of the infant al-Tayyib) — it was the divine right personified in the legitimate heir that counted". History Inextricably bound to the Fatimid regime, the Hafizi sect survived until the fall of the Fatimid Caliphate in 1171, but declined and disappeared quickly after, unlike its two rival branches, the Nizaris and Tayyibis, which survive to the present day. Egypt Hafizi Isma'ilism remained the state religion in Egypt until Saladin proclaimed the suzerainty of the Abbasid caliphs over Egypt in September 1171. Upon the death of the imam–caliph al-Adid shortly after, the members of the Fatimid family were placed under effective house arrest in the palace. Al-Adid's eldest son and designated heir, Dawud, was recognized by the Hafizi faithful as the rightful imam, but he, like his own son and successor Sulayman Badr al-Din, lived and died in captivity. The mostly Hafizi Egyptian Isma'ilis were persecuted by the new Ayyubid regime, with many fleeing to Upper Egypt. A series of abortive conspiracies and uprisings under pro-Fatimid sympathizers or Fatimid pretenders erupted in the 1170s and continued sporadically, with much diminished impact, until the end of the century. As a result of a pro-Fatimid conspiracy, which included several of the last Fatimid officials and the poet Umara ibn Abi al-Hasan al-Yamani, in Cairo in 1174, many of the supporters of the deposed dynasty were exiled to Upper Egypt, which became a hotbed of pro-Fatimid activity. A rebellion erupted there in late summer 1174, under Kanz al-Dawla, but was suppressed. In 1176/7 a pretender claiming to be Dawud found wide support in Qift in northern Egypt. By 1188, however, an attempted uprising by a small group who called out the Shi'a cry 'Family of Ali' during the night, found no response from the people of Cairo. When the real Dawud died as a prisoner in Cairo in 1207/8, the Hafizis asked the Ayyubid sultan al-Adil I for permission to mourn him in public. The sultan granted them permission, but used the occasion to arrest their da'is and confiscate their property. Despite the separation of male and female prisoners, Dawud apparently managed to beget two sons in secret, the eldest of whom, Sulayman, was recognized by the Hafizi faithful as his successor. Sulayman ibn Dawud died in 1248, apparently childless, but some of his partisans claimed that he had a son who was hidden. As late as 1298, a pretender claiming to be the