“What life could still delight me
When in it Jaʿfar is no more?
A king I once beheld
Lying face-down in clotted gore.
All who had a hidden wound
Or lingering illness have been cured, (1)
All save Mahbūba—for her part,
If only death could be procured,
She would buy it with everything
Her two hands own, that she be interred. (2)

Bughā flew into a rage, ordered that she be dragged away, and that was the last anyone ever heard of her. (3)

The next morning al-Muntaṣir received the pledge of allegiance in the Jaʿfarī Palace, on 5 Shawwāl 247 AH.

It is also said that no formal installation was ever validated. He is reported to have wept at the sermon of ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad al-ʿAskarī, the ʿAlawī, and to have presented him with four thousand dinars—Allah knows best.

Al-Mutawakkil’s sons were: al-Muntaṣir Muḥammad and Mūsā, whose mother was Ḥabashiyya; Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Muʿtazz and Ismāʿīl, whose mother was Qabīḥa; al-Muʾayyad Ibrāhīm; Aḥmad—later al-Muʿtamad—; Abū al-Ḥumayd; Abū Bakr; and others.

His mother, Shujāʿ, had died a year before him, leaving behind inestimable wealth, including five million dinars in coined gold alone.