al-Muktafi built the Tāj within it, and in the days of al-Muqtadir he added (1) extraordinarily large extensions. What remained of it lasted until the time of the Tatars, who destroyed the complex and carried off the freeborn women who had been living there in safety, as will be explained in its proper place—God willing—under the events of the year 656 AH.

Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī (2) said: What seems more likely is that Būrān handed the Caliphal Residence over to al-Muʿtamad, for she did not live (3) into the time of al-Muʿtaḍid.

In this year:

Ardabil (4) was rocked by earthquakes six times; its houses collapsed until fewer than a hundred dwellings were left standing, and one hundred fifty thousand people perished beneath the rubble. To Allah we belong and to Him we return.

In the same year:

The water supplies of Rayy and Ṭabaristān dried up to the point that water was sold at one dirham for every three ratls, and prices there rose (5) sharply.

Also this year:

Ismāʿīl ibn Aḥmad al-Sāmānī campaigned against the lands of the Turks; he seized the city of their king, captured the king’s wife—the Khātūn—his father, and roughly ten thousand other prisoners, and took an immense amount of livestock, goods, and money, each cavalryman receiving one thousand dirhams (6).

The pilgrimage that year was led by Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Hārūn ibn Isḥāq al-ʿAbbāsī (7).

Among the notable deaths this year were:

• Aḥmad ibn Sayyār ibn Ayyūb, the Shāfiʿī jurist renowned for his devotion and asceticism (8);

• and Aḥmad ibn Abī ʿImrān (9) — Mūsā ibn ʿĪsā, Abū Jaʿfar al-Baghdādī — one of the foremost Ḥanafī scholars; he studied under