I

In Lingua Franca in the Mediterranean, his last work, published in 1996, John Wansbrough harked back to his doctoral thesis of 1961 on the texts of commercial treaties between Venice and Mamluk Egypt in the form of an extended essay on communication in the Ancient and Mediaeval Mediterranean.Footnote ¹ His argument was summed up in the title of “Orbits” given to the first chapter, whose first sentence envisaged a map of the Mediterranean in the sixteenth century heavily inked with the traces of movement, a network of routes and terminals exhibiting the accumulated expertise of the past 3,000 years. While much of that expertise was technological and commercial, it operated within a shifting economic, political and administrative context, such that the indispensable matrix of long-distance trade was diplomatic contact. For that, the source and the framework was the chancery practice with which he had been concerned in his original thesis, and which he now took as the focus of his study. The orbits of the title described the manner of its operation, on the grounds that ships and emissaries (and, we might add, caravans) were expected to, and mostly did, return to their point of departure. While the voyage home was the concomitant of every outward journey, it presupposed that both commercially and diplomatically, some sort of feedback was the anticipated consequence of the original input. The outcome was a mode of exchange that was not only directional, to and from, but in the case of diplomatic contact hierarchical, between equals or more probably de haut en bas and vice versa. It is a model that fits the Fatimid empire and its workings very well indeed.

The chancery practice of the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt was epitomized by the sijill, pl. sijillāt, the dynasty's version of the formal letter whose composition is fully described by Wansbrough, together with its Latin equivalent, in the second chapter of Lingua Franca. Its classical origin is apparent in its name, although the place of the sigillum or seal had been taken by the ʿalāma or calligraphic formula which was the signature of the Imam-Caliph (and by the twelfth century, that of his Wazir). As documents they have barely survived,Footnote ² as copies somewhat more so; allusions, on the other hand, are frequent, enabling the reconstruction of much that is not apparent in the chronicles. A case in point is the sijill of the Fatimid Imam-Caliph al-Mustanṣir, written in 445/1053–4 in celebration of a successful diplomatic mission to recover the breakaway province of Ifrīqiya for the Fatimid empire, and surviving in a copy made by the faithful in the Yemen long after the event. In “The Ifrīqiyan Sijill of al-Mustanṣir, 445H/1053–4CE”, I have reconstructed its original format on the lines set out in Lingua Franca, and offered a translation.Footnote ³ In the original, it must have been a splendid document, with the ʿalāma, “Praise be to God, Lord of the Two Worlds”, writ large in a calligraphic roundel by the Caliph himself, and prominently displayed at the head of the page. The medium, as Marshall McLuhan used to say, was the message quite as much as the content; appointed to be read from the pulpit, it would at the same time have been displayed for the veneration of the faithful. In Wansbrough's terms, it was both directional and hierarchical within the orbit of the dynasty's relations with the Yemen, where the Dāʿī al-Ṣulayḥī was on the crest of a wave of conquest. Its content meanwhile is of crucial importance for the history of the invasion of Ifrīqiya by the Banū Hilāl and the disintegration of the Zirid dominion, as discussed in my article, “Fatimid historiography: a case study”,Footnote ⁴ and elsewhere. Here, I want to place that sijill, not simply into the context of the quarrel between the Zirid ruler Muʿizz and his Fatimid overlord that occasioned the mission, but into the context of the long series of diplomatic exchanges between the two dynasties that expressed their relationship from the last decade of the tenth century onwards. Because of their function in establishing and maintaining the closeness of that relationship, these exchanges were of fundamental importance to the construction and preservation of the Fatimid empire as it evolved in the aftermath of the conquest of Egypt in 358–62/969–73, down to the great crisis of the fitna and shidda in the 1060s. As such, they are an outstanding example of Wansbrough's diplomatic contact in the service of a grand political design.

