and he also planted the Tājī orchard, whose area measured one thousand seven hundred jarīb (1), and he repaired the aqueducts and bridges.

He was alert, formidable, and high-spirited, with spies and couriers everywhere. He became infatuated with a concubine but then ordered her to be drowned. He seized a slave from his owner by force and later had him cut in two, and among the slave’s papers he found a note that read: “When we finish solving Euclid I shall give twenty thousand in charity; when we finish the book of Abū ʿAlī the grammarian I shall give fifty thousand; and if a son is born to me I shall give such-and-such.”

Each year he demanded an accounting of his dominions, and the total exceeded three hundred thousand thousand dirhams. He said, “I want to raise it until it reaches a million each day.” Ibn al-Jawzī relates that another report puts his annual revenue at thirty-two million dinars. His territories included Kirmān, Fārs, Khūzistān, Iraq, the Jazīrah, Diyār Bakr, Manbij, and ʿUmān. He would compete even over a single qīrāṭ, reinstated oppressive levies and taxes, and had an uncanny eye for people.

He died in Shawwāl 372 AH in Baghdad. A coffin was prepared, his body was transported, and he was buried at the shrine in Najaf. He lived forty-eight years. After him his son Ṣamṣām al-Dawla assumed power; they swore allegiance to him, and the Caliph al-Ṭāʾiʿ invested him.

ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Walīd said: I heard Abū Muḥammad ibn Abī Zayd ask Ibn ʿAdī, when the latter returned from the East, “Did you attend the sessions of speculative theology?” He replied, “Twice—and I never went back.”