mountains and elsewhere, where they observed the stars, worshipped and glorified them, and summoned their spirits to descend. These are devils that descend upon disbelieving polytheists, like the devils associated with idols and the like.
“Al-Mu‘izz ibn Tamīm ibn Ma‘add,” the first of them to enter Cairo, composed a work on this subject that is well known among his followers. This is not “al-Mu‘izz ibn Bādīs,” for the latter was a Muslim who followed the Sunnah and was one of the rulers of the Maghreb. The former came some time after him.
Because of their heretical unbelief and religious innovation, the light of Islam and faith remained extinguished throughout Egypt during their rule, which lasted some two hundred years. Scholars even described it as a land of apostasy and hypocrisy, like the land of Musaylimah the Liar and of “the Qarmatians” who rose up in Iraq and were the predecessors of these Qarmatians. They went from Iraq to the Maghreb, then came from the Maghreb to Egypt. Their unbelief and apostasy are among the gravest forms of unbelief and apostasy, exceeding even those of the followers of Musaylimah the Liar and other such liars. Those people did not make the claims concerning divinity, lordship, and religious laws that the leaders of these people made.
For this reason, their graves are distinguished from Muslim graves, just as Muslim graves are distinguished from those of unbelievers: their graves face away from the qiblah. When horses suffer from colic, people bring them to their graves, just as they bring them to the graves of unbelievers. This is a well-known practice concerning horses: when horses suffer from colic, people take them to the graves of