for three months; then he laid the office aside. In 360 AH he was restored to the vizierate, but in 362 AH he was deposed, disgraced, and taken to Kūfa, where—after a while—he died from a severe haemorrhage. His wife, al-Muhallabī’s daughter, died in prison.
He was a tyrannical oppressor, brazen in his vices(1), yet he was also generous and open-handed. He lived sixty years, was exceedingly fond of display, and heavy-handed in rule. “They will find all they have done present before them, and your Lord wrongs no one” (al-Kahf 49).
It was said:
The intoxication of authority is sweet, …
and its hangover is wealth and life.
157 – Ibn al-Ikhshīd, Ḥasan ibn ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Ṭughj the Turk *
The king, Abū Muḥammad Ḥasan ibn ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Ṭughj ibn Juff, a Turk. Born in 312 AH, he was an emir during the reign of his uncle, the Ikhshīd Muḥammad ibn Ṭughj, and likewise under Kāfūr. When Kāfūr died, the commanders enthroned Abū al-Fawāris Aḥmad, the eleven-year-old son of the ruler ʿAlī ibn al-Ikhshīd, and appointed this Ḥasan as his atābak(2). Ḥasan, then governor of Ramla, was praised by al-Mutanabbī(3) in the verse: