Kutayfat

Kutayfāt, also known as Abu Ali Ahmad ibn al-Afdal or al-Afdal Kutayfāt, (d. 1131) was vizier and amīr al-juyūsh (commander of the armies) to al-Hafiz, Caliph of Egypt, from 1130 to 1131. He seized power by imprisoning al-Hafiz, proclaimed the dynasty deposed and abandoned Isma'ilism as the state religion in favour of a vaguely Twelver form of Shi'ism with himself as vicegerent of a hidden imam. but was murdered by Fatimid forces loyal to the caliph. Kutayfāt was the son of al-Afdal Shahanshah and grandson of Badr al-Jamali, and so the third generation of Armenians serving as Fatimid vizier.

References

• al-Imad, Leila S. (1990). The Fatimid Vizierate (979-1172). Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag. ISBN 3-922968-82-1.
• Dedoyan, Seta B. (1997). The Fatimid Armenians: Cultural and Political Interaction in the Near East. Leiden, New York, and Köln: Brill. ISBN 90-04-10816-5.
• Encyclopedia Islamica, Farhad Daftary and Wilferd Madelung, editors, Leyde-Boston, Brill, 2008
• Halm, Heinz (2014). Kalifen und Assassinen: Ägypten und der vordere Orient zur Zeit der ersten Kreuzzüge, 1074–1171 [Caliphs and Assassins: Egypt and the Near East at the Time of the First Crusades, 1074–1171] (in German). Munich: C.H. Beck. ISBN 978-3-406-66163-1.
• Riley-Smith, Jonathan, The First Crusaders, 1095-1131, Cambridge University Press, London, 1997, pgs. 180–2, 186-7
• Stern, S. M. (1960). "al-Afḍal, Abū ʿAlī Aḥmad, surnamed Kutayfāt". In Gibb, H. A. R.; Kramers, J. H.; Lévi-Provençal, E.; Schacht, J.; Lewis, B. & Pellat, Ch. (eds.). The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Volume I: A–B. Leiden: E. J. Brill. p. 216. doi:10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_0339. OCLC 495469456.