Where are the maidens, perfumed like gazelles, trailing behind them new robes of embroidered brocade?
Where are the diversions, and where is the wine—you would have taken it for a ruby decked in silver mail?
Where is the sudden onslaught upon the foe that once restored the soundness of the ʿAbbasid realm when it had decayed? ⦗1⦘
You never ceased to rein in every roaring lion among them, striking the defiant tyrant with unwavering resolve. ⦗2⦘
Then you were gone—no sight of you, no trace—so that it is as though you had never been anyone at all.
Nothing survives but the good a man sends on ahead; no human kingdom endures forever, nor any earthly immortality.
Ibn ʿAsakir has recorded these verses in his Great History. ⦗3⦘
The caliphate of al-Muktafi bi’Llah, Abū Muhammad ⦗4⦘ ʿAlī ibn al-Muʿtadid bi’Llah, Commander of the Faithful.
He was pledged allegiance as caliph after his father’s death in Rabiʿ al-Awwal of this year. Of all the caliphs, only he and ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib bore the name ʿAlī, and none was styled Abū Muhammad save him, al-Hasan ibn ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, al-Hādī, and al-Mustadīʾ bi-amr Allāh.
When al-Muktafi succeeded his father, rebellions multiplied and spread throughout the provinces.
In the month of Rajab a very violent earthquake struck.
In Ramadan, at the time of sahar, a multitude of stars fell from the sky, and the spectacle continued until sunrise.
At the moment the caliphate devolved upon him he was in al-Raqqa. The vizier and the leading amirs wrote to him, so he set out and entered Baghdad on a day remembered by all—Monday, the eighth of Jumada al-Ūlā of this same year.
On that day he ordered the execution of ʿAmr ibn al-Layth al-Ṣaffār, who had been confined in his father’s prison. He likewise ordered the demolition of the underground cells his father had built for confinement and commanded that a congregational mosque be erected in their place.
He bestowed six robes of honor upon the vizier al-Qāsim ibn ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Sulaymān ibn Wahb and girded him with a sword.
At that time al-Muktafi was twenty-five years old, plus a few months.