II

In 377/987–8 the Fatimid empire in Egypt and Syria, North Africa and Sicily, constituted over the previous eighty years as a single unit governed directly or indirectly by the Imam-Caliph and his nominees, had broken into two. It ceased to be such a unit with the failure of the attempt by the Imam-Caliph al-ʿAzīz to reorganize the government of Ifrīqiya following the death in 375/985 of Buluggīn, the Zirid viceroy of the province appointed by the Imam-Caliph al-Muʿizz on his departure for Egypt in 362/972. Al-Manṣūr, the son of Buluggīn, refused to accept the elevation of ʿAbdallāh, the secretary of state at the capital Qayrawān, to the post of dāʿī, the representative of the Imam-Caliph charged to take the bayʿa or oath of allegiance from him. Equally, he refused to permit the arrival of a second dāʿī to take command of the Kutāma, the warriors of Kabylia in eastern Algeria who had brought the Fatimids to power at the beginning of the century. And as for himself, he refused to return to the original role of his father as lord of the western frontier. Both of the duʿāt, or missionaries appointed by the Imam-Caliph to reorganize the realm, were slain, leaving al-ʿAzīz with no option but to accept the fait accompli, and to recognize the hereditary status of the Zirids as the sole rulers of Ifrīqiya. This status was confirmed by the recognition of Bādīs, al-Manṣūr's son, as walī al-ʿahd or designated heir in 382/992, and then as al-Manṣūr's successor in 386/996.Footnote ⁵ In return, the Zirids continued to affirm their allegiance to al-Qāhira as the necessary source of their authority. Such an arrangement, familiar throughout the old Arab empire since the recognition of the Aghlabids in Ifrīqiya by Baghdad in 184/800, was nevertheless more than a formality. It was the basis of what in Britain we are pleased to call a “special relationship” between the two monarchies that lasted down to the death of Muʿizz, Bādīs's son and successor, in 454/1062. For the Zirids it was essential for their legitimacy; for the Fatimids its maintenance was necessary to preserve the empire they had gained, and to serve as a model for the universal empire they aspired to win. Its importance to both dynasties was vividly demonstrated by the ten-year-long quarrel between them in the 430s/1040s and 440s/1050s that began with Muʿizz's recognition of the ʿAbbasids, continued with the Wazir al-Yāzūrī's manipulation of Muʿizz's defeat by the Banū Hilāl, and ended with Muʿizz's return to Fatimid allegiance.Footnote ⁶ Meanwhile, over the previous fifty or so years from the time of al-Manṣūr's coup d’état onwards, the relationship had been ceremoniously cultivated through the exchange of embassies, typically though not invariably on the occasion of a dynastic event at al-Qāhira or Qayrawān, an accession or the appointment of an heir. It is unfortunate that the record of the chronicles is patchy both for Egypt and in Ifrīqiya, especially for the 420s/1030s, so that the last mention of such an exchange is in the year 420/1029, and it can only be presumed that the accession of al-Mustanṣir in 427/1036, over ten years before the outbreak of the quarrel, was celebrated in similar fashion. But from al-Maqrīzī's Ittiʿāẓ al-hunafāʾ Footnote ⁷ and Ibn ʿIdhārī's Bayān al-mughrib Footnote ⁸ we have descriptions and mentions of some fifteen previous occasions. Five further examples relate to the Kalbids of Sicily, the second such dynasty after the Zirids, who ruled the other half of the Fatimid empire in the west. These are enough to obtain a picture of these exchanges and of the elements involved,Footnote ⁹ and at the same time to trace something of the history of the relationship between the Fatimids in Egypt and their successors in Ifrīqiya.

