Then came the year 320 AH (1).

That year witnessed the slaying of the Caliph al-Muqtadir billah. The immediate cause was that Mu’nis the Eunuch left Baghdad in Muḥarram of that year, angry with the Caliph over his slaves and courtiers, and set out for Mosul. While still on the road he sent his protégé Bushrā back to al-Muqtadir to ascertain [his situation] (2) and dispatched with him a letter addressed to the Commander of the Faithful, [reproaching him on certain points] (3).

When Bushrā arrived, the vizier al-Ḥusayn ibn al-Qāsim—one of Mu’nis’s greatest enemies—ordered him to hand the letter over to him. Bushrā refused to deliver it to anyone but the Caliph. The Caliph therefore summoned him and instructed him to convey it to the vizier, but he refused, saying, “My master did not command me to do that.” The vizier cursed him and cursed his master [Mu’nis] (4), ordered that he be beaten and that three hundred thousand dinars be exacted from him, took a written acknowledgment for that amount, and had his house plundered. He then commanded the seizure of Mu’nis’s fiefs, his property, and the property of those with him; a vast sum was thereby amassed.

The vizier’s standing with al-Muqtadir rose greatly. The Caliph granted him the title ʿAmīd al-Dawlah, had his name struck on dirhams and dinars, and he took firm control of affairs—appointing and dismissing, giving and withholding—rejoicing in his own power for a short while. He sent for Hārūn ibn Gharīb, the Caliph’s maternal uncle (5), and for Muḥammad ibn Yāqūt, summoning them to court in Mu’nis’s stead.

Meanwhile, Mu’nis—styled al-Muẓaffar—remained resolute in his march toward Mosul. He told the Bedouin chieftains, “The Caliph has appointed me over Mosul and the lands of Rabīʿah.” A great multitude of them gathered around him (6); he lavished enormous sums upon them and already had many favors outstanding with them. The vizier wrote to the Banū Ḥamdān—governors of Mosul and the surrounding districts—ordering them to fight Mu’nis the Eunuch. They advanced against him with thirty thousand men, while Mu’nis confronted them with only eight of his own mamlūks and attendants. He routed them, and only one man was killed—named Dāwūd, one of their bravest—whom Mu’nis himself had reared when he was a boy.