for three years, after which the youths of Damascus and its bandits (1) rose in revolt. They wielded formidable influence and controlled the city walls, so in 460 AH he slipped out of the city, and his palace outside Bab al-Jabiyah (2) was wrecked. He then made his way to Egypt.
Others say that he actually boarded ship at Tyre and sailed to Damietta when he learned of the turmoil in Egypt and the severity of its famine. He burst into the country unexpectedly, and al-Mustanṣir the Ismaili (3) was delighted at his arrival. The stoppages (4) imposed upon him were lifted, along with the humiliation he had suffered at the hands of Ibn Ḥamdan (5) and others.
Immediately he had several leading emirs killed in the night, seated himself upon the throne of authority, and the reciter intoned, “Indeed, Allah granted you victory at Badr” (Āl ʿImrān 3:123) (6). The reins of government were restored to him. He then dispatched an army to Damascus, but they failed to take it, for the city had already been seized by Tāj al-Dawlah Tutush, brother of the sultan Malikshāh.
He is the one who built the Perfumers’ Mosque in Alexandria (7), and he was a courageous champion.
(1) The plural shuttar (sing. shatir) designates someone who so vexes his family and tutor by his mischief that they are at a loss with him. The term derives from the verb shatara, meaning to break away from one’s people—thus, to leave them defiantly or in opposition—and by extension to deviate from upright conduct. Abu Ishaq explains that when people say “So-and-so is a shatir,” they mean he has taken a crooked path, hence the label.
(2) Ibn Asakir, 1/262, writes that Bab al-Jabiya, on the western side of the city, is named after the village of al-Jabiya because travellers bound for that village exited there. The gate had three openings: a large central portal with two smaller side doors, mirroring the design of the Eastern Gate. Badran reports that it was repaired in 515 AH/1121 CE. Yaqut’s Geographical Dictionary locates al-Jabiya in the Damascus district, within Jidour of the Golan, near Marj al-Suffar north of Hauran. The popular notion that the gate is linked to “al-Sitt Jabiya” is unfounded. Today it stands east of the Sinan Pasha Mosque; see Thimar al-maqasid, 59.
(3) His biography appears earlier, vol. 15, no. 72.
(4) The expressions al-adbār (misfortunes) and al-nahs (ill-omen) are cited from the marginalia of Wafayat.
(5) The person concerned is Nasir al-Dawla b. Hamdan; see vol. 18, no. 156.
(6) Wafayat and al-Wafi add: when he recited the Qur’anic words “wa-antum adhilla…” (“while you were few and humbled,” 3:123) he stopped short of completing the verse. Al-Mustansir remarked, “Had he finished it, I would have ordered his execution.”
(7) Ibn Khallikan, 2/450, notes that construction was completed in 479 AH/1086 CE.