Then, in the year five, the sultan led his armies across the Jayḥūn River—two hundred thousand horsemen in all. A non-Muslim brute named Yūsuf the Khwārazmian was brought before him. He had been holding a fortress (1). The sultan ordered that he be spread-eagled on four stakes, whereupon Yūsuf cried out, “You effeminate—shall a man like me be killed in such a way?”

The sultan’s anger flared; he took up his bow and said, “Leave him to me.” He shot at him but missed, and Yūsuf leapt (2) onto the dais. The sultan rose, stumbled, and fell on his face. The brute threw himself upon him and stabbed him with a dagger. The mamluks converged and cut Yūsuf to pieces (3). From that wound the sultan died, in Jumādā al-Ākhirah of 465 AH, at the age of forty (4).

Muʾayyad al-Dawlah Ibn Munqidh relates: “I heard Abū Jaʿfar al-Najjār, the envoy of Nāṣir al-Dawlah Ibn Ḥamdān—who had seized Egypt—say that he was dispatched to Alp Arslan, summoning him and requesting his troops to take possession of Egypt after strife had broken out between him and the Sudanese soldiery. The exchange of letters took place in the year (463) and reached the sultan in Khurāsān. He marshalled a great army and advanced to Diyār Bakr, then descended upon Edessa, besieged it, and sent his envoy to the governor of Aleppo, Maḥmūd (5) Ibn Naṣr, asking for reinforcements and commanding him to tread his carpet as other kings did. Maḥmūd refused out of fear, so the sultan came himself, encamped before Aleppo, and his forces spread throughout Syria. Maḥmūd finally came out to attend upon him; the sultan honored him and made peace with him (6). Thereafter the sultan’s zeal for Egypt cooled, but the tyrant of the Romans stirred him once more.