about one hundred thousand strong—the leading notables of Egypt sent envoys to Jawhar asking for safe-conduct and confirmation of their properties. He agreed, drew up a written covenant, and discord then broke out among the Ikhshidid ranks, with only a brief skirmish ensuing.

Another report says that many of the Ikhshidids were actually killed, the rest fled, and they later sought safe-conduct as well. Jawhar granted it, barred his soldiers from plundering the populace, and the markets of Egypt reopened. He then entered in full royal array, clad in a brocade robe, and that very night he dug the foundations of the caliphal palace. He dispatched the heads of the slain to al-Muʿizz, discontinued the Abbasid khuṭbah, dressed the preachers in white, and ordered the call to prayer to include ḥayya ʿalā khayri l-ʿamal (1).

Jawhar’s conduct toward the subjects was generally commendable: he was intelligent, cultured, courageous, and imposing. Yet he followed the creed of the Banū ʿUbayd, outwardly Rāfiḍī Shiʿism but inwardly sheer dissolution. Most of their troops were Berbers given to lawlessness and evil—especially the openly heretical among them—so that they were virtually indistinguishable from unbelievers. How much the Muslims endured from them in killing, looting, and the seizure of women, particularly in the early years of their rule! The people of Tyre even rose against them, killed many of them, and drove the rest away. The Tyrians then sought help from the Christian Byzantines, who arrived by ship. Such was the oppression, injustice, and abduction of women from bathhouses and roadways that had befallen the people of Tyre at the hands of those western troops.

Haftakīn the Turk rebelled against Jawhar; when the two met, Jawhar was routed and sought refuge in Asqalān. Haftakīn besieged him for seventeen months, after which Jawhar asked for safe-conduct and Haftakīn granted it. He then went to Egypt, entering with one thousand two hundred chests of money carried before him.

Indeed, al-Muʿizz in his day wielded far greater power than many of the Abbasid caliphs.

He died in 381 AH.