According to legend, Masoud was an infamous slave

Slavery

Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...

 belonging to the Fatimid

Fatimid

The Fatimid Islamic Caliphate or al-Fāṭimiyyūn was a Berber Shia Muslim caliphate first centered in Tunisia and later in Egypt that ruled over varying areas of the Maghreb, Sudan, Sicily, the Levant, and Hijaz from 5 January 909 to 1171.The caliphate was ruled by the Fatimids, who established the...

 Caliph

Caliph

The Caliph is the head of state in a Caliphate, and the title for the ruler of the Islamic Ummah, an Islamic community ruled by the Shari'ah. It is a transcribed version of the Arabic word   which means "successor" or "representative"...

 Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah

Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah

Abu ‘Ali Mansur Tāriqu l-Ḥākim, called Al-Hakim bi Amr al-Lāh , was the sixth Fatimid caliph and 16th Ismaili imam .- History :...

.
He was said to be a large black

Black people

The term black people is used in systems of racial classification for humans of a dark skinned phenotype, relative to other racial groups.Different societies apply different criteria regarding who is classified as "black", and often social variables such as class, socio-economic status also plays a...

 man used by Hakim to carry out a bizarre punishment. Al-Hakim was said to have occasionally wandered the streets of Cairo

Cairo

Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...

 looking for deceptive merchant

Merchant

A merchant is a businessperson who trades in commodities that were produced by others, in order to earn a profit.Merchants can be one of two types:# A wholesale merchant operates in the chain between producer and retail merchant...

s. When he discovered one, he would immediately have Masoud publicly sodomise the man.

This folk tale has inspired a phrase which has survived into modern times, in which citizens of Cairo threaten to "bring Masoud" to another person.

Al-Hakim is worshipped by the Druze

Druze

The Druze are an esoteric, monotheistic religious community, found primarily in Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan, which emerged during the 11th century from Ismailism. The Druze have an eclectic set of beliefs that incorporate several elements from Abrahamic religions, Gnosticism, Neoplatonism...

, a sect considered heretic by nearly all Muslims. According to the Encyclopedia of the Orient:

The theology of Druze religion is called hikma and its main theme is that God incarnated himself in the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim.

There are a number of tales of questionable historicity portraying Al-Hakim as deranged. Ismaili

Ismaili

' is a branch of Shia Islam. It is the second largest branch of Shia Islam, after the Twelvers...

s claim that anti-Ismaili historians concocted derogatory stories about him.. Among these is the legend of Masoud.

Sources

• Desmond Stewart, Great Cairo: Mother of the World (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 1981, 73-74