before the Khalif, but al-Hakim said, “I have read your father’s will and the statement of the money and goods of which he has disposed by his will: take it, and enjoy it in tranquility and for your happiness.” Indeed, all through his career the chief charge made against him was his reckless generosity, which often reduced the government to serious inconvenience: it was, indeed, a species of megalomania. No doubt the nocturnal festivities of Cairo, well suited to the pleasure loving character of the Egyptians, led to many abuses, and so in 391 a strict order was issued forbidding women to go out of doors by night, and a little later this was followed by a general order prohibiting the opening of the shops by night (Maq. ii. 286). Al-Hakim himself continued his nocturnal tastes and nightly wanderings in the city until 393, when he entirely ceased riding about by night and forbade any person to be out after sunset. In 393 al-Hakim began to show other curious developments in his conduct, the external signs, it would appear, of a growing disorder of the mind. We do not know what grounds Barjawan had for calling him a lizard; very possibly there was something furtive and uncanny in him even in his boyhood. In the early years following the death of Barjawan he seems to have been genial and generous, but all this changed in 393, when his character began to show a rigorous puritanism and signs of religious fanaticism, which indeed need be no sign of a disordered intellect, but which, suddenly developed, might very well accompany such a thing. It was in this year also that he began to be active as a mosque builder and as a generous benefactor of existing mosques, though this again is no evidence of disordered mentality. At the same time he became fanatical in his support of the peculiar tenets of the Shiʿite sect to which he belonged, and began to show great severities towards Christians and Jews, although in this last item he seems to have acted under the pressure of public opinion, which was very decidedly irritated by the favouritism which the Fatimids had so far shown to non-Muslims. But side by side with this sudden puritanism and fanaticism appeared a vein of capricious cruelty which has a very sinister bearing. Such cruelty begins to be prominent in 393 when many persons were put to death, some on religious grounds, others it would appear merely by a passing caprice of the Khalif. Amongst these was the Ustad Raydan, the royal parasol bearer who had counselled the murder of Barjawan.