to whom all the revenues were brought and the land-tax was delivered, and who alone appointed and dismissed officials, so he wrote to Ahmad ibn Tulun complaining of the situation. Ibn Tulun replied, telling him to come to him in Egypt and promising him support and victory. Taking advantage of his brother al-Muwaffaq’s absence, al-Muʿtamid set out in Jumada I, accompanied by a group of commanders. Ahmad ibn Tulun had already stationed a detachment at al-Raqqa to receive him, but when the caliph passed through the territory of Ishaq ibn Kundaj, the deputy of Mosul and the whole Jazira, Ibn Kundaj detained him, prevented him from proceeding, put the leading emirs who were with him in chains, and reproached the caliph in the harshest terms for this shameful scheme. He then compelled him and those with him to return to Samarra in utter humiliation and disgrace.
When news of this reached al-Muwaffaq, he thanked Ishaq for his effort and invested him with all the provinces under Ahmad ibn Tulun’s authority as far as Ifriqiyya. He also wrote to his brother ordering him to curse Ibn Tulun in the dar al-ʿamma (public audience hall); al-Muʿtamid had no choice but to comply, though against his will. Ibn Tulun, for his part, had already struck al-Muwaffaq’s name from the Friday sermon and removed it from the decorative inscriptions on state textiles.
In Dhu al-Qaʿda a clash broke out in Mecca between the partisans of al-Muwaffaq and those of Ibn Tulun; two hundred of Ibn Tulun’s followers were killed, the rest fled, and al-Muwaffaq’s men seized a great deal from them ⦗1⦘.
That same year Bedouin raiders waylaid the pilgrims on the road, taking five thousand camels together with their loads.
Among those who died this year were:
Ibrahim ibn Munqidh al-Kinani ⦗2⦘.
Ahmad ibn Khallad ⦗3⦘, a former client of al-Muʿtasim, one of the propagandists of the Muʿtazila, who had studied kalam under Jaʿfar ibn Maʿshar the Muʿtazilite.
Sulayman ibn Hafs the Muʿtazilite ⦗4⦘, associate of Bishr al-Marisi and Abu al-Hudhayl al-ʿAllaf.
ʿIsa ibn al-Shaykh ibn al-Salil al-Shaybani ⦗5⦘, governor of Armenia and Diyar Bakr.
Abu Furwa Yazid ibn Muhammad al-Ruhawi, classed among the weak narrators ⦗6⦘.