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History’s Most Lunatic Events and People

Khalid Elhassan August 21, 2020 34 min

La Belle Alliance - Battle of Waterloo — Blucher, left, meeting Wellington at Waterloo. Wikimedia

20. Persecuting Others Is One Way to Demonstrate Zeal

The Mad Caliph was desperate to demonstrate that being born to a Christian mother did not make him a soft Muslim. So he departed from the tolerance hitherto displayed by Muslim rulers to Christians and Jews. He went on a religious persecution bender, destroying synagogues and churches. His targets included the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem – the one housing the cave where Jesus is thought to have lain before his resurrection.

The lunatic Fatimid ruler also banned pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He added to that by ordering Christians and Jews to wear distinguishing clothing to identify them. Jews were further singled out by Al-Hakim, who ordered that they wear bells, so they could be identified by sound as well as sight.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.