Download The Fatimids: 1. The Rise of a Muslim Empire: World of Islam AudioBook Free
Emerging from a period of long seclusion, in the year 909, the first choice of the burgeoning community of Ismaili Shi'i Muslims was announced the first Fatimid Imam-caliph. Abd Allah al-Mahdi founded the only real sustained Shi'i dynasty (909-1171) to rule over substantive parts of the medieval Muslim world, rivaling both the Umayyads of Spain and the Abbasids. At its maximum, the Fatimid Empire expanded from the Atlantic shores of North Africa, over the southern Mediterranean, and down both sides of the Red Sea, covering also Mecca and Medina. This accessible history, the first of two volumes, says the storyline of the beginning and extension of the Fatimid Empire in the 10th hundred years. Drawing upon recently available eyewitness accounts, Shainool Jiwa presents the first four generations of Fatimid Imam-caliphs - al-Mahdi, al-Qa'im, al-Mansur, and al-Mu'izz - as well as individuals who dished up them and the ones they battled against. Listeners are used on a journey through the Fatimid capitals of Qayrawan, Mahdiyya, and Mansuriyya and on to the founding of Cairo. In this lively and thorough release, we discover various milestones in Fatimid history and the politics and cultural accomplishments that continue to resonate today. Dr. Shainool Jiwa is a older faculty member at the Institute of Ismaili Studies, London. As a specialist on the Fatimids, she has written and lectured extensively on medieval Islamic history and has edited and translated key medieval Arabic texts relating to Fatimid history, including The Creator of Cairo (2013) and Towards a Shi'i Mediterranean Empire (2009). Dr. Jiwa is also the co-editor of The Shi'i World: Pathways in Traditions and Modernity (2015).
