“Your father will occupy the caliphate for twenty-five years.”

And so it proved to be. Four months before my father’s death I saw him again: he ushered me through a great gate, we climbed to the top of a mountain, he led me in two cycles of prayer, then clothed me in a tunic and said, “Say: Allahumma ihdini fīman hadayt (O Allah, guide me among those You have guided).”⦗1⦘

Ibn al-Jawzi⦗2⦘ remarks: “Al-Mustanjid confirmed the governors in their posts and abolished the tolls and extraordinary taxes.”

The author of al-Rawḍatayn⦗3⦘ relates: “He was characterized by justice and gentleness. He eliminated the imposts so thoroughly that not a single levy remained in Iraq, and he was severe toward those who sowed corruption. He imprisoned a man from ʿAwān who had spent some time informing against people; someone offered ten thousand dinars for the prisoner’s release. Al-Mustanjid said, ‘I will give ten thousand dinars myself if you bring me another man like him so that I can lock him up.’”

Ibn al-Athīr states in his Kāmil⦗4⦘: “Al-Mustanjid was brown-skinned, of full height, and wore a long beard. When his illness worsened, Ustād al-Dār ʿAḍud al-Dawla ibn Raʾīs al-Ruʾasāʾ and Qaymaz al-Muqtafawī, the chief of the emirs, grew fearful. They therefore came to terms with the physician to injure him. The doctor prescribed a hot bath; because of his weakness he refused, but he was nonetheless taken into the bathhouse, the door was locked on him, and thus he perished. I heard this from more than one person who knew the facts.”

He continues: “It was also said that the caliph wrote to his vizier—sending the letter with Ibn Ṣafiyyah the physician—ordering him to seize Qaymaz and ʿAḍud al-Dawla and crucify them. Ibn Ṣafiyyah showed the letter to ʿAḍud al-Dawla, who then met with Qaymaz and Yazdan…"