In Ibn al-Athīr’s al-Kāmil (1) it is reported that the naqīb (chief representative) of the Alid community in Nīshāpūr, Dhukhr al-Dīn, had some of his followers slain by a Shāfiʿī. He therefore demanded that the killer be handed over by the head of the Shāfiʿīs, al-Muwaffaqī, but the latter gave him protection. Fighting then raged for several days; the crisis grew grave, schools and marketplaces were put to the torch, and the slaughter among the Shāfiʿīs became so intense that the town was almost wiped out—Allah alone directs all affairs.

Ibn al-Jawzī (2) states that al-Muqtafī was struck by an illness of the collarbones—others say it was a boil in his neck—and died on the second of Rabīʿ al-Awwal in 555 AH, at the age of sixty-six years and twenty-eight days. His father had died of the very same complaint.

274 – al-Mustanjid bi-Allah Yūsuf ibn al-Muqtafī li-Amr Allah *
The caliph, Abū al-Muẓaffar Yūsuf ibn al-Muqtafī li-Amr Allah Muḥammad ibn al-Mustazhir ibn al-Muqtadī al-ʿAbbāsī.

His father appointed him heir-apparent in 547 AH, at which time he was twenty-nine years old.

When al-Muqtafī lay at the point of death, a faction tried to displace al-Mustanjid. Al-Muqtafī’s favored concubine, Umm ʿAlī, sent messages to the amirs, promising and enticing them to pledge allegiance to her own son ʿAlī ibn al-Muqtafī.

They said: