Al-Hakim biamrillah gave orders that the churches should be destroyed. Their contents were seized and the vessels of gold and silver sold in the markets…. The church lands were confiscated and everyone who asked for some got it. A Muslim historian reports that over thirty thousand churches which had been built by the Greeks were destroyed in Egypt, Syria and elsewhere. The riot of 1321 in Cairo in which several churches were destroyed led in turn the destruction of churches throughout Egypt, in all more than fifty churches suffered.
Alhakim was an absolute religious fanatic as well as the freak of a mad man.