Dakhīrat al-Dīn Muḥammad, the Caliph’s son and appointed heir, passed away, leaving an infant son—the future Caliph al-Muqtadī. Tughril Beg’s troops then ravaged the countryside so thoroughly that a bull fetched no more than ten dirhams, while a donkey went for only two.

Civil strife broke out in Baghdad between the Ḥanbalīs and the Shāfiʿīs (1).

The Caliph married Tughril Beg’s daughter, agreeing to a dowry of one hundred thousand dinars (2).

In the year eight the Basāsīrī uprising began; he had the Friday sermon proclaimed in Kūfa, Wāsiṭ, and several villages in the name of the ʿUbaydid caliph al-Mustanṣir (3). That same year a terrible famine struck Egypt and al-Andalus; no scarcity or plague like it had ever been seen in Córdoba. The mosques were shut with not a single worshipper, and the year was remembered as “the Great Famine” (4).

In the year nine Tughril Beg captured Mosul, handed it over to his brother Yanal, and added to his titles: “King of the East and the West.”

During that same year extreme hunger and mass death gripped Baghdad, and likewise Bukhara and Samarqand, until it was said that beyond the Oxus one million six hundred thousand people perished (5).

In the year fifty al-Basāsīrī seized Baghdad, as we have already mentioned, and he had the Friday sermon proclaimed for the