Dubays ibn ʿAlī ibn Mazīd al-Asadī, al-Nāshirī(1), an Iraqi. In 495 AH he laid out the city of al-Ḥillah(2), which soon became a Shiʿite settlement. He was formidable and daring. He challenged Sultan Muḥammad ibn Malikshāh(3) and fought him; the two armies met at al-Nuʿmāniyyah(4), and Ṣadaqah was killed in the engagement in 501 AH(5). The caliph al-Mustazhir bi-llah had sent him a command not to march out, but he would not listen. He gathered twenty thousand cavalry and thirty thousand infantry, yet the sultan’s forces showered them with arrows, wounding their horses and putting them to flight. Ṣadaqah kept riding about on his own; his famed charger was wounded—there was none like it. His vizier fled on another of his horses; Ṣadaqah called after him, but he did not turn back. Then a sword-blow struck Ṣadaqah in the face, and he was killed(6). Three thousand Arabs died, and his son Dubays, his vizier, and several others were taken captive. His father had died in 479 AH(7).
(1) The nisba goes back to Nashira ibn Nasr ibn Suwaaʾa ibn al-Harith ibn Saʿd ibn Malik ibn Thaʿlaba ibn Dudān ibn Asad ibn Khuzaima. See: al-Lubab, 3/289.
(2) A town in Iraq situated between Baghdad and Kufa, on the Euphrates, on the Kufa bank.
(3) Ibn Alp Arslan the Seljuqid (d. 511 AH) was regarded as the foremost of the Seljuq rulers, noted for his fine achievements, virtuous conduct and comprehensive sense of justice. His full biography appears below, no. 294.
(4) A locality lying between al-Hilla and Wasit.
(5) Al-Lubab gives the year 500 AH.
(6) Ibn al-Athir states in al-Kamil, 10/449, after recounting his life: he was generous, forbearing, truthful, abundantly charitable and kind, ever a refuge for the distressed; he welcomed those who sought him with beneficence, visited them, and ruled with justice so that his subjects enjoyed security and tranquillity. He was chaste—neither marrying another wife nor taking a concubine alongside his spouse—and never confiscated wealth from his governors nor punished them for past faults. His companions entrusted their riches to his treasury and dealt with him as a son with his father. It was said no people loved their ruler as his subjects loved him. He was humble, tolerant, memorised poetry and was quick with witty remarks; truly one of the world’s delights.
(7) The manuscript reads 489, but the correct figure—confirmed by the author’s historical work and by Wafayat al-Aʿyan, 2/491—is 499.