On the second day of his caliphate he entrusted the maẓālim (court of grievances) to Abū ʿAmrah Aḥmad ibn Saʿīd, a client of Banū Hāshim. A poet thereupon exclaimed (1):
Alas for Islam the day when Abū ʿAmrah assumed
the people’s wrongs!
Declared trustworthy over the whole community,
though not to be trusted with dung!
The bayʿah had been given him in al-Mutawakkiliyyah—also called al-Māḥūzah—where he stayed ten days before he and all his commanders and household removed to Sāmarrāʾ.
In Dhū al-Ḥijjah of that same year al-Muntaṣir expelled his uncle ʿAlī ibn al-Muʿtaṣim from Sāmarrāʾ to Baghdad and set guards over him.
The pilgrimage that year was led by Muḥammad ibn Sulaymān al-Zaynabī.
[Among the noteworthy figures who died during it were]
Ibrāhīm ibn Saʿīd al-Jawharī (2);
Sufyān ibn Wakīʿ ibn al-Jarrāḥ (3);
Salamah ibn Shabīb (4); and
Abū ʿUthmān al-Māzinī the grammarian (5)—his full name was Bakr ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿUthmān al-Baṣrī, the foremost grammarian of his age. He had studied under Abū ʿUbaydah, al-Aṣmaʿī, Abū Zayd al-Anṣārī and others, and Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Mubarrad transmitted from him profusely.
Al-Māzinī authored many works in this discipline and bore the hallmarks of the jurists: pious, ascetic, reliable, and trustworthy.
Al-Mubarrad relates (6) that a man from the ahl al-dhimmah once asked al-Māzinī to read with him Sībawayh’s Kitāb, offering him one hundred dinars,