The rest of the men returned to their houses and found them utterly desolate. I then set out to find my father at al-Mughithiyyah. I discovered him sitting with his companions, yet none of them recognized me.

They said, “What do you want?”

I answered, “I am looking for Fakhr al-Din ibn Ratlayn; I know him.”

He turned toward me and asked, “What do you want with him?”

I replied, “I am his son.”

He gazed intently, and when he was sure of who I was he wept. I had with me a small quantity of sesame, so I left it with them.

Ibn al-‘Alqami then worked to abolish the Friday congregational prayers and to build a school upon the doctrine of the Rāfiḍah (Shiʿites), but his ambition came to nothing and the Friday prayers were maintained.

My father related to me: “A settlement had almost been reached whereby the Tatars would receive one-half of Iraq’s revenue; nothing remained but to ratify it. Ibn al-‘Alqami, however, said, ‘The prudent course is to kill him, for without that your rule over Iraq will never be secure.’” (1)

I say: They killed him by strangling. Others say: by trampling. Still others say: he was suffocated inside a carpet. They used to call him “the Simpleton.”

Al-Zahir al-Kazaruni informed me in his History (2) that al-Mustaʿṣim re-entered Baghdad after going out to Hülegü, produced his treasures for him, then departed on the fourth of Ṣafar, and the sword was unleashed on the fifth of Ṣafar.

He further said: “Al-Mustaʿṣim bi-Llāh was slain on Wednesday, the fourteenth of Ṣafar.

“It is reported that he was placed in a sack and trampled until he died—may Allah have mercy on him—then he was buried and all trace of him effaced. He had reached forty-six years and four months of age.

“His two sons, Aḥmad and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, were killed, while his son Mubārak and his daughters Fāṭimah, Khadījah, and Maryam remained in Tatar captivity.”