Some recent contributions to the study of Islamic architecture indicate that a monument's iconog-raphy and the reading of its inscriptions can provide new perspectives for social or political history as well as for the art historian.'A case in point are the monuments of the Fatimid period (358-567/969-1171) in Cairo, a period Gaston Wiet characterized as" une des plus passionantes de l'histoire de l'Egypte musulmane," and one whose architec-tural legacy includes considerably more than merely its documentary sources. Among the twenty-seven monuments listed for this period2 are a pair of doors, a qa'a, and a minaret, five military gates or walls, five mosques, and fourteen shrines or mausoleums. Of the shrines and mosques, ten have epigraphic or textual citations linking them to the'Alid saints. 3 The tombs and shrines all date from the last quarter of Fatimid rule: six of them to between 514 and 524 (1120-30) and six to between 525 and 546 (1130-50), two periods in which the turmoil and confusion that beset the Fatimid caliphate as a result of the first and second succession crises were most apparent. They represent the earliest and largest related group of funerary monuments surviving from the first six centuries of Islam. My contention here will be that they appeared as an architectural expres-sion of an officially sponsored cult of'Alid martyrs and saints that was being used to generate support for the government of an Isma'ili imamate-caliphate which was being spiritually and politically discounted by historical events. Isma'ilism, a sect of the Shi'a and the state religion of the Fatimid dynasty, holds as its central tenet the conviction that after the Prophet's death the only rightful heads of the Islamic community, and hence the only authoritative religious teachers, the imams, were'All (the Prophet's son-in-law), his sons al-Hasan and al-Husayn, and the descendants of al-Husayn through his son'All Zayn al-'Abidin, the solitary survivor of the tragedy of Karbala. The Shi'i communities maintain that the nao (that is, the explicit statement) by which Muhammad nominated'All to succeed him as imam of the Muslims occurred at Ghadir Khumm, where the Prophet is said to have re-ceived a revelation upon returning from the Fare-well Pilgrimage on 18 Dhu'l-Hijja 10/16 March 632. In the presence of the Companions, taking'All's hand in his own, he pronounced," If I am anyone's mawla, then'All is his mawla." Then Muhammad announced his own impending death and enjoined all believers to remain loyal to his family and to the book of God. 4 In 148/765, with the death of Ja'far al-$ Sdiq, the sixth imam after'All, the Imami-Shi'i com-munity split. Isma'il, Ja'far's eldest son and heir, had died before his father. 5 A part of the Shi'a recognized Isma'il's younger brother Misa al-Kazim as the seventh imam, and his line continued until the twelfth imam, who disap-peared in about 260/873 and is still the" awaited imam" or Mahdi of the great majority of the Shi'a, the ithna'ashari or Twelver Shi'a, today. An-other part of the Shi'i community recognized Is-ma'il's son Muhammad as the imam, and as followers of the line of Isma'il they became known as the Isma'ili or Sevener Shi'a. The Fatimid imamate professed to represent the true Islam transmitted through a line of seven imams and their successors, who alone understood the interior (bdtint) meaning of the religion proclaimed by the Prophet. Central to the Isma'ili system, therefore, is the imam-the heir of the Prophet, the Chosen of God, and the sole rightful leader of mankind. The imams, as descendants of