amplified his fabrications, so that the hearts of many of his own followers recoiled from him and they came to detest him.

When his troops multiplied he had no choice but to allot them rations, so he fixed the soldier’s pay at ten dinars a month. His cavalry commanders envied this arrangement. Preoccupied with putting up new buildings, he relaxed his grip on the Zanj, and they began plotting to murder him.

The commander al-Shaʿrānī built a strongly fortified town, but it was captured and al-Shaʿrānī fled.

Sulaymān ibn Jāmiʿ likewise founded a city which he named al-Manṣūrah, ringed it with five moats (1) and made it a farsakh in length, yet it too fell and Ibn Jāmiʿ escaped.

Al-Muwaffaq meanwhile continued to honour everyone who defected to him, clothing them in robes of distinction.

He wrote to the wretch, calling him to repent of his claim to speak with the angels, of his tampering with the Quran and of his deviance, but the man gave no answer. Instead he fortified his city, al-Mukhtārah, on the Nahr Abī al-Khaṣīb until it became proverbial for impregnability. He set up mangonels and other engines that amazed the onlookers, and within its walls were some two hundred thousand fighters. The government forces could subdue it only by a protracted siege. Opposite the place al-Muwaffaq built a town of his own and took up residence there, persevering until he seized al-Mukhtārah. The villain fled to narrow channels in the Nahr Abī al-Khaṣīb, where neither ship nor horseman could reach him. He then emerged among his champions and fought with the utmost ferocity, declaring:

My resolve is like a whetted blade, my ambition—
a soul that charges forth like a lion of the field.

And if it argues with me I say, ‘Be silent:
death that gives you rest, or mounting the pulpit.’ (2)