persecution · 1009–1021 · Jerusalem
From about 1004 the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim turned on the Christians of Egypt and Palestine: churches confiscated, burned or demolished, distinguishing dress enforced, many driven to convert. The contemporary Melkite chronicler Yahya of Antioch records the climax — the church of the Holy Sepulchre demolished to its foundations in September 1009. Later chroniclers counted the destroyed churches in the thousands (the famous figure of thirty thousand is memory's exaggeration, but the scale was vast). The storm eased after 1017–1021, and Constantine IX financed the Sepulchre's rebuilding, finished by 1048.
al-Hakim's turn against his Christian subjects and their holy places.
Churches destroyed in the thousands, the Holy Sepulchre razed (1009), conversions forced — easing after 1017; the Sepulchre rebuilt by 1048.