Jawhar the Commander (1) dispatched Jaʿfar ibn Falaḥ at the head of a large army to Syria. A fierce battle took place. In Damascus there was the nobleman al-Sharīf Abū al-Qāsim ibn Abī Yaʿlā al-Hāshimī, a man to whom the people deferred; he defended (2) the Abbasid cause for a long time. Matters eventually came to the point that the khuṭbah in Damascus was delivered for al-Muʿizz, and al-Sharīf Abū al-Qāsim was taken to Egypt. Al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ṭughj and a number of emirs were also captured and brought to Egypt (3). Jawhar then sent them all on to al-Muʿizz in Ifrīqiyah. The Fatimids’ grip on Damascus became firmly established in the year 360 AH, as will be related (4). For more than one hundred years the phrase hayya ʿalā khayri l-ʿamal was proclaimed in the adhān, and curses against the two Shaykhs—may Allah be pleased with them—were written on the doors of the great mosques and the smaller mosques of Damascus—Surely to Allah we belong and to Him we return (5). This remained the case until the Turkish dynasty abolished it, as will be set out in its proper place, if Allah Most High so wills.

That same year the Byzantines entered Ḥimṣ; finding that most of the inhabitants had already evacuated, they burned the city and carried off about one thousand of those who remained there and in the surrounding villages—Surely to Allah we belong and to Him we return (5).

In Dhu al-Ḥijjah, ʿIzz al-Dawlah moved the body of his father, Muʿizz al-Dawlah ibn Būyah, from his residence to his tomb in the Quraysh cemetery.

Among the prominent figures who died that year—listed by Ibn al-Jawzī in his al-Muntaẓam (6)—was Kāfūr al-Ikhshīdī, already mentioned above. Ibn al-Jawzī said: “I have observed that al-Mutanabbī’s praise of Kāfūr can be taken both as blame and as commendation; it is as though he were merely playing with him. Allah knows best.”

Then the year 359 AH began. On the tenth of Muḥarram the Rāfiḍites carried out their heinous innovation: the markets were closed, livelihoods were suspended, and unveiled women roamed the streets wailing over al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī, beating their faces, while coarse hair-shirts were hung in the bazaars and straw was scattered about.

That same year the accursed Byzantines entered Antioch, expelled its elderly men and women, and carried off around twenty thousand women and children as captives—all by the design of Nikephoros, the Armenian ruler—may Allah curse him. Ibn al-Jawzī said: “He had become overbearing, tyrannical, and rebellious, and, in addition to that, he married the wife of the king who had preceded him.”