Bensalem Himmich - The Theocrat

I Am the Expert Rider

I ride toward you and head for your secrets. Do not run away, do not panic! For all you know, I may have brought release after hardship, or I may have opened my beneficence to all when you were expecting murder!

Why Have I Come

The truth is not absolute, it is free.

Truth is the making of what is most powerful and capable of repudiating immaturity and custom and giving free rein to the will for interpretation and power, There is no harm if the realms and goals of the will break away and contradict each other.

By Fatima, your destruction rests on equality of sides and the languor of that which has neither color nor followers. So seek and derive your causes from the life of opposites and contradictions.

Consider how many residents in hell crawled their way there with good intent!

How often does ease come after hardship?

How many things do you hate, when they are actually the best thing for you?

So accept and tolerate me, bitter and unruly though I am! I have come only to teach you the meanings of the hidden opposites, the secret laws of transformation. I have come only to cure you of your maladies and to propagate a fanatical opposition to what you are, what you intend, be it overt or covert; and to declare open war on all those who, in the flame of time, and absence, cannot wait.

1. From Records of Decrees and Interdictions

Al-Hakim’s behavior was utterly extraordinary. At every moment he used to invent laws which he forced people to implement.

Ibn Khallikan,

Book on the Deaths of Important People

Once al-Hakim had killed off Master Burjuwan — the administrator of the state, al-Husayn ibn ‘Ammar — the leader of the Katama and secretary of the state, and others as well, he had exclusive control over power. From then on, barely a year or two went by without him issuing, among a flood of documents and sealed regulations, some compulsory decrees that were both strange and contradictory. One of the first such decrees, issued in the fourth year of the caliph’s quarter century, namely A.H. 390, concerned “the individual nature of authority in both its overt and covert aspects.” After the initial “in the name of God” and “thanks be to God,” it begins as follows:

To all you people who hear this proclamation: God, to whom belongs majesty and power, has ordained that leaders be identified by special qualities that are possessed by no one else among the people. After reading this document, anyone who opens a debate or correspondence with anyone other than the divine presence, our Lord and Master, will be subject to execution by the will of the Commander of the Faithful. God willing, those who have witnessed this document should inform those who have not. 3

In the right-hand margin.

My sphere is the territory you have inhabited, where women, words, and blessings are evident.

My sphere is circles and cadres where I exercise authority with exemplary violence. No ministers or gentry even dream of killing me, as they amass property and titles by pillage and plunder, live the easy life and strut about in my name and under my protection.

Be you strong or weak, beware of me and be on your guard. My only purpose in coming is to restore to the never-sleeping eye in your midst both its prestige and its rights.

In the left-hand margin:

You must always seek security from me.

You peoples who are integral to my era and my service, you may well come from different races, classes, and sects, but you are not permitted to disagree about me or about my exclusive right to grant pardon and security and to soothe hearts and minds. Until you can show contrary proof, I view you as being all against me and moving in directions other than those I wish.

Here then is my hellfire kindled by linen, sackcloth, and alfa . This is my hellfire, one that craves the flesh and fat of anyone who is unwilling to bring his entreaties to me or who holds back rather than entering the gate of my penance and security.

In this same year al-Hakim and his servants slaughtered many people, making no distinction between guilty and innocent, mighty and lowly, free and slave, Muslim and non-Muslim.

He forbade people to undertake the land and sea journey for the pilgrimage, since he was worried that people might escape from God’s own country and Egypt thus be emptied of its own inhabitants.

During this year all fishermen had to stand before al-Hakim and take a solemn oath not to go after scaleless fish. They were told that anyone who did so and thus disobeyed this injunction would be eviscerated.

In the same year public baths were also closed, and a large number of bathers were arrested with no covering, then made to walk naked through the streets and markets!

In year five of al-Hakim’s quarter century a decree against dogs was issued under his seal. Here is part of what it contains:

Regarding all dogs, except those used for hunting purposes, rid me of them and remove them completely from all my lands and quarters. I cannot bear the sight of the vilest of creatures, the most remote from ethics of change and contradiction, the most likely to put up with the burdens of bootlicking and loyalty.

So in this year dogs were killed in thousands. Those who managed to get away fled to distant, uninhabited regions.

The occasion was also used to confiscate and slaughter all pigs owned by Christians.

This year (although some say the year before), al-Hakim got to hear a couple of verses of poetry that made him very upset and angry. He asked who the poet was and was told it was Najiya ibn Muhammad ibn Sulayman Abu al-Hasan al-Katib al-Baghdadi, boon companion of caliphs and great men. Al-Hakim demanded that he be summoned, but people pointed out that he was dead or at least one of those who had disappeared. The two lines (in the tawil meter) run as follows:

I saw the morning unsheathe its sword

As the night and stars retired in defeat

And a red glow emerged. Then I said: Night has been murdered,

And-here is the horizon stained with blood by him who spilled it. 4

In the sixth year of al-Hakim’s quarter century the caliph surprised his people with the decree “The Reversal of Times and Prevention of Curfew.” Part of it reads as follows:

To prevent those delusions and disturbing dreams that come with the night and to uncover schemes hatched up by anyone against authority and me in a grab for power:

I, al-Hakim bi-Amr Illah, hereby announce the reversal of times and meetings. From now on, work will be at night and sleep in daytime. I hereby forbid all travel around the city after sunset, all assemblies outside houses, all fouling of street space. Beware of breaking my time-schedule! Anyone apprehended and brought to me for such a crime will be put to death.

Until further instruction to the contrary, this injunction will stand as is without change or adjustment.

That year, candles were lit at night in Cairo and throughout Egypt, turning night into day. One day, al-Hakim happened to pass by a carpenter working in the middle of the day. “Did I not forbid this? he asked the man. “My lord,” the man replied, “when people earned their living in the daytime, they entertained themselves at night. When the opposite is the case, they entertain themselves during the day. This is entertainment.” With that al-Hakim smiled and went on his way. 5

In the eighth year of al-Hakim’s quarter century his Shi’i devotees published, with his connivance, a decree concerning ancestors, requiring that insults be posted on doors, walls, cemeteries, and street corners.

In this same year a group of exoterics was paraded around the city on donkeys, after which their shoulders were fractured and they were all beheaded. In every quarter the town crier proclaimed: This is the punishment for all those who express their affection for Abu Bakr, ‘Uthman, ‘Aisha, Talha, al-Zubayr, ‘Amr ibn al-‘As, and Mu‘awiya.