The future al-Fa'iz was born as Abu'l-Qasim Isa, the son of the twelfth
imam–
caliph of the
Fatimid Caliphate,
al-Zafir. Isa was raised to the throne on 16 April 1154 at the age of five, after the murder of his father and two of his uncles, by the
vizier,
Abbas ibn Abi al-Futuh, and his son, Nasr. He was given the
regnal name , 'Victorious with God's Help'. The sight of his uncle's corpses, and the loud cries of acclamation from the assembled troops of the
Fatimid army frightened the young boy. Throughout his life, the common belief was that his subsequent
epileptic seizures and tremors were a result of these traumatic experiences. For the same reason, his role in public ceremonies was limited; the annual ceremony celebrating the
flooding of the Nile was even held at night during his reign. The bloody events soon resulted in Abbas' own downfall. Terrified women in the Fatimid family called upon the
Armenian-born governor of
Asyut,
Tala'i ibn Ruzzik, for assistance, reportedly sending their own cut hair in supplication. Ibn Ruzzik readily agreed and marched on Cairo. Abbas tried to resist, but faced general opposition: most of the troops were reluctant to support him or defected outright, and the remainder found themselves under attack by the populace with stones. In the end, on 29 May Abbas had to force his way out of the capital with his son and a handful of followers. The party made for
Syria but was intercepted on 6 June by the
Crusaders near the
Dead Sea. Abbas was killed, and Nasr was sold to the Fatimids; he was mutilated and beaten to death by the palace women. Ibn Ruzzik was named vizier with plenipotentiary powers on 17 June, while the underage al-Fa'iz was placed under the tutelage of his aunts, headed by al-Zafir's sister
Sitt al-Qusur ('Lady of the Palaces'), who had played a leading role in securing revenge against Abbas and Nasr for the murder of her brothers. Outside the walls of the
Great Fatimid Palaces, Ibn Ruzzik was the actual ruler of the state, and al-Fa'iz was virtually his prisoner. A
Twelver Shi'ite, he actively sponsored the
Alid in the
Hijaz and
Iraq, but he made no attempt to depose the Fatimid dynasty, instead ruling on its behalf as a
de facto king in the style of the all-powerful and illustrious Armenian viziers
Badr al-Jamali and
al-Afdal Shahanshah, whom he attempted to emulate. Ibn Ruzzik's position was not without its challenges: in 1155, and again in 1157, he faced uprisings against him by provincial governors. Seeking to bolster his legitimacy, Ibn Ruzzik returned to an aggressive policy against the Crusaders in
Palestine. He scored some successes with a naval attack on
Tyre in 1155 and with raids at
Gaza and
Hebron in 1157 and 1158, but his efforts to secure Egypt through an alliance with the
Zengids of Syria under
Nur al-Din Zangi failed. When
Baldwin III of Jerusalem prepared an invasion of Egypt in 1160, he had to be bought off. Ibn Ruzzik's reputation as a holy warrior, a poet, and a patron of culture was counterbalanced by his despotic rule, resorting to confiscations to address the by now chronic shortfalls of revenue, exacerbated by the active pursuit of the war against the Crusaders. Al-Fa'iz died during an epileptic seizure on 22 July 1160. Ibn Ruzzik chose another underage child to succeed him: al-Fa'iz's nine-year-old cousin al-Adid, who was wed to one of the vizier's daughters for good measure. He was to be the last Fatimid caliph. ==See also==