to al-Manṣūr the ʿAbbāsid. Al-Muʿtaḍid’s son Ismāʿīl tried to assassinate him; he seized the boy, struck off his head, and invested his other son, al-Muʿtamid (1), with the succession.

It is also reported that the Frankish tyrant poisoned him by means of a sumptuous robe he had sent him as a gift (2).

Among the clearest proofs of his tyranny and arrogance was that he confiscated the money of a blind man. The latter lampooned him in verse and took up residence near the Sacred Mosque in Mecca. When al-Muʿtaḍid learned that the blind man was calling down curses upon him, he dispatched an agent, handing him a number of gold dinars coated with poison. The man travelled to Mecca and delivered the gold. The blind man exclaimed, “He oppresses me in Seville and then rewards me here?!” He placed one of the dinars in his mouth, as beggars sometimes do, and died the next day.

A muezzin also fled from him to Toledo. There he continued, in the pre-dawn hours, to implore God against al-Muʿtaḍid, so the ruler sent an emissary who returned with the man’s head.

One night al-Muʿtaḍid became drunk, left his palace accompanied by a single page, and, still intoxicated, travelled until he reached Carmona (3), whose governor was Isḥāq al-Barzal, with whom he was at war. Isḥāq happened to be drinking with a group of companions when al-Muʿtaḍid requested permission to enter. They admitted him, astonished beyond measure. He greeted them, ate with them, and—his stupor now ebbing (4)—suddenly realised the danger he was in; nevertheless he composed himself and said, “I wish to sleep.” They prepared a bed for him, and he pretended to fall asleep. Some of them said, “Here is a fat ram! By Allah, even if you expended the whole kingdom of al-Andalus, you could not capture him.” Muʿādh ibn Abī Qurrah replied, “Certainly not. The man has come under our protection…"