where he brought al-Muʾayyad before them and produced a written decree that was read aloud, declaring that al-Muʾayyad had abdicated and entrusted all authority to al-Nāṣir li-Dīn Allāh ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Abī ʿĀmir. Everyone present testified to this against al-Muʾayyad (1).

This al-Nāṣir then plunged into open debauchery and sin. His men had formerly gone bare-headed, so he ordered the soldiers to shave their hair and wear turbans in imitation of the Banū Zīrī (2). They wound the turbans without the least skill and ended up as hideous and ungainly as could be, becoming the laughing-stock of all.

He next set out on campaign, but while he was on the march news reached him that Muḥammad ibn Hishām ibn ʿAbd al-Jabbār al-Umayyī, a cousin of al-Muʾayyad biʾllāh, had risen in Córdoba, demolished al-Zahrāʾ, enlisted the judge Ibn Dhakwān, and spent lavishly on the city’s ruffians, so that four hundred men gathered around him. Working in secret, he arranged his affairs, then mounted, made for the governor’s residence in Córdoba, and cut off the governor’s head. The grand chamberlain, al-Ustādh Jūdhār the Elder, then came out to him.

Muḥammad ibn Hishām said to him, “Where is al-Muʾayyad biʾllāh? Bring him out.”

He replied, “He humbled himself—and us—by his feebleness, and has gone out seeking a pledge of safety.”

Muḥammad said, “It is precisely to remove this humiliation from you that I have taken up arms. If you depose yourself willingly, you shall have whatever you desire.” He then summoned Ibn al-Makwī (3) the jurist, Ibn Dhakwān (4) the judge, and the ministers, and they went in to