Then came the year 284 AH.

In Muḥarram of that year the severed head of Rāfiʿ ibn Harthamah was brought to Baghdad. The caliph ordered that it be mounted on display on the eastern side of the city until midday, and then on the western side until nightfall.

In Rabīʿ al-Awwal Muhammad ibn Yūsuf ibn Yaʿqūb received the robe of investiture as qāḍī for the City of Abū Jaʿfar(1) al-Manṣūr, succeeding Ibn Abī al-Shawārib five months and some days after the latter’s death, the office having remained vacant(2).

In Rabīʿ al-Ākhir a dense darkness together with a redness appeared over Egypt. A man would look at his companion’s face and see it extremely red—so too the walls. They remained in that state from mid-afternoon until nightfall; then they went out to the open ground, calling upon Allah and imploring Him until He removed it from them.

In this same year al-Muʿtaḍid resolved that Muʿāwiyah ibn Abī Sufyān should be cursed from the pulpits. His vizier ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Sulaymān ibn Wahb warned him against that, for the hearts of the common folk would reject it—they invoke mercy for him and pray that Allah be pleased with him(3) in their markets and gatherings. Al-Muʿtaḍid, however, paid no heed, ordered the matter, and carried it through. Proclamations were drafted(4) containing the curse upon Muʿāwiyah, censuring him, his son Yazīd, and a number of the Umayyads, and citing fabricated ḥadīths denigrating Muʿāwiyah. They were read aloud on both banks of Baghdad, and the populace were forbidden to ask mercy or divine pleasure for him.

The vizier persisted until he said, among other things, “Commander of the Faithful! This deed will only make the masses favor the Ṭālibids and respond to their summons.” Al-Muʿtaḍid was taken aback and abandoned what he had intended, fearing for his rule. Allah had decreed that this vizier was a Nāṣibī, harboring hostility toward ʿAlī; so this was one of al-Muʿtaḍid’s lapses—may Allah pardon him.

A proclamation was issued in the provinces: the populace were not to gather around a storyteller, a soothsayer, an astrologer, a polemicist, or anyone of that sort, and they were not to busy themselves with the matter of Nowrūz. Later permission regarding Nowrūz was granted; people would pour water on passers-by, and they expanded and exaggerated the practice until they began to drench the soldiers, the police, and others. This too was one of his lapses.

Ibn al-Jawzī(5) said: