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9 - Western Arabia and Yemen (fifth/eleventh century to the Ottoman conquest)

from PART II - EGYPT AND SYRIA (ELEVENTH CENTURY UNTIL THE OTTOMAN CONQUEST)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2011

By
Esther Peskes
Edited by
Maribel Fierro
Maribel Fierro
Affiliation:
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, Madrid
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Summary

Western Arabia

From the second half of the fourth/tenth century the ʿAbbāsid caliphate’s hegemonic monopoly in western Arabia eroded. The economic and geo-strategic importance of the Red Sea intensified in the wake of the ʿAbbāsid state’s decline, and the basic significance of the Ḥijāz as goal of the pilgrimage (ḥajj) and original abode of Islam widened. In the period under study the region became an object of imperial strategies in which ʿAbbāsids, Fāṭimids, Ayyūbids, Rasūlids, Mamlūks and others had their share. Within this framework of supra-regional power politics the foundation and consolidation of the Sharīfī emirates of Mecca and Medina, the main local political actors in western Arabia, took place.

In Mecca, descendants of the Prophet Muḥammad by his grandson al-Ḥasan took over power during the sixties of the tenth century CE. Thus began Sharīfī government there for nearly a millennium to come. The rise of the emirate coincided with the beginning of Fāṭimid rule in Egypt and it was to the Fāṭimids that the Sharīfs had to pay allegiance at first. Early Sharīfī ambitions for independence culminated in the proclamation as caliph by the ruling Sharīf in 401/1010. Yet, the Fāṭimids could dominate Mecca, and in 455/1063 their Yemeni vassals, the Ṣulayḥids, temporarily controlled the city to install a pro-Fāṭimid reign after the end of the first Ḥasanid clan in governance, the Mūsāwīs.

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The New Cambridge History of Islam , pp. 285 - 298
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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