work on the history of Sicily after the invasion. But his best known work is his annals of Alexandrian history, entitled Contexture of Gems, a dreary book revealing a credulous mind on the part of its author. During Said's patriarchate the petty Melchite community was disturbed by internal quarrels, which led to the interference of the emir, who took occasion to seize the Church treasures—said by the Copts to be very great—and transport them to his palace at Misr. He only allowed them to be redeemed on payment of 5,000 pieces of gold. The caliphate had now declined to a state of miserable weakness. In fact it was a mere shadow, and each emir ruled in his own province. Thus Mohammed Akchid, the emir in Egypt at this time, became an independent governor. It was useless to appeal against him to the caliph as the Copts of an earlier period had appealed to the caliph of their day. Therefore the independence of Egypt only meant more misery for the Egyptians, and that without hope of redress.
Theophanius, a Coptic patriarch who began his rule in the year 954, added to the troubles of the times by developing madness. He was taken by water to Misr for medical treatment; but one night during the voyage his delirious screams so alarmed his fellow-passengers, that one of the bishops descended to the hold and killed him—by suffocation or, as some said, by poison.
On the death of Akchid, who seems to have been a strong ruler, Mazzin of the Fatimite family—the rivals of the feeble remnant of the Abbasidæ line—-succeeded in taking Egypt. Thus there was established the Fatimite caliphate in Egypt, They settled their headquarters at Cairo in the year 970. This dynasty lasted for two centuries. At first promising reform under a strenuous government, it rapidly degenerated, most of the sovereigns being absorbed in their own pleasures and displaying no great ideas and no ambitions.[1] But for the Christians much of this period afforded a breathing space between
- ↑ See S. Lane Poole, Hist. of Egypt, p. 116.
