to speak,(1) and they forced him to stay awake: whenever he tried to sleep they jabbed him with iron. After all that they put him into a wooden furnace whose floor was studded with up-right nails; they made him stand upon them and stationed guards to keep him from sleeping. He remained like that for several days until he died in that very state.

Some say he was taken out of the furnace while a breath still remained in him; they struck his belly and then his back until he died under the blows.

Others relate that he was burned, after which his body was handed over to his children, who buried him. Dogs then dug up the grave and devoured his flesh and skin—may Allah pardon him.

He died on the eleventh of Rabiʿ al-Awwal of that same year.

The goods recovered from his treasuries were valued at roughly ninety million dinars. We have already noted that al-Mutawakkil asked him about his brother al-Wathiq’s execution of Ahmad ibn Nasr. He had replied, “Commander of the Faithful, may Allah burn me with fire if al-Wathiq killed him that day while he was anything but a disbeliever.”

In Jumada al-Ula of that year the Muʿtazili judge Ahmad ibn Abi Duʿad suffered a stroke and remained in that condition until he died four years later—just as he had called down upon himself, as mentioned above.

Afterwards al-Mutawakkil became angry with a group of secretaries and officials and seized from them very large sums of money.

In the same year al-Mutawakkil(2) appointed his son Muhammad al-Muntasir governor of the Hijaz and Yemen, investing him with authority over both territories in Ramadan of that year.

That year the Byzantine emperor Michael, son of Theophilus, took his mother Theodora,(3) exposed her in the sun, confined her to a convent, and killed the man of whom he had suspected her; her reign had lasted six years.

The pilgrimage that year was led by Muhammad ibn Dawud, the governor of Mecca—may Allah protect and exalt it.

In the same year Ibrahim ibn al-Hajjaj al-Sami(4) passed away.