The earlier Fatimids in North Africa present rather a brutal appearance and, so far as we can see, their one ideal was the establishment of political power. But that was not the original character of the movement which had distinct intellectual tendencies, and to this earlier type al-Moʿizz had reverted. Since the dynasty had been established in Egypt the humane side had been more prominently in evidence, and especially in the encouragement of medicine and natural science. The Khalif al-Moʿizz employed the Jewish physician Musa b. al-Ghazzan and his two sons Ishaq and Ismaʿil: these were not only eminent practitioners but Musa was distinguished as a writer on the pharmacopoeia, and all three were regarded as leading authorities on medicine. Another distinguished physician was the Christian Eutychius or Saʿid b. Batriq, patriarch of the Malkite church of Alexandria who died in 328 (= A.D. 943), the author of a history of which an edition in Arabic and Latin was published at Oxford in 1654. Al-Hakim himself was anxious to encourage scholarship in accordance with the traditions of the sect of which he was the head. The mosque of al-ʾAzhar had been especially devoted to the learned by his father, and now in Jumada II. 395 he founded an academy on the lines of similar institutions already existing at Baghdad and elsewhere. This new foundation was named the _Dar al-Hikma_ or “house of wisdom.” To it were attached a number of professors, both of the traditional sciences and Qurʾan and canon law, and also of the natural sciences. A library was connected with it and was filled with books transferred from the royal palace near by. All who came to it were supplied with ink, pens, paper, and rests for books.