already performed the dawn prayer, with a Qur’an open before him and Ibn Sukaynah, his personal imam, seated opposite. Najā the servant entered and handed him the note while I looked on; he read it several times and asked, “Who wrote this?”

They replied, “Fāris al-Islām.”

“Bring him here,” he ordered.

He came, whereupon the caliph seized my hand; I began to tremble and kissed the ground. The caliph said, “And peace be upon you.” He then read the note repeatedly and asked again, “Who wrote this?”

“I did,” I replied.

“Woe to you! Why did you leave the place of the other word blank?”

“It is exactly as you have seen it, Commander of the Faithful!”

“Woe to you! This is the very dream I myself have just been shown at this moment.”

I said, “Our master, nothing is truer than your own vision; turn back from where you came.”

“Woe to you! Would the Messenger of Allah ﷺ be belied? No, by Allah, there is no return left to us; Allah decrees what He wills.”

On the second or third day the battle was joined; what was to happen happened: he was routed, taken captive, and killed—may Allah have mercy on him. (1)

Ibn Nāṣir said: In 529 AH al-Mustarshid Billāh set out for Hamadhān to reconcile the rival sultans and quell the discord among the troops. A large contingent of Turks accompanied him, but most of them betrayed him and went over to Masʿūd ibn Muḥammad ibn Malikshāh. The two armies met; al-Mustarshid’s forces were defeated in Ramaḍān, and he and his closest attendants were arrested and taken to a nearby fortress, where they were imprisoned. The caliph remained with Sultan Masʿūd until mid-Dhū l-Qaʿdah and was then moved with them to Marāgha. The Bāṭiniyya (the Ismāʿīlī Assassins) assembled a band of malāḥida (godless killers) against him. As he had been lodged on the edge of the camp, they entered upon him, murdered him and the group stationed at the gate of his pavilion (2), and were themselves slain. His body was transported and buried in Marāgha, and he met his end on