Later a rift opened between him and his two missionaries (duʿāt), for he had neither dealt justly with them nor assigned them any high post. They therefore sowed doubts about him among their own confidants, the troops’ ranks split, and an engagement took place between the two sides (1).

ʿUbayd Allah gained the upper hand and put the two brothers to the sword (2). Nations thereafter submitted to him. He founded the city of al-Mahdiyya (3), and no army set out against him because of the great distance involved and the weakness of the caliphate under the rule of al-Muqtadir (4).

From the Maghrib he equipped his son to seize Egypt, but the attempt did not succeed.

Abu l-Hasan al-Qābisī, author of al-Mulakhkhaṣ (5), states: “The people whom ʿUbayd Allah and his sons killed—four thousand scholars and worshippers—were slaughtered in Dār al-Naḥr in al-ʿAdhab, for he sought to force them to abandon invoking Allah’s pleasure for the Companions; they chose death instead.”

Sahl the poet said:
“He filled the slaughter-yard with chained captives—
those who were devout and constant in prayer.” (6)

The rest were buried in al-Munastīr (7), which in the Frankish tongue is called the Great Monastery.

His reign lasted a little over twenty years.

The vizier al-Qifṭī (8) recounts in the history of the Banū ʿUbayd: “Abu ʿAbd Allah al-Shīʿī was one of the master tacticians; he gathered the elders of Kutāma to make them doubt the imam.”