hundred thousand, and none of them escaped except three thousand.

There was a battle between the Egyptians and the Franks (1) near Ascalon; the commander of the Egyptians, Saʿd al-Dawla, was killed, yet the Muslims prevailed.

Ibn al-Athir says: It is reported that three hundred thousand Franks were killed.

I reply: This is a colossal exaggeration.

Sultan Muḥammad ibn Malikshāh and his brother Barkyāruq fought each other repeatedly, while the provinces boiled over with the Bāṭinis. Their arch-leader was Ḥasan ibn al-Ṣabbāḥ al-Marwazī, a chancery scribe who had once been an envoy of the Banū ʿUbayd. They took up the dagger’s trade, murdering a number of scholars and emirs by stealth, seizing fortresses, waging war, and cutting the highways. They also appeared in Syria, and every devil and apostate, every schemer and trickster, gathered around them.

Al-Ghazālī, in Sirr al-ʿĀlamīn, relates: “I witnessed the affair of Ḥasan ibn al-Ṣabbāḥ when he affected asceticism beneath the fortress of Alamut. The people of the fortress wished him to ascend, but he refused, saying, ‘Do you not see how evil has spread and the people have become corrupt?’ A number of men were drawn to him. When the lord of the fortress went out hunting, Ḥasan leapt upon it, took possession, and sent someone who killed the lord. Their fortresses multiplied, and the sons of Malikshāh, preoccupied with their own quarrels, ignored them.”

Ibn al-Bāqillānī, al-Ghazālī, and the Muʿtazilī ʿAbd al-Jabbār all wrote books exposing the scandals of these people (2).

Ibn al-Athir adds: In the year 494 AH the sultan Barkyāruq ordered the killing of