The Setting

Having successfully fought against the Aghlabids, in 297/909 the Fatimids established themselves in the Aghlabids' former royal city of Raqqada by taking over their palaces and all the other buildings the city contained: a large mosque, baths, markets and caravanserais. Raqqada was to be the Fatimids' first ‘royal city’. Only a few years later, al-Mahdi took the decision to build a strategically more secure and appropriate seat for the growing needs of the newly-established dynasty. Having inherited from the Aghlabids a powerful navy, in 304/916 al- Mahdi ordered to build on the coast, 200 km south of Tunis, what was to become known as al-Mahdiyya, ‘the city of the Mahdi’. When the city was completed five years later, al-Mahdi moved there and al-Mahdiyya, became the first purpose-built Fatimid capital. Built on an almost impregnable peninsula, al-Mahdiyya served as a natural port on the coastal trade route between al- Andalus and Egypt, and provided easy access to Sicily, an island the Fatimids had gained as part of their successful North African campaign. Defended by massive walls, a section of which is still extant today, the city had at least two royal palaces: one for the imam-caliph al-Mahdi, known as qaṣr al-manār, the ‘lighthouse palace’, facing west, and another for his son and heir al-Qa'im, facing east. Other buildings included a mosque (restored in the 1960s), storehouses, an arsenal and administrative edifices.