The Fatimids, Cairo and al-Azhar

The Shiite dynasty of the Fatimids, risen in North Africa, conquers Egypt and lays out a new capital beside old Fustat — al-Qahira, Cairo. Almost at once the al-Azhar mosque is built, and by it grows up a school, in time one of the oldest working universities in the world. Fatimid Egypt is rich with the trade of India and the Mediterranean, and we know an unusual amount about its people's daily life thanks to the Cairo Geniza — the paper-store of the synagogue in Fustat. In 1009 the caliph al-Hakim will destroy the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and the echo of that act will be the Crusades.