Tughtikin, who had once been the retainer of the Saljuq sultan Tutush.

Būrī took power after his father in Ṣafar 522 AH. He was a man of forbearance and generosity, and he was largely responsible for the slaying of his vizier and the persecution of the Ismaʿīlīs (1).

He had been born in 478 AH.

Ibn al-Khiyāṭ composed several panegyrics for him in his Dīwān. Those who served as his vizier included Abū al-Dhawwād ibn al-Ṣūfī, and later Karīm al-Mulk, a cousin of al-Muzdaqānī.

When Ibn Ṣabbāḥ, lord of Alamut, learned what had befallen his Ismaʿīlī followers in Damascus, he bristled with anger and dispatched a band to assassinate Tāj al-Mulūk. He chose two men wearing military sharbush caps and dressed as soldiers; they travelled on, met some of their co-religionists in the garrison, and pretended to belong to the silahdāriyya. The soldiers vouched for them, whereupon the pair sprang at the atabeg and killed him.

Abū Yaʿlā Ibn al-Qalansī (2) reports: “They attacked him on the fifth of Jumādā al-Ākhira 525 AH. One assailant swung a sword at his head, cutting a clean gash in his neck; the other stabbed him with a knife in the flank, the blade passing between skin and flesh.”

I (the author) say: He lingered after those wounds, but died in Rajab 526 AH. Allegiance was then sworn to his son, Shams al-Mulūk Ismāʿīl.