its inhabitants, after which he marched on the remaining towns of Yemen, spreading corruption far and wide and killing great numbers of people. The people of Ṣanʿāʾ then fought him, defeated him, and routed him; he withdrew to one of their towns. The caliph dispatched al-Muzaffar ibn Ḥāj as his deputy there and clothed him with robes of honour. Al-Muzaffar set out for the province and remained there ⦗1⦘ until he died.
On the day of ʿEid al-Aḍḥā a band of roughly eight hundred Qarmatians entered Kufa while the populace were occupied with their festival. They cried out, “O vengeance for al-Ḥusayn!”, meaning the one who had been crucified in Baghdad—he was the son of Zakrawayh. Their war cry that day was, “O Aḥmad! O Muḥammad!”, by which they meant ⦗2⦘ the two men slain with him in Baghdad ⦗3⦘. The townspeople hurried inside Kufa and the Qarmatians followed after them; the common folk pelted them with stones and other missiles, killing about twenty of them, and the rest retreated in humiliation. Praise and thanks belong to Allah.
In this same year a man in Egypt named al-Khalanjī rebelled and cast off his allegiance; a group of soldiers gathered round him. The caliph ordered Aḥmad ibn Kayghalagh, his deputy over Damascus and its districts, to march against him. They fought outside Egypt and al-Khalanjī inflicted a severe defeat on him. The caliph then sent another army, which routed al-Khalanjī. He fled, went into hiding in Egypt, was apprehended, handed over to the caliph, and his affair was extinguished. Praise be to Allah.
While the army was busy with Egyptian affairs, Zakrawayh ibn Mehrwayh—after the killing of his father al-Ḥusayn in Baghdad—sent out an army under a former school-teacher named ʿAbd Allah ibn Saʿīd. He headed for Busra, Adhriʿāt, and al-Bathaniyya. Their inhabitants ⦗4⦘ fought him, whereupon he granted them safe-conduct; but once he had them in his power he killed the fighting men and [took the women and children captive] ⦗5⦘.
He then attempted to enter Damascus. Ṣāliḥ ibn al-Faḍl, the lieutenant of Aḥmad ibn Kayghalagh, confronted him, but the Qarmaṭī defeated him, killing Ṣāliḥ among those slain. He besieged Damascus, yet could not take it, so he turned toward Tiberias, where they killed most of its inhabitants, as we have mentioned, and plundered a vast amount.
They next proceeded to Hīt and did the same. The caliph dispatched an army against them; their leader was captured while the remainder escaped. They afterwards made for Kufa on the day of ʿEid al-Aḍḥā, as already related, but gained nothing. Praise and gratitude are due to Allah.
All this occurred at the instigation of Zakrawayh ibn Mehrwayh, who was hiding in his homeland among a group of Qarmatians. Whenever the search for him grew intense, he would descend into a well he had prepared, at whose mouth stood an oven; a woman would stoke it and bake bread so that no one suspected anything. The caliph sent a large force against him, and Zakrawayh himself, together with those loyal to him, fought them, routed the caliph’s troops, and seized booty from