Abū al-Maymūn ʿAbd al-Majīd ibn the amir Muḥammad ibn al-Mustanṣir—namely Maʿadd ibn al-Ẓāhir ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥākim ibn al-ʿAzīz ibn al-Muʿizz, an Egyptian ʿUbaydī Ismāʿīlī.

They pledged allegiance to him on the very day his cousin al-Āmir was killed, so that he might administer the realm until the unborn child of al-Āmir, should it be born, could be declared imam. Yet the reins of power were seized by the commander of the armies, Abū ʿAlī ibn al-Afḍal ibn Badr al-Jamālī (1).

Al-Āmir had previously imprisoned Abū ʿAlī after he slew his own father; once al-Āmir was gone, the emirs released Abū ʿAlī, raised him over themselves, and he went to the palace issuing commands and prohibitions, while al-Ḥāfiẓ remained under him, subdued.

Abū ʿAlī governed the kingdom with full effectiveness: he was just toward the populace, restored many confiscated properties to their owners, kept within general Shiʿi doctrine, adhered to the Twelver creed, abandoned the Ismāʿīlī teaching, and turned away from al-Ḥāfiẓ and his household. He even ordered that, from the pulpits of Egypt, prayers be offered for the Awaited One, the “Master of the Cellar,” as they claim (2), and he had that name struck on the coinage, persisting in this policy.

The state grew agitated until a cavalryman from the elite charged him and killed him outside Cairo in Muḥarram of 526 AH; the deed had been planned by al-Ḥāfiẓ. The emirs hastened to serve al-Ḥāfiẓ, released him from confinement and detention, renewed their pledge to him, and he assumed sole control of the kingdom (3).

He had been born in exile during the famine, at ʿAsqalān in the year 467 AH (4).