1094

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political events

Scotland's Donald III (Donald Bane) loses his throne in May to a nephew who takes power as Duncan II but dies in November, whereupon Donald regains power and rules jointly with the nephew's brother Edmund, letting Edmund rule in the south while he rules in the north, but both are then deposed by another brother, who accepts English support in November to defeat Donald and imprison him at Rescobie, near Forfar (see 1097).

Valencia falls June 15 to the exiled Castilian soldier El Cid (Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar) after a siege of 9 months by an army of 7,000 men, most of them Muslims. Of all the Christian military leaders, only El Cid has been successful in resisting the advances of the Yusuf ibn Tashuf's African Muslims, but he violates all the conditions of surrender at the city of Valencia: its chief judge Ibn Jahhaff is burned alive and many of its citizens are slaughtered. El Cid rules an independent kingdom that extends over nearly all of Valencia and Murcia, and it will remain under his family's control until 1102 (see 1099).

An assassin kills the Fatimid caliph al-Mustansir at Cairo after a 58-year reign in which he opposed expansion by the Seljuk Turks but wound up losing power to them. Dead at age 65, he had enriched himself by controlling trade on Red Sea routes and throughout most of North Africa, riding about under a golden parasol encrusted with jewels, but Turkish mercenaries looted his palace treasure beginning in 1062 and especially during the Egyptian civil war of 1067 to 1073. Persian Ismailites who include Hasan-e Sabbah refuse to recognize al-Mustansir's successor and transfer their allegiance to his deposed elder brother Nizar, whose descendants (the Nizari Ismaelites) will remain hostile not only to the Fatimid caliphs at Cairo but also to the Abbasids, adopting terrorism as a sacred religious duty (see 1090; 1092). They will become known as the Assassins (Hashhashin), building forts and castles across much of Persia and Mesopotamia.

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