The Fatimid caliph Hakim bi’amrillah reigned in Egypt from 996 to 1021 CE. He was one of the most eccentric men ever to have wielded power in Islam. He was only eleven years old when he came to the throne. During his rule religious enthusiasm mixed with unusual cruelty prevailed. Christians and Jews were unpopular for the wealth they had amassed through the favor of the earlier Fatimids, and Hakim took steps against them. In 1008 he seized the property of the churches and forbade the Palm Sunday processions, whether in public or in churches. In 1009 he arrested the Patriarch of Alexandria and sent orders to the governor at Ramla to destroy, undermine, and remove all traces of the holy Church of the Resurrection. The governor, Abu Dhahir, siezed the church’s furniture, and knocked the church down to ground level. He also wrecked the Cranion, the Church of St. Constantine and all its surroundings, and did all he could to uproot the Holy Sepulchre and to remove all trace of it. His actions, the ongoing wars and the earthquakes caused the Church of the Resurrection to remain in a half-ruined condition until 1048 when Constantine Monomachus completed its restoration. These actions are rendered by Christian writers, who describe the visit of their eschatological Emperor, Charlemagne, to Jerusalem as a consequence of the pagans’ maltreating of the Holy Sepulchre. It should be noted that according to Charlemagne’s Life, the Emperor never visited Jerusalem.