This was the period during which the Ismaʿilian sect was founded, spread to North Africa, and a Khalifate was established at Kairawan. It was a time during which the Khalifate of Baghdad was passing through a course of rapid decay: under no other circumstances would such progress on the part of the Ismaʿilis have been possible. The Khalif Harunu r-Rashid died in 193 (= 808) whilst actually proceeding against a rebellious son in Khurasan. His death was followed by a civil war at the end of which his rebellious son was established as Khalif, but soon afterwards in 205 (= 820) Khurasan was practically lost to the Khalifate and passed into the hands of the independent dynasty of the Tahirites, who ruled nominally in the Khalif’s name but paid him no obedience. Tahir himself was an Arab, but his supporters were mainly Persians, and this begins the period of Persian political supremacy which lasted until the rise of the Turks in the middle of the 4th cent. The Saffarids who ruled in Khurasan from 260 to 290 A.H. were purely Persian, and so were the Samanids who arose in 288 and ruled until 400. All these maintained themselves in the east, but in 320 (= 932) the Buwayhids, a Daylamite tribe from the shores of the Caspian Sea came down into the very heart of the Khalifate, and from 344 until 447 controlled Baghdad, holding the Khalif as an ornamental figure to adorn the pageant of state. Not only were these Buwayhids Persians but, like the Saffarids and Samanids, they were Shiʿites, not themselves recognising the Khalif as the true ruler of Islam, but using him simply as a tool to give effect to their rule over those who did. This was the golden period of Arabic philosophy and literature. In North Africa the Aghlabid dynasty of Zairawan went down before the followers of the Fatimid Mahdi, who increased in power and prosperity until they conquered Egypt in 356. Only in the far West the rival Khalifate of Cordova held its own, minor independent states were formed in the further parts of North Africa, and in Sicily a popular movement declared for the orthodox Khalif of Baghdad. During all this time Islam hardly enters into the political history of Europe, save in Spain. The Byzantine Empire held its own owing to the weakness of Islam: the Latin Empire was in process of disintegration and new states were being formed in the west. Almost contemporaneously two sturdy races begin to appear at points far removed, the Turks who are gradually filtering across the Oxus into Persia and becoming Muslims, and the Northmen who are settling on the sea-board of the North-West of Europe and becoming Christians. (ii) _The Golden Age of the Fatimids._ (A.H. 356-469 = A.D. 966-1076.)