After the Fatimid claims had been laid before the world the ʿAbbasids brought forward many calumnies (Maq. i., 349). The strongly anti-Fatimid Ibn Khallikan relates a story that when the first Fatimid Khalif to enter Egypt, al-Moʿizz, came to Cairo, the jurist, Abu Muhammad ibn Tabataba, came to meet him, supported by a number of undoubted members of ʿAli’s family, and asked to see his credentials. Al-Moʿizz then drew his sword and cried, “Here is my pedigree”: and scattering gold amongst the by-standers added, “And this is my proof.” The story is an improbable legend, and even Ibn Khallikan rejects it on the ground that when al-Moʿizz entered Cairo, Abu Muhammad the jurist (d. 348) had been many years in his grave (Ibn Khall. iii., 366). The weakest part of the Fatimid claim, as we have remarked, lies in the great diversity of forms the claim takes in different writers. When ʿUbayd Allah or Saʿid, ʿAbdullah’s great-grandson, established himself in Africa, the genealogy began to call for serious attention, and came to be examined, not by uncritical members of the sect, but by all the historians and genealogists of the Muslim world. It then appeared in no less than nine divergent forms. (1) Traced through Jaʿfar as-Sadiq the sixth Imam, then through his son Ismaʿil, his son Muhammad “the concealed,” then Jaʿfar al-Musaddiq—Muhammad al-Habib—and then ʿUbayd Allah. Thus Maqrizi and Ibn Khaldun. According to this ʿAbdullah and Ahmad do not appear in the descent at all. (2) Traced through Jaʿfar to Muhammad “the concealed” as in the preceding, then ʿAbdullah ar-Rida (the accepted of God),—Ahmad al-Wafi (the perfect),—al-Husayn at-Taki (the pious),—and ʿUbayd Allah the Mahdi. This appears in Ibn Khallikan and Ibn Khaldun, and seems to have been more or less the official version. According to this ʿAbdullah, the father of Ahmad, was the son of Mohammad “the concealed,” not of Maymun. Similarly the pro-Fatimid author of the _Dastur al-Munajjimin_ (MS. of M. Schefer, cited by de Goeje, _Qarmates_, pp. 8-9), who says that Muhammad b. Ismaʿil took refuge in India; he had six sons, Jaʿfar, Ismaʿil, Ahmad, Husayn, ʿAli, and ʿAbdu r-Rahman, but does not mention ʿAbdullah nor say which of these sons was the Imam: he then refers to the three “mysterious ones” as succeeding Muhammad. Tabari (iii., 2218, 12) says that Muhammad b. Ismaʿil had no son named ʿAbdullah. (3) As before, but Maymun as son of Muhammad “the concealed,” then ʿAbdullah—Muhammad—Ubayd Allah; thus in Abu l-Feda. Maymun is made the son of the seventh Imam (which is impossible), and the Mahdi is represented as ʿAbdullah’s grandson (see below). (4) Ismaʿil, son of Jaʿfar,—Muhammad “the concealed,”—Ismaʿil,—Ahmad,—Ubayd Allah. This also occurs in Abu l-Feda, and in ʿUbayd Allah’s “Genealogy of the ʿAlids” (MS. Leiden, 686—cited by de Goeje, _Qarmates_, p. 9) Muhammad had three sons, Ismaʿil II, Jaʿfar, and Yahya; Ismaʿil had a son named Ahmad, who dwelt in the Maghrab.