and they entered the city, killing everyone they met. They slaughtered a great multitude of Muslims, plundered wealth, children, and women, and freed the Byzantine prisoners who had been in Muslim hands—there were one thousand four hundred of them. These men seized swords and fought beside their compatriots, proving even more savage toward the Muslims than their own people (1). They captured roughly fifteen thousand children, boys and girls alike, together with countless women and two thousand men. They wrecked the mosques and set them ablaze, poured water into jars of olive oil until the oil overflowed and was lost, and burned everything they could not carry away. They remained in the city for nine days committing these enormous outrages.

Al-Dumistak then resolved to withdraw, fearing the return of Sayf al-Dawlah. His nephew said to him, “Will you leave and abandon the citadel behind you?” He replied, “We have attained more than we ever hoped for, and inside it are fighters and seasoned warriors.” The nephew insisted, “We must have it.” “Then go to it,” he answered. So the nephew made straight for the fortress (2) to besiege it, but the defenders hurled a stone at him and killed him on the spot, before the whole army. Al-Dumistak—may Allah curse him—was enraged. He ordered the Muslim captives in his custody, about two thousand souls, to be brought before him, and their necks were struck in his presence—may Allah disfigure him—after which he turned back in retreat.

Earlier that same year, in Muḥarram, they had entered ʿAyn Zarbah (3). Its inhabitants asked for safe-conduct, which the king granted, commanding them all to assemble in the mosque, while anyone who remained in his house was to be killed. Accordingly, the entire population gathered in the mosque, and any who lagged behind were slain. He then proclaimed, “Let none of you stay here today; go wherever you wish, but whoever delays shall be killed.” When they pressed to leave the mosque, many were trampled to death. They wandered about aimlessly, not knowing where to go, and great numbers of them died in the roads. He demolished the congregational mosque, smashed the minbar, cut down forty thousand palm trees around the town, tore down its wall and the designated houses, and remained there for some time. In the surrounding region he captured fifty-four fortresses—some by the sword, others by a grant of safety—and killed multitudes of people. The Byzantines took prisoner Abū Firās ibn Saʿīd ibn Ḥamdān, Sayf al-Dawlah’s governor of Manbij, an accomplished poet with an elegant dīwān. Their stay in ʿAyn Zarbah lasted twenty-one days. They then marched to Qaysariyya, where four thousand men from Tarsus under its governor Ibn al-Zayyāt confronted them; he killed most of them. The Christian fast then came upon him, so he busied himself with it until it was over. Thereafter he fell upon Aleppo by surprise, and what befell him there we have already mentioned.

In this same year the common people among the Rāfiḍa (4) wrote on the doors of the mosques in Baghdad: “Curse Muʿāwiyah ibn Abī Sufyān (may Allah be pleased with him); curse the one who usurped Fadak from Fāṭimah”—meaning Abū Bakr (may Allah be pleased with him); “curse the one who excluded al-ʿAbbās from the council”—meaning ʿUmar (may Allah be pleased with him); “curse the one who banished Abū Dharr”—meaning ʿUthmān (may Allah be pleased with him); “and curse the one who prevented the burial of al-Ḥasan.”