hakim sent a letter to Sultan Mahmud ibn Subuktakin, the ruler of Ghazna, inviting him to submit to his authority. The latter ripped it up, spat on it, and then forwarded it to al-Qadir, the Abbasid Caliph.”
¹²

In the twenty-first—some people say, the twenty-second—year of al-Hakim’s quarter century, the caliph was afflicted with bouts of melancholia that were sometimes severe. He secluded himself and wandered around a great deal. He started wearing sackcloth and stopped bathing. He used to spend the night observing the stars and searching in them for divine inspiration. These habits of his were accentuated by a group of devotees who made their appearance at this time. They called
him “the buttress of time and most eloquent of speakers,” and used books and epistles to record behavior traits and segments from his extraordinary and incredible decrees as proofs and signs of his infallibility and divinity. They demanded that he be sanctified and worshiped and secretly won his affection and his support. They started touring Egypt and Syria attracting followers to his cadre of “sages” and establishing pacts, agreements, and obligations of confidentiality and pledge. A series of intrigues and bloody conflicts broke out between this group of Sunnis. As a consequence, the devotee named Akhram was killed. Thereafter Hamzah al-Druzi took their cause with him and fled to the mountains of Syria, shortly before or after the murder of al-Hakim himself. His own followers spoke in terms of his disappearance three nights before the end of the month of Shawal in the year
A.H.
411, an event to which we will refer later on.

2. The slave Mas‘ud, or the Agent for Sodomite Punishment

He used to take charge of the public order for himself, riding around the markets on a donkey (he never rode anything else). When he found anyone cheating, he ordered a slave whom he always took with him, named Mas‘ud, to sodomise the offender. This is a dire, indeed unprecedented, circumstance.

Ibn Kathir,

The Beginning and the Ending

Al-Hakim used to put on a white woolen garment and ride a tall, blond-colored donkey named Moon. He would make circuits of the markets in Cairo and the old city and take care of matters of public order himself. He always took along with him a tall, bulky slave named Mas‘ud. Whenever he came across anyone cheating people, he ordered Mas‘ud to sodomize the merchant on the spot in his shop, with al-Hakim standing close by and everyone watching till the slave had finished. For this reason
Mas‘ud became the butt of jokes in Cairo. People would say: Mas‘ud, go and get him! A poet of the time composed these lines:

Mas‘ud has a tool that is mighty.

Long as a papyrus scroll.

One that cleaves the arses of sinners

Harder than a pearl on a nail.

Ibn lyas,
Bright Flowers Concerning the Events of the Ages

This Mas‘ud had been one of the vast number of slaves that made the slave market on the outskirts of Cairo resound with noise. His most recent slave master, Abu Sulayman al-Za‘farani, had categorized him as a tough sell, someone that needed oils and creams to make him attractive to gullible buyers. Mas‘ud’s face was as black as could be and incredibly ugly, so much so that, if we are to believe rumors of the time, it was impossible to entertain any positive thoughts about him even with his white teeth. In all three dimensions his body was as powerful and tall as any ghoul: if he made up his mind to kill his slave master by kicking and punching him, it would have been no harder than banging a nail.

Like everyone so endowed, Mas‘ud wore his inner soul through the color of his skin and eyes, People saw his temperament as molded by sheer evil and darkness; the very purchase of him was regarded as a loss, since, like many other slaves, he was always running away. “If he’s hungry, he sleeps; if he’s sated, he fucks.” went the popular saying, but actually it did not apply to Mas‘ud. When he was hungry, he waited; if he was sated, he belched and started work again. As regards running away, he did indeed do it a lot; for that very reason, he never stayed with a single owner or slave master any longer than demanded by the limits of surveillance and daylight. He would wait instinctively for those moments of distraction at dead of night when he could speed away like an arrow in pursuit of careening specters.

The root cause of such behavior was not poor training or corrupt character, but rather a terrible fear of his own image as others saw him and of his smell that others termed foul. He had managed to run away more times than any other slave, so at one point he was declared legally killable inside Egypt. That particular episode forced him to spend a frantic period on the run, and he was forced to look for a hiding place. For a while he lived a life that swung between total panic and sorrow, anticipating his own downfall and the oblivion that would follow; if not that, then a mountain where he could stay clear of hunters and the blind. The last place Mas‘ud stayed during this period was a deserted cemetery shrouded in silence and full of wild herbs. There he eked out a living among the rocks and tree roots. Each night he envisioned legions of the dead rising up and handing him cold and poison to drink; the angel of the dead would arrive in a black cloak of infinite length and depart with the elements. In spite of the difficulties of living in such a place and the terrifying company at night, Mas‘ud came to appreciate that life among the dead was much preferable to falling once more into the clutches of the living. The eyes of the latter were hellfire, their expressions were deadly arrows, whereas the former had no eyes but merely sockets that were forever empty, neither pursuing anyone nor loading someone down with investigations and matters of conscience.