“Is this how the exile comes back to his native land?!” she cried out (1).

When the year 558 AH began (2), he ordered the army to prepare for jihad against the Byzantines, proclaimed a general call-up that lasted a full year, and then marched until he encamped at Salé. There he fell ill, and death overtook him on the twenty-seventh of Jumada al-Akhirah (3). All of the Maghrib trembled at the news of his passing.

He had named his son Muḥammad as heir, but the young man was unfit—rash, afflicted with leprosy, and addicted to wine. Muḥammad ruled only a few days before being deposed, and the leading men agreed to invest his brother Yūsuf ibn ʿAbd al-Muʾmin with power. Yūsuf reigned for twenty-two years, while ʿAbd al-Muʾmin left behind sixteen sons (4).

The author of the book al-Jamʿ relates: I came across a letter that one of ʿAbd al-Muʾmin’s secretaries had written on his behalf, opening with the words:

“From the sinless, approved, pure Caliph, foretold by the Arab Prophet, the vanquisher of every anthropomorphizing deviant, the champion of Allah’s exalted religion—the Commander of the Faithful ʿAbd al-Muʾmin ibn ʿAlī.”

255 – Shahrdār* ibn Shīrawayh ibn Shahrdār ibn Shīrawayh ibn Fanākhusrah al-Daylamī: the imam, scholar, ḥadīth expert, and transmitter, Abū Manṣūr, son of the ḥāfiẓ and historian Abū Shujāʿ al-Daylamī, al-Hamadhānī, a descendant of al-Ḍaḥḥāk ibn Fayrūz al-Daylamī—may Allah be pleased with him.