, Tutush, himself the son of the Seljuq sultan Alp Arslān the Turk.

Duqāq assumed power after his father was killed in 487 AH. He was then in Aleppo, when his father’s retainer—who was also the deputy governor of the Damascus citadel—secretly summoned him away from his brother Riḍwān, the ruler of Aleppo. Duqāq hastened to Damascus, took control of the city, and—on the advice of his step-father, the Atabeg Tughtikīn (1)—put that retainer, Sāwtakīn, to death in order to secure his position. Riḍwān thereupon advanced and besieged Damascus, but he could not capture it and withdrew. Duqāq thus ruled independently.

An illness then struck him and lingered until he died on the eighteenth of Ramaḍān 497 AH; his reign had lasted ten years.

It was said that his mother poisoned him: she arranged for a maidservant to dose a cluster of grapes with poison, pricking the grapes with a poisoned needle. His mother later regretted it. His entrails rotted away, and he was buried in the Khānqāh al-Ṭawāwīs (2).

The Atabeg Tughtikīn next took matters into his own hands. In the name of the sultanate he first set up Duqāq’s infant son; earlier he had fetched from the prison of the Baʿlabakk citadel a brother of Duqāq named Artāsh and proclaimed him sultan. Three months later Artāsh grew suspicious of the Atabeg and fled to Baldwin the Frank, lord of Jerusalem, who gave him no support. He then headed toward Iraq by way of al-Raḥba, and death overtook him en route. The Atabeg turned to the aforementioned child, set him up as a mere figurehead, then seized power for himself, and his tenure proved lengthy (3).