Of the three main instruments employed to cement the asymmetric relationship between the Fatimid suzerain and the Zirid vassal, the sijill or authoritative letter, with its physical presence and written instruction, was the most important, accompanied by insignia and followed by gifts. All were employed by the Fatimids to invest the Zirids with their authority; gifts were the token by which the Zirids affirmed their loyalty, accompanied by a reciprocal correspondence with their suzerains. Both at Qayrawān and al-Qāhira, the respective capitals, the arrival of the embassies bearing such tokens was ceremoniously received, serving in Ifrīqiya as the occasion for great public pageants designed to celebrate the union of prince and people. Their constitutional importance was particularly marked in 387/997 with the arrival of three sijillāt occasioned by the deaths of al-Manṣūr in Ifrīqiya and al-ʿAzīz in Egypt in the previous year. The first installed al-Manṣūr's son Bādīs in succession to his father, with the title of Naṣīr al-Dawla, variously Naṣīr al-Dawla al-Ḥākimiyya; the second announced the death of al-ʿAzīz and the succession of al-Ḥākim. The third was a command to Bādīs and the royal family, the Banū Manād, to enter into the ʿahd or covenant with the new sovereign through the bayʿa, the oath of fidelity.Footnote ¹⁰ The need for such a document was apparent in its absence; when Barjawān, the regent for al-Ḥākim, sent his fellow eunuch Yānis from Barqa to take control of Tripoli in 390/1000, Bādīs demanded to see the sijill of his appointment. It was not forthcoming, presumably because it did not exist; and Yānis fell in battle with the army sent against him.Footnote ¹¹ The episode marked the beginning of a second and equally unsuccessful attempt on the part of al-Qāhira to regulate the affairs of Ifrīqiya: in 1002 al-Ḥākim dispatched the son of a former rival of Buluggīn, Yaḥyā ibn ʿAlī ibn Ḥamdūn, to take control of both Tripoli and Gabes in alliance with the Zanāta chieftain who had seized control of Tripoli as a self-proclaimed vassal of the Caliph.Footnote ¹² Whatever the motive, Bādīs was evidently not amused; his defeat of Yaḥyā was followed by some ten years of silence in the sources on the relationship between the two dynasties which presumably reflects its coolness. This was in any case the decade when al-Qāhira was shaken by the messianic uprising of Abū Rakwa in the western desert, which even after its suppression in 396/1006 left Cyrenaica to the Arab beduin. Not until Bādīs's reconquest of Tripoli in 401/1010 did the situation change: two years later the resumption of diplomatic contact signalled a rapprochement between the two monarchies. It was cordial in the extreme. In 403/1012–13 a sijill conferring the title of ʿAzīz al-Dawla on Bādīs's then son and heir al-Manṣūr was received with great pomp and ceremony; of more practical importance, a second sijill added Barqa in Cyrenaica to Bādīs's dominions, with the evident aim of re-establishing control of the land bridge between the two centres of empire.Footnote ¹³ Thereafter, the sequence resumed. After a sijill of the following year announced the appointment of Ibn Ilyās as walī al-ʿahd to al-Ḥākim,Footnote ¹⁴ another in 407/1016–17 recognized the accession of Muʿizz, the son and actual successor of Bādīs, under the title Sharaf al-Dawla.Footnote ¹⁵ This title was confirmed in a subsequent sijill of 411/1020–1,Footnote ¹⁶ while following the announcement of al-Ḥākim's death in the following year, and the command to take the bayʿa to his successor al-Ẓāhir,Footnote ¹⁷ a sijill of al-Ẓāhir in 414/1023–4 entitled Muʿizz to employ the phrase “From the Amīr Sharaf al-Dawla wa ʿAḍūduhā” in the mukātaba, his official correspondence, and to be addressed in the same way.Footnote ¹⁸

The sijillāt which bestowed such titles were evidently constitutive. The titles themselves were those of the Dawla, the Caliphal state; and their reading out was the equivalent of a coronation which turned the Zirid monarch into a Ṣanīʿa or Creature of the Imam-Caliph. They were read out not only in his presence, but in the Great Mosques of Qayrawān and the palace city of al-Manṣūriyya; and at least in 414/1023–4, copies were made to be sent as proclamations to the far corners of the land, to be greeted with public acclaim.Footnote ¹⁹ In the absence of precise descriptions of the ceremony at which they were presented, it is not clear whether the insignia which regularly accompanied the arrival of these sijillāt in Ifrīqiya were, like a crown and sceptre, similarly constitutive, serving to invest the Zirid monarch with the power and authority conferred upon him by the sijillāt. Referred to generally as tashrīf, when not otherwise specified, such insignia nevertheless