At the Crossroads of Competing Confessions and Politics: al-Turtūshī’s Experience in the Fātimid Alexandria

Abstract

The tenth and eleventh centuries witnessed significant social and political transformations in the Islamic World. While the Buwayhid Dynasty began to control Iraq in 945, the Fātimid Dynasty started to dominate Egypt in 969. Besides, Christian Europeans set up crusades and managed to capture important Muslim cities in al-Andalus and the Middle East during the late eleventh century. These transformations had certain impacts on the Sunnī Muslim scholars. Through examination of an Andalusian scholar, Abū Bakr al-Turtūshī's life and works, I will analyze how al-Turtūshī as a Sunnī Muslim scholar encountered different confessional groups (Shi‘īs, Jews, Christians, and Sūfīs) and how he made an effort to shape the Shi'ī Fātimid politics in harmony with the Sunnī Islam. In addition, I will explore how he aimed to draw strict religious boundaries between Muslims and non-Muslims in Fātimid Egypt. Furthermore, I will examine how he attempted to reconstruct the Sunnī identity and reform social life in Medieval Egypt.