Ya'qub ibn Killis

Origins and early life

Ya'qub ibn Killis was born about 930 in Baghdad into a Jewish family, and by birth he was a Jew; this fiche states plainly that he did not remain one, converting to Islam in 967 at the court of the Ikhshidid regent Kafur in Egypt, and he is recorded here on the ground of birth, as the site records everyone born Jewish who later held another faith.

Work and career

He had gone with his father to Egypt as a merchant, was noticed for his mastery of accounts and revenue, and rose in Kafur's administration; after Kafur's death and a spell of imprisonment he went over to the Fatimids in Ifriqiya and returned with their conquering army. Under the caliphs al-Mu'izz and al-Aziz he became in 979 the first man to hold the office of vizier in the Fatimid state, and he held it until his death, laying the foundations of the whole Fatimid administrative and fiscal system, which Britannica credits to him.

He reorganised taxation, the mint and the land survey of Egypt, and he made the newly conquered country rich. He founded the library and academy known as the Dar al-Hikma, and above all he was the decisive figure in turning al-Azhar from a mosque into a teaching institution: he had advised Jawhar al-Siqilli to build the mosque, then organised its first courses and endowed salaries for its professors and stipends for its students, an arrangement from which the oldest continuously operating university in the world descends. He died in 991, mourned publicly by the caliph.