It was the policy of the Princess Royal and of the committee which held supreme power after her death to keep the Khalif in the background, and exclude him from all real part in the work of government. It was as well, perhaps, that his freedom was rather circumscribed for, as he grew up, he gave signs of a cruel temperament which in some directions surpassed that of his father. He was wholly occupied with the pursuit of pleasure, finding his interest in the company of singing girls, buffoons, and others of like kind, and showed no desire to take part in public affairs. In 424 he invited the palace girls to the number of some 2,660 to a festival: when they came to the feast they were led to one of the mosques and taken inside; the doors were then bricked up and the unfortunate girls were left to starve. For six months the mosque was left unopened and the bodies unburied. Many other instances of wanton cruelty are related of him. In 427 az-Zahir fell sick of the plague, and as he grew worse he was taken to the “Garden of the Strand” at Maqs, then the port of Cairo, where he died on the 15th of Shaban, leaving the Khalifate to his son al-Mustansir, then a child seven years of age. XII THE EIGHTH FATIMID KHALIF, AL-MUSTANSIR (A.H. 427-487 = A.D. 1035-1095) Abu Tamin al-Mustansir bi-llah (“the seeker of aid from God”) was proclaimed Khalif at his father’s death on Sunday, the 15th Shaban, 427 (14 June, 1035). His reign has the distinction of being the longest of all the Khalifates either in Egypt or elsewhere. Again we find the influence of a woman of the royal family predominant in the state, this time of a black ex-slave woman. In Cairo there were two Jewish merchants, Abu Saʿd Abrahim and his brother Abu Nasr Saʿd ad-Dahir, sons of Sahl. The Khalif az-Zahir had bought a black Sudani slave girl from Saʿd ad-Dahir, and she was the mother of al-Mustansir. During the earlier years of the reign the influence behind the throne was in the hands of the Sudani Queen Mother and her former master, the Jewish slave merchant. This influence was restrained so long as the wazir al-Jarjarai lived, but all check upon it came to an end at his death in 436. The old faction fights between Turks and Berbers had now long passed away. Under Hakim we have seen the formation of new parties, Turks and negroes, rival groups of mercenaries in the Khalif’s employ; the Arabs and Berbers, so far as they were not absorbed in the mass of the population, joining with the Turks in opposition to the negro regiments. The Queen Mother, herself a Sudani negress, threw the whole weight of her influence on the side of the black troops.