996: Yaḥyā b. Saʿīd al-Anṭākī on a Pogrom against Foreign Christian Traders in Old Cairo

Abstract

In spring 386/996, an angry mob accused a group of Christians classified as “Byzantines” (al-Rūm) of having laid fire to the new Fāṭimid fleet in the shipyard of Old Cairo. The fleet was just about to set out to support the caliph al-ʿAzīz bi-llāh in his war against Byzantium. More than one hundred Christians were killed; massive looting and a harsh reaction on the part of the authorities ensued. This incident—reported by the contemporary Arabic-Christian chronicler Yaḥyā b. Saʿīd al-Anṭākī, and narrated in two versions in the later works of al-Maqrīzī—has been contextualised differently. One strand of scholarship uses this episode to discuss the Fāṭimids’ treatment of ḏimmīs, i.e. non-Muslims under Muslim rule. Another strand identifies these “Byzantine” Christians as Amalfitans, thus regarding the incident as evidence for intensifying economic relations between southern Italy and Egypt. The article brings these two perspectives together by comparing Yaḥyā b. Saʿīd’s depiction of events with those of al-Maqrīzī and by situating the episode within the broader contexts of Fāṭimid–Byzantine relations, interconfessional and interreligious coexistence in Egypt, and transmediterranean trade.