19. To Demonstrate That He Was Not Soft on Christianity, the Mad Caliph Went on a Christian Persecution Bender
The son of the Fatimid Caliph Abu Mansur and a Christian consort named Al Azizah, Al Hakim became Caliph at age eleven after his father’s death. The religion of the Mad Caliph’s mother opened him to allegations of being an insufficiently zealous Muslim, and of being soft on Christianity. The accusations bothered him, so he went to extreme lengths to prove his Islamic zeal, and show that he was no Christian puppet. As in exceptionally extreme lengths: he launched an unprecedented wave of Christian persecutions, and ordered the destruction of churches and Christian monuments throughout his empire.
To demonstrate that having a Christian mother did not make him a soft Muslim, Al-Hakim abandoned the tolerance hitherto displayed by Muslim rulers to Christians and Jews. He went on a persecution bender, destroying synagogues and churches, including the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem – the one housing the cave where Jesus is thought to have lain before his resurrection. The Mad Caliph also banned pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and ordered Christians and Jews to wear distinguishing clothing to identify them. Jews were further singled out by being required to wear bells, so they could be identified by sound as well as sight.