In the year 400 AH Ibn Sahlān (1) built a mighty wall around the shrine of ʿAlī (2).

About the same time Maḥmūd b. Subuktakīn won a great victory in India.

During this period al-Ḥākim’s missionaries fanned out across the provinces, so Caliph al-Qādir ordered a formal deposition to be drafted denouncing the lineage of the ʿUbaydīyah (3). It stated that they are in fact descended from Dayṣān b. Saʿīd al-Khurramī, and that the upstart in Egypt, Manṣūr b. Nizār—al-Ḥākim, may God consign him to ruin—and his grandfather, when he reached the Maghrib, adopted the title “the Mahdī ʿUbayd Allāh.” He and his ancestors, the document declared, are vile, impure, rebellious impostors. You know, it continued, that no member of the Ṭālibid family ever hesitated to brand them impostors, and that this claimant and his forebears (4) are unbelieving zindīqs, adherents of the thanawiyyah (dualist doctrine) (5) and the majusiyyah (Magian creed) (6). They have abolished the divine penalties, made illicit relations lawful, shed blood, reviled the prophets, cursed the early generations, and even claimed divinity.

The deposition was signed by al-Sharīf al-Raḍī, al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā, Muḥammad b. Muḥammad b. ʿUmar, Ibn al-Azraq—all of them Alids—together with the judge Abū Muḥammad b. al-Akfānī, al-Qāsim Abū al-Qāsim al-Jazarī, Shaykh Abū Ḥāmid al-Isfarāyinī, Abū Muḥammad al-Kashfulī (7), and Abū al-Ḥusayn