al-Qa'im bi-Amr Allah

Al-Qa'im bi-Amr Allah (a regnal title meaning roughly "he who carries out God's command") was the second ruler of the Fatimid dynasty, the Ismaili Shia caliphate that arose in North Africa in the early tenth century. He was born in March or April 893 in Salamiyya, a town in Syria that was then a secret center of the Ismaili movement. As a child he shared his father's flight westward when Abbasid pursuit forced the family to abandon Salamiyya, traveling through Ramla and Fustat (old Cairo) before settling for some years in Sijilmasa in the Moroccan south. After Fatimid forces took power in Ifriqiya (modern Tunisia and eastern Algeria), his father reigned as al-Mahdi, and in 912 named him heir.

As heir-apparent he personally led two large military expeditions toward Egypt (914–915 and 919–921), reaching Alexandria both times but failing to hold the country. He succeeded his father in 934 and ruled from the fortified coastal capital, al-Mahdiya, where sources say he lived so withdrawn a life that his personality is barely known. The defining crisis of his reign was the revolt of Abu Yazid, a preacher of Kharijite (a rigorist anti-dynastic current) leanings who rallied Berber tribes and besieged al-Mahdiya in 945. Al-Qa'im died on 17 May 946 with the rebellion unresolved; his son, who took the title al-Mansur, finally crushed it. Ismaili tradition counts him as the twelfth imam — a claim of religious authority specific to that community, not a neutral historical fact.