the deposits that had belonged to Yaʿqūb and ʿAmr, the two sons of al-Layth, and they contained riches so vast that neither limit nor description could encompass them. His position was thus strengthened and his authority grew tremendously. All of this formed part of the destiny Allah had decreed for them, granting them worldly prosperity [after hunger and want].

(1) “And your Lord creates what He wills and chooses” (Qur’an 28:68).

He then wrote to al-Rāḍī (2) and to his vizier Abū ʿAlī ibn Muqla, requesting to lease the revenues of the territories under his sway for one million dinars each year. Al-Rāḍī agreed, sending him robes of honor, a banner, and the full pomp of sovereignty.

In the same year al-Qāhir bi-Allāh put to death two great amirs: Isḥāq ibn Ismāʿīl al-Nawbakhtī—who had been the very man to advise the dynasty (3) to raise al-Qāhir to the caliphate—and Abū al-Sarāyā ibn Ḥamdān, the youngest of his father’s sons. Al-Qāhir bore them a grudge because, before he became caliph, they had outbid him for two singing slave-girls. He invited them to a convivial gathering; they perfumed themselves and attended, whereupon he ordered that they be thrown into a nearby pit. They pleaded for mercy, but he spared them not: they were cast in and earth was heaped over them.

The deposition of al-Qāhir and the gouging of his eyes

The cause was this: the vizier Abū ʿAlī ibn Muqla had fled from al-Qāhir when the latter arrested Muʾnis the Eunuch. Hiding in his own house, he corresponded with the troops, inciting them against al-Qāhir and warning them of his ruthlessness, daring, and swift wrath. He told them that al-Qāhir had prepared prisons for the senior amirs and places of destruction in which to cast them, just as he had done with certain others. This inflamed them and led to the decision to seize al-Qāhir forthwith. They assembled, resolved on immediate action, and rode out with the commander known as Sīmā to the Palace of the Caliphate. Surrounding it, they stormed in through every gate. The vizier al-Khuṣaybī slipped away disguised as a woman, while al-Qāhir—drunk—fled and hid on the roof of a bathhouse. They discovered him, captured him, and confined him in the residence of Ṭarīf al-Sabkarī, releasing Ṭarīf from prison. Baghdad fell into turmoil and was plundered. This took place on Saturday, the third of Jumādā al-Awwal of that year [the month in which Shaghab died; only about a year separated her death from his capture, the blinding of his eyes, and the various torments he suffered—Allah took vengeance on him] (4). They then brought him out and gouged his eyes so that they ran down his cheeks, perpetrating an enormity unheard of in Islam. Afterwards they released him; at times he was imprisoned, at other times allowed to go free. His death did not occur until 339 AH (5), and he became so destitute that one day he stood in the Mosque of al-Manṣūr begging alms, whereupon a man gave him five hundred dirhams,