Fatimid government confronts Sunnis

The Fatimid period is one of the most documented periods in the history of Islam. The Fatimids, in view of the time and extent of their rule and their challenge to Sunni Islam, deserve to be carefully and extensively examined in new research. Their two-hundred-year rule over Egypt alone is enough to make them worthy of such a theoretical examination. Therefore, the present study was conducted with the aim of recognizing the Fatimids’ encounter with the Sunnis. For this purpose, first, the Fatimids ‘encounters with neighboring governments and the people under their rule are examined, and then the actions and policies of the Fatimid caliphs with the Sunnis are presented, and at the end, a summary of the Fatimids’ encounters with the Sunnis is given. The present study aims to show that the Fatimids, during their rule in Africa, pursued most of the policies based on prejudice, violence, and anger against the Sunnis, and during their rule in Egypt, they were able to pursue a tolerant policy against other religions. Due to political and social requirements, they had to adopt the same amount against the Sunnis. Perhaps this factor was the lack of adequate and equal rights and opportunities for the Sunni followers, which provided the main reason for the failure of the Fatimids in the West. In other words, it can be said that the confrontation of the Fatimids in the Maghreb was based on the method of imposing the religious beliefs and rituals of the Ismailis and this caused their political, spiritual and religious presence in the Maghreb not to continue and their diplomacy, politics and religious confrontation in Egypt on the method of tolerance. And the freedom of other religions was based on most of their presence. Therefore, in this article, using the library method, the contents of the first category sources and new researches have been decorated and then the subject has been studied in a descriptive manner.