Fatimid Egypt Begins Its Slide Toward Crisis

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Beneath the gilded surface of al-Mustansir's Cairo, factional violence between Turkish and Sudanese military corps began tearing at the Fatimid state. Court politics had devolved into armed standoffs between ethnic regiments, each demanding pay the treasury could barely provide. Within five years, failed Nile floods and open civil war would push the caliphate to the brink of collapse - a crisis so severe that cannibalism would stalk the streets of Fustat.