Famine Devastates Fatimid Cairo and Fustat

1065

The Nile's second consecutive failure pushed Egypt's crisis past the point of administrative remedy. In Cairo and its older twin city Fustat, the starving population stripped leather from book bindings for sustenance. Turkish soldiers, unpaid and desperate, looted the Fatimid palace libraries - priceless manuscripts accumulated over a century of Ismaili patronage scattered or destroyed. The caliph al-Mustansir was reduced to sitting on a mat, his throne sold for bread.