Caliph of Cairo

One fateful night in the year 1021, the powerful ruler of Fatimid Cairo, Al-Hakim, rode out of the southern gates of his city mounted on a favourite grey donkey named Qamar ('the moon'). He was never seen again. And thus did one of the Islamic world's most enigmatic caliphs pass not only out of the sight of humankind but into legend as well. Was the caliph murdered, or could he have decided to abandon his royal life, wandering off to live as a reclusive ascetic, a dervish monk, alone and anonymous? Whatever the truth, the fact was that Al-Hakim had literally vanished into the desert, bringing to an end one of the strangest and most puzzling careers in Islamic history. Yet Al-Hakim, though shrouded in mystery, has never been forgotten. To the Druze, Al-Hakim was (and is) a manifestation of God, and his disappearance merely indicated his reversion to non-human form. For Ismailis, Al-Hakim was the sixteenth imam, descended from the Prophet, and infallible. Jews and Christians, by contrast, long remembered him as their persecutor, who ordered the destruction of many of their synagogues and churches, while other non-Shi'a Muslims felt similarly threatened by his edicts.
Who was Al-Hakim? Was he insane, eccentric or divinely inspired? Using all the tools of modern scholarship, Paul Walker offers the most balanced and engaging biography yet to be published of this endlessly fascinating individual, whose whole life seemed to be defined by paradox.