b. ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib Ibn al-ʿAlqamī al-Baghdādī (1), a Rāfiḍī Shiite and the vizier of al-Mustaʿṣim.

His tenure lasted fourteen years. During that time he publicized Rāfiḍī doctrine; the Sunnis opposed him and he was humiliated, whereupon he grew fierce. When he realized that Hūlāgū planned to advance on Iraq, he wrote to him, emboldened him, and strengthened his resolve to invade—seeking thereby to gain favor with him and to achieve his own aims. Thus he dug a pit for the ummah and was soon made to fall into it himself. He tasted degradation: once his procession rivalled that of a sultan, yet he ended up riding alone on a mere kadīsh (pack-donkey). He died consumed by vexation and grief—and in the Hereafter still greater disgrace and punishment await him.

Abū Bakr, the son of al-Mustaʿṣim, together with the minor Dawidār, had earlier thrown their weight behind the Sunnis, so that al-Karkh was plundered and the Shiʿites suffered grievously. Enraged by this, Muʾayyad al-Dīn resolved to exact revenge with the sword of the Tatars, not only upon the Sunnis but upon Shiʿites, Jews, and Christians as well. The caliph was killed along with about seventy of the chief dignitaries, and the sword was let loose in Baghdad for thirty-nine days until rivers of blood coursed through the city. Baghdad was left as though it had never been—surely we belong to Allah and to Him we return. Ibn al-ʿAlqamī lived on for three months after the catastrophe and then perished (2).

A few days before him his brother, Ṣāḥib ʿAlam al-Dīn Aḥmad, had died; and after him his son Muḥammad—one of the eloquent masters of prose—also passed away.

The vizier lived to the age of sixty-six.