He was given the bayʿa as crown-prince, his name being pronounced in the Friday sermon while he was still an adolescent, and that situation lasted for several years. His father then deposed him and invested his brother ʿAlī with the succession; that arrangement continued until ʿAlī died in 618 AH. His father then had to restore him to the line of succession. After al-Nāṣir’s death he assumed the caliphate, but his reign was short. The Musnad of Aḥmad was read aloud in his presence on the basis of the ijāza he had received from his father.

Ibn al-Najjār said: “Abū Ṣāliḥ al-Jīlī reported to us; al-Ẓāhir, while I read to him, reported to us; my father informed us in writing, from ʿAbd al-Mughīth ibn Zuhayr, from Ibn al-Ḥuṣayn …,” and he mentioned a hadith.

Ibn al-Athīr (1) wrote: “When he assumed power he manifested justice and beneficence and revived the practice of the two ʿUmars. Indeed, were someone to say that no one like him ruled after ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, he would be telling the truth. He restored a great deal of money and property that had been usurped, abolished customs duties throughout all the provinces, ordered the reinstatement of the former land-tax schedule over the whole of Iraq, and cancelled the additional levies introduced by his father, whose amount was beyond calculation (2). One example is Baʿqūbā: its earlier land-tax had been ten thousand dinars, but in his father’s time eighty thousand were taken from it; he reduced it to the original figure. The treasury’s scale (sanjah) was half a qirāṭ heavier than the standard mithqāl; they used that heavier weight when collecting and the ordinary one when paying out. He abolished it and inscribed, ‘Woe to those who give short measure’ (3) (4). The head of the dīwān arrived from Wāsiṭ with more than one hundred thousand dinars wrongfully exacted; he returned them to their rightful owners. He also sent the ḥākim ten thousand dinars to discharge the debts of prisoners.

He used to say, “I have opened the shop after ʿAṣr (5); so leave me to do good—how long do I have left to live?” On the eve of the Day of Sacrifice he spent and gave away in charity one hundred thousand dinars,