Abd Allah al-Mahdi Billah
874 CE–934 CE · Salamiyya
Abd Allah al-Mahdi Billah (born, by the official Ismaili account, in 874 CE / 260 AH; died 4 March 934 CE / 322 AH) founded the Fatimid Caliphate, the only major Shia caliphate in Islamic history. The Fatimids belonged to the Ismaili branch of Shia Islam (a Shia tradition that traces the imamate through Isma'il, son of the sixth imam Ja'far al-Sadiq). For roughly a decade he led the Ismaili da'wa ("summons," the missionary network) from Salamiyya in Syria, where the movement long operated in concealment. Reports hold that around 899 he openly claimed the imamate for himself and his forebears, a step that split the movement and provoked the breakaway of the Qarmatians, who rejected his claim.
Pressure from the Abbasid authorities drove him to flee westward, through Ramla and Fustat in Egypt to Sijilmasa in Morocco, where he lived as a merchant and was placed under detention. Meanwhile his missionary Abu Abdallah al-Shi'i, leading the Kutama Berbers, toppled the Aghlabid rulers of Ifriqiya. In 909 al-Shi'i marched to Sijilmasa, freed him, and on 27 August had him enthroned. He took the regnal title al-Mahdi ("the rightly-guided one"). His claimed descent from Ali and Fatima is affirmed by Ismaili tradition and rejected by hostile Sunni and Twelver sources, who called him an impostor named Ubayd Allah; scholars regard the genealogy as unresolved. In 921 he moved his court to the new fortified capital he built, Mahdia, where he died.
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Salamiyya
What they did here
He was raised in Salamiyya, the family's long-standing base, after his father's death, and from the mid-890s directed the Ismaili missionary network ('da'wa') from there. Sources report that around 899 he openly proclaimed the imamate for himself and his line, splitting the movement and driving off the Qarmatians.
About Salamiyya
Salamiyya, in west-central Syria east of Hama, was, according to Ismaili tradition, the secret headquarters of the Ismaili imams in the 9th century before the public proclamation of the Fatimid caliphate; it was from here that Abd Allah al-Mahdi set out before founding the dynasty in North Africa in 909.
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