Ali was a son of
Ja'far ibn Falah, a prominent
Kutami Berber general. Ali succeeded his brother Sulayman, a general who had served governor of
Damascus in the late 10th century, as head of the family. After the death of Sulayman's successor as governor of Damascus, the Berber commander Jaysh ibn al-Samsama, in 1000, Ali became governor. Ali returned to Egypt around 1005 or before. There, he faced a nomadic Arab–Berber army led by the
Umayyad leader
Abu Rakwa. The latter defeated Ali at
Giza and news of his defeat to Abu Rakwa's nomads caused panic in
Cairo. Abu Rakwa skipped Cairo to raid the
Fayyum oasis to the south, where he was defeated by a Fatimid army under
Al-Fadl ibn Salih. Ali most likely is the person credited in an inscription found above the mosque of
Salamiyah in central Syria for erecting a mausoleum for one of the Fatimids'
"hidden" imams Abd Allah. Ali had captured Salamiyah for the Fatimids and likely built the mausoleum in 1009. It was later repaired by the local chief
Khalaf ibn Mula'ib in 1088. In July 1013 the Fatimid caliph
al-Hakim bestowed the title
Qutb al-Dawla (Axis of the State) on Ali and appointed him at the head of a 24,000-strong, Kutami army to rein in the
Jarrahids, a
Bedouin tribe which controlled
Palestine. Ali entered Palestine's capital
Ramla, and the sons of the Jarrahid chieftain
Mufarrij ibn Daghfal, Ali and Mahmud, announced their loyalty to al-Hakim. Mufarrij, meanwhile, was poisoned and killed by his secretary on the order of al-Hakim, who afterward executed the secretary. According to the historian
Hugh N. Kennedy, Ali was al-Hakim's "most trusted commander ... the great political survivor of the reign," a period in which several high-ranking commanders and officials were executed by al-Hakim. Ali died shortly before al-Hakim, , in a riding accident. Ali's son
Safiyy al-Dawla Muhammad served as the Fatimid governor of Aleppo in 1022–1023. ==References==