—and Diyār Bakr, Muḍar, and Rabīʿa were held by the Banū Ḥamdān. Egypt and Syria lay in the hands of Muḥammad ibn Ṭughj. Ifrīqiya and the Maghrib were ruled by al-Qāʾim bi-Amr Allāh ibn al-Mahdī, who falsely claimed descent from the Fāṭimids and had assumed the title “Commander of the Faithful.” Al-Andalus was governed by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad, surnamed al-Nāṣir, of the Umayyad house. Khurāsān and the lands beyond the Oxus belonged to al-Saʿīd Naṣr ibn Aḥmad of the Sāmānids. Ṭabaristān and Jurjān were controlled by the Daylamites, while Bahrain, al-Yamāma, and Hajar were under Abū Ṭāhir Sulaymān ibn Abī Saʿīd al-Jannābī the Qarmaṭian—may Allah curse him.

That same year Baghdad was struck by a severe famine and sweeping mortality: bread vanished from the city for five consecutive days, and countless inhabitants died, most of them the poor. The dead were left in the streets with no one to see to them; two corpses were often borne on a single bier, sometimes with a child laid between them. A single grave would be dug and then widened so that several bodies could be placed inside. In Isfahan some two hundred thousand people are said to have perished.

During that year a great fire erupted in ʿUmān, in which one thousand of the blacks and a multitude of whites were burned; among the goods consumed were four hundred loads of camphor.

The caliph dismissed Aḥmad ibn Kayghalagh from the deputy-governorship of Syria and entrusted that province as well to Ibn Ṭughj, the deputy of Egypt.

In the same year ʿAḍud al-Dawla Abū Shujāʿ Fannā Khusraw ibn Rukn al-Dawla ibn Būyah was born in Isfahan.

Among the notable figures who died in this year were:

(1) Ibn Mujāhid the Qurʾān-reciter—Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn Mūsā ibn al-ʿAbbās ibn Mujāhid—one of the leading imams in this discipline. He transmitted hadith from a multitude of teachers, and was himself narrated from by al-Dāraquṭnī and others. Trustworthy and reliable, he lived on the eastern side of Baghdad. Thaʿlab used to say, “In our time no one is more learned in the Book of Allah than he.” He died on a Wednesday and was carried out for burial on Thursday, ten days before the end of Shaʿbān in this year. Someone saw him in a dream, reciting, and asked, “Did you not die?” He replied, “Indeed; but after every completion of the Qurʾān I would pray to Allah to let me be among those who recite in their graves—and so it is.” May Allah have mercy on him.

(2) Jaḥẓa the Barmakid poet—Aḥmad ibn Jaʿfar ibn Mūsā ibn Yaḥyā ibn Khālid ibn Barmak, a member of the Barmakid family,