fabricating a claim against him for 1,000 dinars, with the claimant’s witnesses already on hand. The man would be bewildered and struck dumb, whereupon al-Rafīʿ would say, “Settle with your opponent.” So he would compromise for half the amount. Thus the Muslims’ wealth was violated, the calamity grew, many people stumbled into hardship, and the scandals multiplied. They appealed to al-Ṣāliḥ, who summoned his vizier and asked, “What is all this?”

The vizier grew afraid; the real instigator of the trouble, al-Muwaffaq al-Wāsiṭī, had opened wide the gates of oppression. The vizier therefore hastened and put the two men to death so they could not testify against him and in order to placate the people. It is also said that al-Ṣāliḥ himself was aware of the matter.

Sadr ʿAbd al-Malik ibn ʿAsākir records in his Jarīdah that Judge al-Rafīʿ set out for Baghdad as an envoy. The vizier Amīn al-Dawlah and al-Manṣūr, the sultan’s son, mounted to receive him, and he rode in amid a great crowd wearing a black robe of honour, as did all his companions. It was reported that he never actually entered Baghdad nor was the letter he carried accepted; instead he was turned back, and he bought the robes for his companions at his own expense.

He adds: al-Ṣāliḥ then began confiscating people’s assets through al-Rafīʿ. He wrote to his judicial deputies demanding whatever orphan funds were in their charge. Al-Rafīʿ followed the ways of provincial governors: he judged for bribes, took from both litigants, would not declare anyone upright unless paid, and accepted money openly. He even borrowed 40 trays to send as a gift to the governor of Ḥimṣ and never returned them. During his tenure the water levels fell, the trees withered and were struck down, the mills ceased to turn, and a non-Arab who left 100,000 died, yet he did not give the man’s daughter a single fals. He permitted women to cross through the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus, saying, “It is no greater than the Two Sanctuaries,” so on the night of mid-Shaʿbān the mosque was packed with men and women.

Sibt al-Jawzī⦗1⦘ said: A number of notable people told me that al-Rafīʿ’s creed was unsound—he was a thoroughgoing materialist—he would come to Friday prayer drunk, and his house was like a tavern.