In the year 60 (560 AH): the daughter of Abū al-ʿIzz al-Ahwāzī was born in Baghdad, bringing his daughters to four in all.

In the same year a deaf, indiscriminate turmoil over doctrines erupted in Isfahan; fighting raged among the scholars for several days and many people were killed, as Ibn al-Athīr relates ⦗1⦘.

In the year 561 AH: the Rāfiḍa staged elaborate ʿĀshūrāʾ mourning rites, went to excess, and vilified the Companions. The Georgians launched an incursion, heretical innovations spread within the Muslim community, and Nūr al-Dīn conducted several campaigns.

In the year 562 AH: Shīrkuh marched to Egypt for the second time with two thousand men. He besieged the country for two months, whereupon Shāwar sought aid from the Franks, who entered by way of Damietta. Shīrkuh engaged them, prevailed, and thousands of Franks were killed. He then moved south, occupied Upper Egypt, and his nephew Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn captured Alexandria. The Franks retaliated, besieging him there for months until Shīrkuh returned, at which point they fled. A Frankish garrison and an annual tribute of one hundred thousand dinars were subsequently imposed on Egypt. When Shīrkuh returned, Nūr al-Dīn granted him Homs.

In the year 564 AH: Shīrkuh launched his third campaign against Egypt. The Franks seized Bilbays and marched on Cairo. Shāwar humbled himself before them and sought peace on the basis of an annual payment of one million dinars. The tyrant Amaury accepted and Shāwar hurried to give him one hundred thousand dinars in advance, while simultaneously appealing to Nūr al-Dīn. He blackened his letter in mourning, enclosed women’s braids within it, and kept dispatching urgent messages. Nūr al-Dīn, then in Aleppo, mustered his army and enlisted Asad al-Dīn, so that, it was said, they numbered seventy thousand cavalry and infantry.

At his approach the Franks withdrew in humiliation. Shīrkuh entered Cairo in Rabīʿ al-Ākhir, ascended the throne of state, and al-ʿĀḍid invested him with the robes of sovereignty and issued an official patent, the heading in al-ʿĀḍid’s own hand reading: “This is a covenant the like of which has never been witnessed.”