r the recognition of the caliph on the coinage, and
he was the first to found a Moslem dynasty there. A man of fair
Mohammedan education, iron will, and ubiquitous personal attention to
affairs, he added Syria to his dominions, defeated the East Romans with
vast slaughter near Tarsus (883), kept an army of 30,000 Turkish slaves
and a fleet of a hundred fighting ships.

He beautified his capital by building a sumptuous palace and his
well-known mosque, which still stands in his new royal suburb of Katai;
he encouraged the small farmers and reduced the taxation, yet he left
five millions in the treasury when he died in 884. His son maintained
his power, and more than his luxury and artistic extravagance; but there
were no elements of stability in the dynasty, which depended solely upon
the character of the ruler. The next generation saw Egypt once more
(905) a mere province of the caliphate, but with this difference, that
its governors were now Turks, generally under the control of their own
soldiery, and much less dependent upon the ever-weakening power of the
Caliph of Baghdad. One of them, the Ikhshid, in 935 emulated Ibn-Tulun
and united part of Syria to Egypt; but the sons he left were almost
children, and the power fell into the hands of the regent Kafur, a black
eunuch from the Sudan, bought for L25, who combined a luxurious and
cultivated court with some military successes and real administrative
capacity.

_III.--The Fatimid Caliphs_

The Mohammedan world is roughly divided into Sunnis and Shia. The Shia
are the idealists, the mystics of Islam; the Sunnis are the formalists,
the schoolmen. The Shia trace an apostolic succession from Ali, the
husband of the prophet Mohammed's daughter Fatima, hold doctrines of
immanence and illumination, adopt an allegorical interpretation of
scripture, and believe in the coming of a Mahdi or Messiah. The Sunnis
adhere to the elective historical caliphate descended from Mohammed's
uncle, maintain the eternal uncreated sufficiency of the Koran,
literally interpreted, and believe in no Messiah save Mohammed.

The Shia, whatever their racial origin, form the Persian, the Aryan,
adaptation of Islam, which is an essentially Semitic creed. In the tenth
century they had established a caliph among the Berbers at Kayrawan
(908). They had thence invaded Egypt with temporary success in 914 and
919. When the death of Kafur in 968 left the country a prey to rival
military factions, the