and Syria as well; in Damascus they inserted into the call to prayer the phrase hayya ʿalā khayr al-ʿamal (“Come to the best of deeds”) (1). Rāfiḍī doctrines then flared up across the lands, east and west (2), and the Sunnah was pushed partly into obscurity. The Byzantines overran Nisibis and other towns—there is no strength or power except with Allah (3).

In Baghdad a foot-soldier from the police contingent was killed, whereupon the head of the city sent men who set fire to several markets, and Baghdad was ravaged by a terrible conflagration. Women and children perished in the blaze; the tally of what was destroyed came to three hundred and twenty houses, three hundred and seventeen shops, and thirty-three mosques.

Supplications against the chief—Abū al-Faḍl al-Shīrāzī (4)—multiplied; he was subsequently given poison and died (5). During this period the city of Cairo was founded for al-Muʿizz the Fāṭimid.

In Baghdad the vizierate passed to Abū Ṭāhir ibn Baqiyya. His fixed allowance came to one thousand ratls of ice per day and one thousand mann of candles per month. He served as vizier to ʿIzz al-Dawla for four years, after which ʿAḍud al-Dawla had him crucified (6).

When paralysis gained full control over al-Muṭīʿ, the chamberlain Subuktegin urged him to depose himself and hand the caliphate to his son al-Ṭāʾiʿ. He did so on the thirteenth of Dhū al-Qaʿda in the year 363 AH (7), and they recorded his abdication in the name of Abū al-Ḥasan