undoubtedly served as the outward signs of that conferment, and in that capacity were inseparable from the presentation of the sijillāt, and indispensable to the public display which may have been the essential proof of the transaction. Presumably for that reason, the insignia described in the sources were most conspicuously flags, two of which in 414/1023–4 were specified as manjūq,Footnote ²⁰ evidently sumptuous banners of gold and silver brocade, in addition to the more numerous bunūd or alwiya that came with every delegation, some fifteen or twenty at a time, embroidered with gold. All were immediately displayed to the populace in spectacular cavalcades, for example in 403/1012–13 to celebrate the resumption of such relations with al-Qāhira. Along with the flags came robes, khilaʿ, perhaps all of which came from the Imam-Caliph's own enormous wardrobe but do not receive the same emphasis, despite the use of the phrase khuliʿa ʿalayhi, “he was enrobed”. Swords, in the plural, came in 403/1012–13, perhaps implying that they were regularly sent.Footnote ²¹ But the particular reference in 411/1020–1 to a sword with a great jewel for a pommel,Footnote ²² and the mention in 414/1023–4 of three horses from the Imam-Caliph's personal mounts, with splendid saddles,Footnote ²³ perhaps implies that such evidently symbolic items may have been optional. As such, it is difficult to distinguish them from the gifts of less obviously symbolic character which were sent to Ifrīqiya by al-Ẓāhir in 420/1029.Footnote ²⁴ These included fine Egyptian cloth from Tinnis and Damietta; rarities from India and the Yemen; a giraffe; Bactrian camels with howdahs (qibāb, “domes”) containing slave girls; and other amazing things. Exotic animals, on the other hand, were certainly thought of as appropriate for royalty. The elephant that was sent from al-Qāhira in 384/994 following the previous approval of Bādīs as walī al-ʿahd went in procession to the celebration of an ʿĪd by Bādīs in his capacity as designated heir;Footnote ²⁵ it was presumably the same elephant, with giraffes from the Bilād al-Sūdān, that went in his procession to the muṣallā in 387/997 to celebrate his investiture as monarch under the title Naṣīr al-Dawla.Footnote ²⁶

The presents from al-Ẓāhir in 420/1029 were sent in return for an elaborate present from Muʿizz, the last of four such presents from the Zirids to the Fatimids of which we have a mention in the history of their relations with al-Qāhira. That of 387/997 was in response to the nomination of Bādīs as Naṣīr al-Dawla and the accession of al-Ḥākim to the Caliphate.Footnote ²⁷ In 403/1012–13, the year of the Fatimid delegation to Ifrīqiya, al-Raqīq, the head of the Zirid chancery, paid a reciprocal visit to al-Qāhira to complete the transaction involved in the reconciliation of the two dynasties with a present from Bādīs.Footnote ²⁸ The present sent in 405/1014–15Footnote ²⁹ was a more magnificent sequel, which went by sea from al-Mahdiyya to Barqa, where it was landed for the onward journey only to be plundered by the Arabs of the Banū Qurra; its fate has probably obscured the political purpose of installing the leader of the expedition, Yaʿlā ibn Faraj, as walī of Barqa in accordance with the sijill of 403/1012–13, of which no more is heard. The occasion for the final present of 420/1029 is unknown. Their composition is described in more or less detail, but was evidently much the same in each case: horses with splendid saddles; slave girls; Ṣaqāliba or white eunuchs; black eunuchs; and an assortment of Ifrīqiyan or Maghribī products: silk, most probably from Gabes; fine cloth from Sousse and Sicily; headcloths and turbans; furs, beeswax most probably from Kabylia, and saffron; leather shields of Saharan type and lances or javelins. They were presumably accompanied by an appropriate letter; that of 405/1014–15 included both a letter and a present from Bādīs's sister Umm Mallāl to Sitt al-Mulk, the sister of al-Ḥākim. It might be expected that these occasions were not the only ones on which gifts of this kind were made, but that they were sent more frequently, at least following a major visitation from al-Qāhira. They equally called for a substantial embassy, which in 420/1029 was ceremoniously received by al-Ẓāhir, seated in state.Footnote ³⁰ The gifts themselves were evidently a token of loyalty, a reaffirmation of the bayʿa which both Bādīs and Muʿizz were commanded to make at the accession of al-Ḥākim and of al-Ẓāhir.Footnote ³¹ In that sense, they may have been more important to the recipient, the Imam-Caliph, than the letters which undoubtedly accompanied them, like the letter which went along with the present from Umm Mallal to Sitt al-Mulk. These, on the other hand, would have been the high spots