258 – al-Mustakfī Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿUbayd Allāh*
son of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Nāṣir, an Umayyad of the Marwānid line (1).
In Dhū al-Qaʿdah 414 AH he rebelled in Córdoba against his cousin, who was styled al-Mustazhir (2); he killed him and took the reins of power.
He was a rash and witless man (3).
Ahmad al-Ḥāyik was appointed his vizier, but he later had this very vizier executed. The people then rose against him, deposed him (4), and imprisoned him for three days without giving him any food. Afterward they banished him, so he fled to the frontier districts. In the early-teen years of the 400s AH one of his own commanders poisoned him by lacing a chicken dish.
259 – Ibn ʿAbdān, Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad al-Shīrāzī**
The shaykh, ḥadith scholar, and reliable narrator, Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī, son of the ḥāfiẓ Aḥmad ibn
(*) Jamhara al-Ansab, pp. 100–101; Jadhwat al-Muqtabis, pp. 26–27; al-Dhakhira, part 1, vol. 1, pp. 433–437; Bughyat al-Multamis, p. 33; al-Kamil fi l-Tarikh, vol. 9, pp. 277–278; al-Maghrib fi Hulli l-Maghrib, vol. 1, pp. 54–55; al-Bayan al-Maghrib, vol. 3, p. 141; al-Wafi bi-l-Wafayat, vol. 3, p. 230; Tarikh Ibn Khaldun, vol. 4, p. 152; Aʿmal al-Iʿlam, p. 135; Nafh al-Tib, vol. 1, pp. 432, 437. The author already presented his biography in connection with al-Muʿtali billah, no. 82.
(1) He was the father of the poet and belletrist Walada, the famed beloved of Ibn Zaydun.
(2) This refers to ʿAbd al-Rahman b. Hisham b. ʿAbd al-Jabbar, whose life appears under no. 215.
(3) For his folly and recklessness, consult al-Maghrib fi Hulli l-Maghrib 1/54–55; al-Kamil 9/277; and al-Dhakhira 1/1/433–436. Al-Humaydi adds in Jadhwa, p. 27: “This al-Mustakfi was extremely backward; the tales about him are too shameful to recount.”
(4) Authority then reverted to Yahya b. ʿAli b. Hammud al-Muʿtali billah, whose biography is given above under no. 82.
(**) No dedicated biographical sources have been found for him.