Editing Fatimid dynasty (section)

===<span class="anchor" id="Maymun al-Qaddah"></span>Fatimid genealogies and controversies===<!-- [[Maymun al-Qaddah]] and [[Abd Allah ibn Maymun al-Qaddah]] redirect here; when one of them gets an article the other should be redirected to it and this anchor removed -->
Official Fatimid doctrine claimed an uninterrupted line of succession between the first Fatimid caliph, [[Abdallah al-Mahdi Billah|Abd Allah al-Mahdi Billah]] ({{reign|909|934}}), and Ali and Fatima, via Muhammad ibn Isma'il.{{sfn|Canard|1965|p=850}} This descent was both accepted and challenged already in the Middle Ages, and remains a topic of debate among scholars today.<ref>cf. {{harvnb|Andani|2016|pp=199–200}} for a summary.</ref> As the historian of Shi'a Islam [[Heinz Halm]] comments, "The alleged descent of the dynasty from Ali ibn Abi Talib and Muhammad's daughter Fatima has been called into question by contemporaries from the very beginning and cannot be proven",{{sfn|Halm|2014}} while Michael Brett, an expert on the Fatimids, asserts that "a factual answer to the question of their identity is impossible".{{sfn|Brett|2001|p=29}}

The main problem arises with the succession linking al-Mahdi with Ja'far al-Sadiq. According to Isma'ili doctrine, the imams that followed Muhammad ibn Isma'il were in concealment ({{transliteration|ar|satr}}), but early Isma'ili sources do not mention them, and even later, official Isma'ili genealogies diverge on the number, names and identities of these 'hidden imams' ({{transliteration|ar|al-a'imma al-masturin}}), a problem complicated by the Isma'ili claims that the hidden imams assumed various aliases for safety.{{sfn|Canard|1965|pp=850–851}}{{sfn|Daftary|2007|pp=99–100, 104}} Thus the pro-Isma'ili Prince Peter Hagop Mamour, in his 1934 apologetic work ''Polemics on the Origin of the Fatimi Caliphs'', lists no fewer than fifty variations of the line of the four hidden imams between Isma'il ibn Ja'far and al-Mahdi, claiming that the various names represent pseudonyms.{{sfn|Brett|2001|p=34}} Early Isma'ili sources tend to be silent on the matter, from a mixture of both religious imperative—since God has decreed his imams to be hidden, they should remain so—and apparent ignorance.{{sfn|Brett|2001|p=35}} Al-Mahdi himself, in a letter sent to the Isma'ili community in Yemen, even claimed not to be descended from Isma'il ibn Ja'far, but from his older brother Abdallah al-Aftah, who is generally held to not have had any descendants at all. Notably, later official Fatimid genealogies rejected this version.{{sfn|Canard|1965|p=851}}{{sfn|Daftary|2007|p=101}}{{sfn|Halm|1991|pp=146–147}} In addition, it appears that the first known ancestor of the Fatimid line, [[Ahmad al-Wafi|Abdallah al-Akbar]], the great-grandfather of the first Fatimid caliph, initially claimed descent not from Ali at all, but from his brother [[Aqil ibn Abi Talib]], and was accepted as such by the Aqilids of Basra.{{sfn|Halm|1991|pp=19–20}} According to Brett, the line of descent claimed by the Fatimid between Ja'far al-Sadiq and al-Mahdi reflects "historical beliefs rather than historical figures, for which there is little or no independent confirmation",{{sfn|Brett|2001|p=29}} as even Isma'il ibn Ja'far is an obscure figure, let alone his supposed hidden successors.{{sfn|Brett|2001|p=30}}

While pro-Fatimid sources emphasize their [[Alid]] descent—the dynasty named itself simply as the 'Alid dynasty' ({{transliteration|ar|al-dawla al-alawiyya}})—many [[Sunni]] sources instead refer to them as the 'Ubaydids' ({{langx|ar|بنو عبيد|Banu Ubayd}}), after the diminutive form Ubayd Allah for al-Mahdi's name, commonly used in Sunni sources with an apparently pejorative intent.{{sfn|Canard|1965|p=852}}{{sfn|Halm|2014}} Medieval anti-Fatimid polemicists, starting with [[Ibn Rizam]] and [[Akhu Muhsin]], were keen to discredit Isma'ilism as an [[antinomian]] heresy and generally considered Fatimid claims to Alid descent fraudulent. Instead, they put forth a counter claim that al-Mahdi descended from Abdallah, the son of a certain [[Maymun al-Qaddah]] from [[Khuzistan]],{{sfn|Daftary|2007|pp=8, 101–103}} that al-Mahdi's real name was Sa'id, or that al-Mahdi's father was in reality a Jew (a common antisemitic trope among medieval Arab authors).{{sfn|Canard|1965|p=850}} While several medieval Sunni authors and contemporary potentates—including the impeccably Alid [[sharif]]s of [[Mecca]] and [[Medina]]—accepted or appeared to accept Fatimid claims at face value,{{sfn|Andani|2016|pp=199–200}} this anti-Isma'ili 'black legend', as the modern scholar [[Farhad Daftary]] calls it, influenced Sunni historiographers throughout the following centuries, and became official doctrine with the [[Baghdad Manifesto]] of 1011.{{sfn|Daftary|2007|pp=8–9, 24–25}} Due to the paucity of actual Isma'ili material until Isma'ili sources started to become available and undergo scholarly examination during the 20th century, the Sunni version was adopted even by some early modern [[Orientalists]].{{sfn|Daftary|2007|pp=101–103}}