of the mukātaba, the official correspondence of the Zirids, whose importance in the relationship of the dynasty to its suzerain and its subjects is apparent in the addition of wa ʿAḍūduhā to the title which Muʿizz was permitted to employ in writing. That importance is perversely illustrated in the apocryphal anecdote retailed by the twelfth-century head of the Fatimid chancery, Ibn al-Ṣayrafī, that the Wazir al-Yāzūrī sent the Banū Hilāl to Ifrīqiya to punish the “stupid Berber” Muʿizz for addressing him in the mukātaba with the honorific Ṣanīʿa instead of the humbler ʿAbd Amīr al-Muʾminīn.Footnote ³² Preposterous as it is, the story bears witness to an ongoing correspondence of the Zirids with al-Qāhira, exemplified in the sijill sent by al-Ḥākim in 411/1020 in reply to a letter from Muʿizz in the early years of his reign, reporting the demise of the rival Umayyad Caliphate at Cordoba.Footnote ³³ The message from al-Qāhira was one of congratulation, accompanied by the presentation to the Zirid monarch of fifteen gold-embroidered flags, whose arrival was the occasion for a celebratory parade. The reciprocity in this case is clear, and says as much if not more about the diplomatic contact by which the Fatimids in Egypt endeavoured to maintain and extend their empire. Thus, as a celebration of victory on the strength of a communication received from a subordinate in the field, al-Ḥākim's letter finds a parallel in the sijill of 1053–4 to the Yemen. This was equally a response to an announcement of victory, in this case by the envoy sent by al-Yāzūrī to encourage the Banū Hilāl to besiege Muʿizz in Qayrawān and receive the submission of those anxious to return to the Fatimid fold. It too was a celebration of the downfall of an enemy, that of the erstwhile viceroy Muʿizz himself, stigmatized by a play on words as Mudhill, “vile”. It was almost certainly followed by others, very likely by one which celebrated the return of Muʿizz to his Fatimid allegiance; but as it stands it is the last in the Ifrīqiyan series of which we have a record, charting the history of this particular relationship. The conclusion to be drawn is that despite the down-the-line, directional and hierarchical character of the sijillāt, it was a relationship that depended for its continuance upon its value to the Zirids rather than the obedience required of them to the instructions of al-Qāhira. As assertions of their authority rather than their power, the sijillāt nevertheless remained a potent expression of the claims of the Fatimids to the Caliphate of all believers, and their essential instrument for the retention of their empire in the West.

For that, physical communication was essential. The expeditions which conveyed the sijillāt and their attendant presents over more than a thousand miles each way described the routes inked on Wansbrough's map of the Mediterranean in orbital fashion. Their size must have been considerable, the envoys who led them persons of appropriate stature. The names of only two of the Ifrīqiyan emissaries has survived: that of al-Raqīq, the head of the Zirid chancery and chronicler of the dynasty, and that of Yaʿlā ibn Faraj, the general in command of the ill-fated gift of 405/1014–15. The Fatimid envoys played a crucial role as the representatives of the Imam-Caliph charged to deliver the sijillāt; to perform whatever ceremony was required; and to receive in return the homage of the Zirids, are more regularly named. The grandest, or at least the most elaborately titled, was the one who came in 387/997 on the occasion of the two deaths and two successions at Qayrawān and al-Qāhira: al-Dāʿī al-Qāḍī al-Sharīf ʿAlī ibn ʿAbdallāh al-Bāhirī al-ʿAlawī. Thereafter it is a question of three or four names, and a family connection. In 403/1012–13, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Abī Kudayna was accompanied by Abū l-Qāsim ibn Ḥasan.Footnote ³⁴ In 410-11/1020, Abū l-Qāsim ibn al-Yazīd came together with Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Abī Kudayna, who came again in 414/1023–4.Footnote ³⁵ In the case of al-Bāhirī, we are seeing the product of the alliance between the Fatimids and the Ashrāf, those other descendants of the Prophet whom al-Muʿizz and al-ʿAzīz had been careful to cultivate.Footnote ³⁶ In the case of Ibn Abī Kudayna, father and son, we are looking at a ministerial dynasty that produced a Wazir in the 450s/1060s. All may be thought of as duʿāt, missionaries in the sense of fulfilling a particular mission on behalf of the Imam-Caliph, rather than preachers of the Fatimid doctrine or heads of communities of believers. As surrogates for the Imam-Caliph they were accorded a royal welcome: in 403/1012–13 the two envoys, arriving by ship at al-Mahdiyya, were received by Bādīs together with the people of Qayrawān, quḍāt and aʿyān, qāḍīs and notables, with flags and trumpets.Footnote ³⁷

