120 DESTINY DISRUPTED
The story of King Sancho illustrates how the various communities got
along. In the late tenth century CE, Sancho inherited the throne of Leon,
a Christian kingdom north of Spain. Sancho's subjects soon began refer-
ring to him as Sancho the Fat, the sort of nickname a king never likes to
hear his subjects using with impunity. Poor Sancho might more accurately
have been called Sancho the Medically Obese, but his nobles could not
take the large view. They regarded Sancho's size as proof of an internal
weakness that made him unfit to rule, so they deposed him.
Sancho then heard about a Jewish physician named Hisdai ibn Shaprut
who reputedly knew how to cure obesity. Hisdai was employed by the Mus-
lim ruler in COrdoba, so Sancho headed south with his mother and retinue
to seek treatments. The Muslim ruler Abdul Rahman the Third welcomed
Sancho as an honored guest and had him stay at the royal palace until His-
dai had shrunk him down, whereupon Sancho returned to Leon, reclaimed
his throne, and signed a treaty of friendship with Abdul Rahman.^1
A Christian king received treatments from a Jewish physician at the
court of a Muslim ruler: there you have the story of Muslim Spain in a
nutshell. When Europeans talk about the Golden Age of Islam, they are
often thinking of the Spanish khalifate, because this was the part of the
Muslim world that Europeans knew the most about.
But COrdoba was not the only city to rival Baghdad. In the tenth century,
another city emerged to challenge the supremacy of the Abbasid khalifate.
When the Abbasids decided to rule as Sunnis, they revived the Shi'ite
impulse to rebellion. In 347 AH (969 CE) Shi'i warriors from Tunisia
managed to seize control of Egypt and declared themselves the true khali-
fas of Islam because (they said) they were descended from the Prophet's
daughter Fatima, for which reason they called themselves the Fatimids.
These rulers built themselves a brand new capital they called Qahira, the
Arabic word for "victory." In the West, it is spelled Cairo.
The Egyptian khalifate had the resources of North Africa and the gra-
naries of the Nile valley to draw upon. It was well situated to compete in
the Mediterranean Sea trade, and it dominated the routes along the Red
Sea to Yemen, which gave it access to markets bordering the Indian Ocean.
By the year 1000 CE, it probably outshone both Baghdad and Cordoba.
In Cairo, the Fatimids built the world's first university, Al Azhar, which is
still going strong. Everything I've said about the other two khalifates-big