Then ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿĪsā proved incapable and was removed after fifty days. The vizierate was entrusted to Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn al-Qāsim al-Karkhī. He imposed a fine of one hundred thousand dinars on ʿAlī ibn ʿĪsā and another of seventy thousand dinars on his brother ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿĪsā. After three and a half months he too was dismissed, and Sulaymān ibn al-Ḥasan was appointed in his stead; he was later replaced by Abū al-Fatḥ al-Faḍl ibn Jaʿfar ibn al-Furāt, though that occurred in the following year. The house of (1) was burned, just as the house of Ibn Muqlah had been burned on that very same calendar day—exactly one year later. All of this was the result of the disorder wrought by the Turks and the military slaves.

When Ibn Muqlah’s house was set ablaze in this year, someone wrote upon its walls:

You trusted the days because they once were fair,
And never feared the evil fate might bring;
The nights dealt kindly with you—so you were fooled—
Yet in the clearest night the gloom takes wing.

The authority of the caliphate collapsed completely. Al-Rāḍī sent word to Muḥammad ibn Rāʾiq—who was in Wāsiṭ—summoning him so that he might appoint him “commander of commanders” in Baghdad and place the land tax and auxiliary revenues ⦗2⦘ of every province and bureau under his control, commanding that the khuṭba mention his name on every pulpit and dispatching robes of honor to him. Ibn Rāʾiq came to Baghdad invested with all of that. With him was the amīr Bujkam the Turk, formerly the slave of Mardāwīj—the very man who had helped kill Mardāwīj and thus relieved the Muslims of him. Ibn Rāʾiq seized full control of Iraq, transferred the treasury funds to his own residence, and left the vizier without the least authority. The caliphate’s condition became extremely weak; the governors of the frontier provinces acted independently, and the caliph retained jurisdiction over nothing beyond Baghdad and its environs. Even there he wielded no power vis-à-vis Ibn Rāʾiq, [nor did he enjoy any exclusive prerogative] ⦗3⦘; not a single command of his was obeyed. Ibn Rāʾiq merely supplied him with whatever money, allowances, and the like he required.

Such was the state of affairs under all subsequent commanders of commanders, [for they never raised their heads in deference to the caliph] ⦗4⦘. As for the other regions: Basra remained with this same Ibn Rāʾiq; Khūzistān was in the hands of Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Barīdī, who this very year wrested from Yāqūt the kingdom of Tustar and other territories, seizing his stores and wealth. Fars was ruled by ʿImād al-Dawla Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Būyah; Rayy, Isfahan, and al-Jibal were held by his brother Rukn al-Dawla ibn Būyah, though he was contested there by Washmkīr, the brother of Mardāwīj. Kirmān was governed by Abū ʿAlī Muḥammad ibn Ilyās ibn al-Yasaʿ. The lands of Mosul and the Jazīra