Fatimid Frontier

The Fatimid Caliphate, a Shia Ismaili dynasty ruling from Cairo since 969, was the principal Muslim power facing the new Crusader states at their southern edge. From the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 until the loss of Ascalon in 1153, the Fatimid frontier ran along the southern coast and inland approaches — a corridor of dune, dry valley, and walled town through which Egyptian armies could march, and from which Egyptian galleys could raid the Crusader ports.

Ascalon was the hinge of the frontier. From the time of the First Crusade onward the Fatimids made it their forward bastion against the Latin East — a fortified port whose harbor landed reinforcements and whose raiding parties harried the southern fiefdoms of Hebron and Darum. King Baldwin III's siege and capture of the city in 1153 closed the door on serious Fatimid pressure from the Levantine coast.

After Ascalon, the frontier shifted southward, into Egypt itself. King Amalric I led five expeditions against the Fatimids between 1163 and 1169, exploiting the caliphate's chronic vizier-feuds and threatening Cairo from the eastern Delta. The contest was decided not by Crusader arms but by the arrival of Saladin, sent by Nur ad-Din to restore Sunni authority. In 1171 Saladin abolished the Fatimid caliphate at the death of al-Adid, the last caliph, and the Ayyubid sultanate replaced the Fatimid frontier with a far more dangerous one.