the warriors who made frequent forays into Byzantine territory. During one of those campaigns, while the Muslims were besieging a Byzantine town, he caught sight of a woman atop the fortress and became infatuated with her.
He sent her a message:
“How may I reach you?”
She replied, “By becoming a Christian and climbing up to me.”
So—may Allah disgrace him—he complied. Before the Muslims knew it, he was with her inside the fort. They were stricken with deep sorrow and found the matter exceedingly hard to bear.
Some time later they passed by the fortress and saw him still with that woman. They called out:
“Brother, what has become of your Quran?
What has become of your righteous deeds (1)?
What has become of your fasting and your prayer?”
He answered, “Know that I have forgotten the entire Quran except the verse:
‘Perhaps those who disbelieve will wish they had been Muslims.
Leave them to eat and enjoy themselves and be diverted by false hope, for soon they will know.’ (Quran 15:2-3)”
[Year 279 AH]
In the closing days of Muḥarram that year, Jaʿfar al-Mufawwaḍ was stripped of the succession, and Abū’l-ʿAbbās, son of al-Muwaffaq, became sole heir to the caliph al-Muʿtamid. He was granted the honorific al-Muʿtaḍid, and authority over the realm was placed in his hands just as it had been in his father’s. Al-Muʿtamid proclaimed this before a vast assembly, and the day became one of public celebration.
On that occasion Yaḥyā ibn ʿAlī offered congratulations to al-Muʿtaḍid (2):
Blessed be the pact in which you now take the lead—
A gift from a Lord who knows your merit indeed.
If today you are named the guardian of our throne,
Tomorrow you shall stand as the great Imām alone.
May every friend of yours attain his highest quest,
And every foe of yours be shamed and dispossessed.
The pillar of religion had begun to sway and bend;
By this new oath it has been straightened once again.
The visage of the kingdom now beams with radiant light,
Illuminating what was once enveloped in night.
So tighten the knot of the charge placed in your hand;
Among all people you alone hold full command.
That same year a proclamation was made in Baghdad forbidding roadside storytellers, astrologers, and the like to sit in mosques or along the thoroughfares, and banning the sale of books on kalām, philosophy, and dialectics among the populace. This was carried out at the initiative of Abū’l-ʿAbbās al-Muʿtaḍid, the Sultan of Islam.
In the same year fighting broke out between Hārūn al-Shārī and the Banū Shaybān in the region of Mosul. Ibn al-Athīr has discussed the matter at length in his al-Kāmil (3).