funds amounting to almost one hundred thousand dinars. He then marched with the Berbers to Toledo, fought its people, captured the city, and slaughtered its governor. Next he defeated an army that confronted him and set out for Córdoba. Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Jabbār al-Mahdī led his forces out to meet him, but Sulaymān crushed them; many were swept away in the river and many were killed. It was a major massacre in which a number of scholars and devout men lost their lives.

Al-Mahdī therefore produced al-Muʾayyad bi-Allāh—having earlier claimed that he had died—seated him before the populace, and had the judge Ibn Zakwān announce, “This is the Commander of the Believers; Ibn ʿAbd al-Jabbār is only his deputy.” The Berbers retorted, “Ibn Zakwān, only yesterday you offered his funeral prayer, and today you bring him back to life!”

As for the common people, they went out to seek safe-conduct from Sulaymān, and he treated them generously. Ibn ʿAbd al-Jabbār went into hiding, affairs settled in Sulaymān’s favor, and he entered the palace. The people buried their dead—twelve thousand in all.

Ibn ʿAbd al-Jabbār fled to Toledo, where the inhabitants rallied to him. He sought aid from the Franks and sent them a vast amount of gold from the public treasury—God’s decree is ever carried out. He then advanced with a great army, and the battle took place at ʿAqabat al-Baqar near Córdoba. Ibn ʿAbd al-Jabbār was routed; three thousand Franks were killed and multitudes drowned. He himself was captured, slaughtered in cold blood, and his four limbs were severed on the Day of Tarwiyah in the year 400 AH, when he was thirty-four years old.

After that, al-Muʾayyad bi-Allāh remained on the throne while al-Mustaʿīn and the Berbers ravaged the land. Long and tangled events followed. He besieged Córdoba for an extended period until Shawwāl of the year 403 AH; then they stormed the city, put it to the sword, plundered it, took some captives, and killed al-Muʾayyad. It is said that more than twenty-one thousand people were slain in Córdoba. The troops of al-Mustaʿīn committed acts that even the Christians would not have done. Power was consolidated in al-Mustaʿīn’s hands, whereupon he oppressed, dealt unjustly, and laid waste to the provinces.

Among his commanders were al-Qāsim and ʿAlī, the two sons of Ḥammūd ibn Maymūn, the ʿAlawī Idrīsids. He placed them at the head of his army, appointing one over Algeciras and the other over Ceuta. ʿAlī, the governor of Ceuta, began corresponding with various notables and entertained hopes of the caliphate; multitudes hastened to his side