Equally important was the mode of transport, presumed in all cases to be by sea on the strength of the two references in 403/1012–13 and 405/1014–15. Whatever the perils of the voyage, ships had the advantage of speed, carrying capacity and simple economy over the long journey by caravan along the coast, whose unsettled conditions from the affair of Yānis at Tripoli onwards made it in any case scarcely practicable. The Fatimid navy, sailing out of al-Mahdiyya, had been instrumental in the conquest of Egypt, and both the Zirids and the Kalbids in Sicily had formidable fleets. In the first half of the eleventh century, the takeover by the Italians of shipping in the Mediterranean was only beginning.Footnote ³⁸ The sea was evidently the only way for the Fatimids to communicate with Sicily, the other half of their dominion in the Maghrib, where the Kalbids had remained more amenable than the Zirids to direct Fatimid interference in their affairs. The appointment of Jaʿfar in succession to his partially paralysed father Yūsuf was by sijill c. 998;Footnote ³⁹ in 403/1012–13, a further sijill, accompanied by insignia, gave him the title of Tāj al-Dawla wa Sayf al-Mulk.Footnote ⁴⁰ Coinciding with the embassy to Ifrīqiya, it confirms the intention of al-Qāhira to revive its empire in the West. In 415/1024–5 the embassy to Ifrīqiya in the previous year was followed by the arrival of Abū l-Qāsim Rizq al-Baghdādī with a sijill and presents from the wealth of the palace, including two singing girls, for Jaʿfar's successor Aḥmad al-Akḥal; the captain of his ship had duly received a robe of honour.Footnote ⁴¹ Such embassies, in fact, point to the maritime character of the Fatimid empire in the Mediterranean, all the more because of the deterioration and final loss of that control of the Libyan coast from Tripoli to Barqa which had been essential to the conquest of Egypt in 969–73.Footnote ⁴² The grant of the government of Barqa to the Zirids in 403/1012–13 was an episode in a long-running battle between the Zirids and immigrant Zanāta warriors from the central Maghrib, which culminated in the 1020s in the acquisition of Tripoli by the Zanāta Banū Khazrūn.Footnote ⁴³ Coming after the messianic rising of the bedouin under Abū Rakwa, the loss of Barqa to the Banū Qurra in 405/1014–15 meanwhile marked the rise of the nomad Arab threat which culminated in the arrival of the Banū Hilāl in Ifrīqiya in the middle of the century. The arrival of the Arabs undoubtedly played a part in Muʿizz's calculated breach with the Fatimids in 440/1048–9, three years before his rout at the battle of Ḥaydarān in 444/1052 opened the way to the final Fatimid mission celebrated in the sijill of 445/1053–4. That mission in turn was instrumental in Muʿizz's abandonment of Qayrawān for al-Mahdiyya, and his return to Fatimid allegiance in 449/1057.Footnote ⁴⁴

For the Fatimids this was a hollow triumph; Ifrīqiya, the old Byzantine province of Africa which had been taken over by the Arabs, had finally dissolved into city states and tribal domains. With the Kalbids gone from Sicily and the beginning of the Norman conquest of the island, the arrival at al-Qāhira of a final present from Muʿizz in 452/1060 was a conclusion rather than a resurrection of their empire in the west.Footnote ⁴⁵ Including a shield inlaid with a jewel allegedly belonging to the Fatimid Mahdi, it certainly went once again by sea. But while the Zirids under Muʿizz's successor Tamīm settled down on the coast to engage in a doomed attempt to salvage something of the maritime dominion of the Fatimids in the central Mediterranean, the regime of the Fatimids in Egypt was itself transformed by the crisis of the 450s/1060s, and the liaison between the two dynasties faded away. While Ifrīqiya may have survived as a province in the mind of the Fatimids,Footnote ⁴⁶ ironically the best evidence we have for the persistence of the Fatimid connection in the Maghrib comes from the Normans in Sicily. In his attempt to recreate for himself the Fatimid empire in the central Mediterranean,Footnote ⁴⁷ Roger II turned not only to correspondence with al-Qāhira but to Fatimid ceremonial and Fatimid chancery practice. The products of his Arabic chancery have survived in a series of what are in effect sijillāt, the dafātir al-ḥudūd, impressive titles to land and peasants comparable in their own way to the contemporary privileges granted to the monks of Sinai in Stern's Fātimid Documents.Footnote ⁴⁸ They are a testament, if not to the remaining power, then at least to the enduring prestige of the Imamate-Caliphate; and certainly to the force of Wansbrough's lingua franca in the Mediterranean.