In 462 AH the Fatimid proclamation for al-Mustansir was cut off in Mecca; the khuṭbah was now delivered for al-Qāʾim bi-Amr Allāh, and the adhān dropped the phrase hayya ʿalā khayr al-ʿamal (“Come to the best of deeds”) (1). This reversal came about because the Egyptians were utterly humbled by the great famine: they perished in droves, some of them devouring one another, scattering across the land in hunger. The treasuries of al-Mustansir were exhausted; he became impoverished and stumbled into hardship (2).

On that occasion the author of al-Mirʾāh (3) relates that a woman went out holding a mudd of pearls to purchase with it a mudd of wheat; no one so much as looked at her, so she cast the pearls aside—and there was no one willing to pick them up (4).

Ruin all but overwhelmed every province: a dog sold for six dinars, a cat for three, and an irdabb of grain for one hundred dinars (5).

In 463 AH Sultan Alp Arslan defeated the Byzantine emperor, took him captive, and sixty thousand of the enemy were killed (6).

Soon afterward Atsiz the Khwarazmian (7), one of Alp Arslan’s commanders, advanced and seized almost all of Syria; he ruled harshly, rebelled, and behaved with outrageous arrogance (8).

The Egyptian army then became preoccupied with its own affairs. They fell into dispute, fought one another for a time, and came to