—and many people were killed, until he eventually overpowered the two brothers and put them both to death (1).

He then consolidated his rule and founded the city of al-Mahdiyya (2).

Al-Ḥusayn ibn Ḥamdān returned from Qumm and was given charge of Diyār Bakr.

In 299 AH, the vizier Ibn al-Furāt was arrested (3) on the accusation that he had exchanged letters with the Bedouins urging them to raid Baghdad. Abū ʿAlī al-Khāqānī (4) assumed the vizierate, and gifts arrived from Egypt, among them five hundred thousand dinars, a human rib one span wide and fourteen spans long, and a he-goat with udders that produced milk (5). Presents also reached the court from the ruler of Transoxiana, and from Ibn Abī al-Sāj came further gifts, including a Byzantine carpet seventy cubits long by sixty wide, woven by craftsmen over ten years (6).

In 300 AH the plague intensified in Iraq; ʿAlī ibn ʿĪsā ibn al-Jarāḥ (7) became vizier, and Abū ʿUmar the Judge was appointed chief qāḍī. That same year al-Ḥallāj was flogged, and the crier announced above him, “This man is one of the propagandists of the Qarāmiṭa” (8). He was then imprisoned for a period, and it emerged that he espoused incarnationism.

All of the Maghrib was assigned to a young son of al-Muqtadir (9)—a child of four—and Muʾnis al-Khādim (10) was deputed to govern on his behalf.