Early Isma'ili sources ignore the existence of Maymun al-Qaddah, but later, Fatimid-era sources were forced to confront their opponents' claims about his person, and tried to reconcile the conflicting genealogies accordingly.{{sfn|Canard|1965|p=851}}{{sfn|Daftary|2007|p=105}} Some sectarian Isma'ili—especially [[Druze]]—sources even claimed that during the period of concealment of the Isma'ili imams, the Isma'ili movement was actually led by the descendants of Maymun al-Qaddah, until the restoration of the true line with the Fatimid caliphs.{{sfn|Daftary|2007|p=105}} Later [[Tayyibi]] Isma'ili authors also used the figures of Maymun al-Qaddah and his son Abdallah to argue for the legality of there being a substitute or representative of the imam, whenever the latter was underage.{{sfn|Daftary|2007|pp=105–106}} A further controversy that emerged already in medieval times is whether the second Fatimid caliph, [[Al-Qa'im (Fatimid caliph)|Muhammad al-Qa'im bi-Amr Allah]], was the son of al-Mahdi, or whether the latter was merely usurping the position of a still-hidden imam; that would mean that al-Qa'im was the first true Fatimid imam-caliph.{{sfn|Canard|1965|p=851}}{{sfn|Daftary|2007|p=105}}

Modern authors have tried to reconcile the genealogies. In ''Origins of Ismāʿı̄lism'', the Arabist [[Bernard Lewis]] suggested the existence of two parallel series of imams: trustee ({{transliteration|ar|mustawda'}}) imams, descended from Maymun al-Qaddah, whose task was to hide and protect the existence of the real ({{transliteration|ar|mustakarr}}, {{lit.|permanent}}) imams. Lewis posited that al-Mahdi was the last of that line, and that al-Qa'im was the first of the {{transliteration|ar|mustakarr}} imams to sit on the throne.{{sfn|Canard|1965|p=851}}{{sfn|Daftary|2007|p=107}} Research by [[Vladimir Ivanov (orientalist)|Vladimir Ivanov]], on the other hand, has conclusively shown that the supposed Qaddahite descent of the Fatimids is a legend, likely invented by Ibn Rizam himself: the historical Maymun al-Qaddah is now known to have been a disciple of [[Muhammad al-Baqir]] (recognized by both Isma'ilis and Twelvers as an imam), and both he and his son Abdallah hailed from the [[Hejaz]]. For reasons of chronology alone, Ibn Rizam's version is thus proven to be untenable.{{sfn|Daftary|2007|p=103}} Access to more sources has furthermore led to the partial reconciliation of the conflicting accounts by positing that some of the variant names in the genealogies were indeed cover names for the Isma'ili imams: thus Maymun ('the Fortunate One') is suggested as the sobriquet for Muhammad ibn Isma'il, especially since a source connects him with a sect known as the Maymuniyya. This explanation is also present in an epistle by the fourth Fatimid caliph, [[al-Mu'izz]], in 965. This would make the  claim of al-Mahdi's descent from an 'Abdallah ibn Maymun' actually correct, and lead hostile sources to confuse him with the earlier Shi'a figure.{{sfn|Daftary|2007|pp=104–105}} Another suggestion, by Abbas Hamdani and F. de Blois, is that the officially published genealogies represent a compromise between two different lines of descent from Ja'far al-Sadiq, one from Isma'il and another (per al-Mahdi's letter to the Yemenis) from Abdallah al-Aftah.{{sfn|Brett|2001|p=36}}{{sfn|Daftary|2007|p=107}} Other scholars, such as Halm, remain skeptical, while Omert Schrier and Michael Brett dismiss the Fatimid claims of Alid descent entirely as a pious fiction.{{sfn|Andani|2016|p=200}}