ibn Dustuk (1), the Kurd. He killed his brother Manṣūr at the fortress of al-Hattākh (2), consolidated his grip on power, and his reign lasted fifty-one years.

He was a firm and fair ruler, given over to amusement, yet—so it is said—he never missed the dawn prayer. He kept three hundred and sixty concubines, spending each night with one of them, and he left behind many children. Poets celebrated him in verse, and the cultured vizier Abū al-Qāsim ibn al-Maghribī (3) held the vizierate for him twice, after which Fakhr al-Dawlah ibn Jahīr served in the same post. Dignified and enormously wealthy, he dispatched to Sultan Tughril Beg a splendid tribute that included, among other gifts, the “Mountain of Ruby” (4) which had once belonged to the Buyids; he had purchased it for its price from Ibn Jalāl al-Dawlah. Out of his generosity he would scatter wheat from the granaries for the birds (5).

He died in Shawwāl, 453 AH, at about eighty years of age, and was succeeded by his son Niẓām al-Dawlah Naṣr (6).

Among the accounts of Naṣr al-Dawlah—stories branch endlessly—is that the kingdom of Mosul slipped for some years from the descendants of Nāṣir al-Dawlah (7) ibn Ḥamdān. His two sons, Ibrāhīm and Ḥusayn, entered the service of Sharaf al-Dawlah (8) ibn ʿAḍud al-Dawlah and became two of his commanders; but when their brother Bahāʾ assumed power