nearly reached the age of seventy.

During his days, reviling the Companions was rampant and the Sunnah was deemed strange and suppressed. They even forbade the ḥadith master Abū Isḥāq al-Ḥabbāl from transmitting traditions, threatened him, and so he refrained.

After al-Mustansir his son Aḥmad succeeded him.

73 – Al-Mustaʿlī bi-Allah Aḥmad ibn al-Mustansir ibn al-Ẓāhir*

He was the ruler of Egypt, Abū al-Qāsim Aḥmad ibn al-Mustansir Maʿadd ibn al-Ẓāhir ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥākim Manṣūr ibn al-ʿAzīz ibn al-Muʿizz, the ʿUbaydī al-Mahdawī of Egypt.

He assumed power after his father in 487 AH, being twenty-one years old.

In his time the Fatimid state weakened, its foundations were shaken, and the call in their name ceased in most of the cities of Greater Syria, which fell to the Franks and to other Turcoman bands⦗1⦘.

Thus, in 491 AH the Franks seized Antioch from the Muslims, after it had been in Muslim hands for about twenty years; they also took Jerusalem, sacked it, and captured Maʿarrat al-Nuʿmān in 492 AH, before going on to occupy a number of other towns and fortresses⦗2⦘.

Al-Mustaʿlī himself had no real power or authority in the presence of the Commander of the Armies⦗3⦘.