Al-Qadir


Al-Qadir was the Abbasid Caliph in Baghdad from 991 to 1031. He was the Grandson of al-Muqtadir, he was chosen in place of the deposed Caliph, at-Ta'i, his cousin. Banished from the capital, Baghdad, earlier, he was now recalled and appointed to the office he had long desired.
Al-Qadir held the Caliphate for 40 years. It was during his Caliphate that Mahmud of Ghazni arose, threatening the empire; and but for the conflicts that broke out in Mahmud's family upon his death, the Buwayhid kingdom, paralysed by damaging war, would have been swallowed. The global Muslim population had climbed to about 4 per cent as against the Christian population of 10 per cent by 1000.
Al-Qadir is noted for taking the lead in the Sunni struggle against Isma'ili Shi'ism. He helped Sunnis set up their own festivals to rival the Shi'a celebrations and made the Hanbali school the official Muslim position.
Caliph Al-Qadir ordered the Manifesto of Baghdad in 1011 in response to the growth of the Fatimid-supporting Ismaili Shia sect of Islam within his borders.
The Manifesto of Baghdad is the testimony given by a number of Sunni Muslim and Twelver Shiite genealogists and the law scholars known all across the Islamic world in 402 AH/1011 CE, doubting the Alid lineage of the Fatimids, they were declared to be descended from a Jew by the name of the Ibn al-Qaddah, A Munafiq/Hypocrite, which meant that the Fatimid dynasty was traced back to a Jew, a supposed enemy of the faith, instead of the Ahl al-Bayt, which was the basic justification for the claim of sanctity of the Fàtimid Kings in the Ismaili Shia doctrine.
Al-Qadir died at eighty-seven years of age in Baghdad, and was succeeded by his son al-Qa'im.