It is related that the very first thing he did on entering the seat of his rule was to fall prostrate in gratitude to Allah, Mighty and Majestic, ⦗1⦘. The first legal dispute laid before him concerned a woman of Kāfūr al-Ikhshīdī’s household who complained that she had entrusted a Jewish gold-smith with a robe of pearls woven with gold, whereupon he denied ever having received it. The man was summoned and questioned, yet he persisted in his denial. al-Muʿizz therefore ordered that his house be dug up and its contents brought out; there they found the robe, placed inside a jar and buried. He returned it intact to the woman ⦗2⦘. She then offered it to him as a gift and set it before him, but he refused to accept it and gave it back to her, an action the onlookers praised.

An authentic hadith states: “Allah indeed supports this religion even through a sinful man.” ⦗3⦘

Among the notable deaths this year was that of the poet al-Sarī al-Raffāʾ ibn Aḥmad ibn al-Sarī, Abū al-Ḥasan al-Kindī al-Mawṣilī, an accomplished panegyrist of Sayf al-Dawlah ibn Ḥamdān and others. He had come to Baghdad, and there he died during this year. Ibn Khallikān reports that some place his death in the year four, others in five, and yet others in forty-four.

He further relates that enmity existed between al-Sarī and the brothers Muḥammad and Saʿīd, sons of Hāshim al-Khālidī of Mosul; al-Sarī accused them of plagiarising his verse ⦗5⦘. He was devoted to copying the dīwān of Kushājim and would sometimes pad it with poetry of the Khālidī brothers, falsely ascribing it to Kushājim in order to enlarge the volume. After praising Sayf al-Dawlah he was granted a stipend, but the two brothers continued to malign him until the allowance was cut off. He then travelled to Baghdad and composed panegyrics for the vizier al-Muhallabī; they followed him there as well and slandered him before the vizier until the latter deserted him. Debt overcame him and he died this same year, leaving a substantial and excellent dīwān of poetry.

Of his verses are the following:
He greets munificence with a gentle, open face,
yet when the two armies clash his mien turns hard;
His hearth is spacious while he stays in one place,
but let him ride with his host and the open plain grows narrow. ⦗6⦘

And he said:
You clothed me in favors so bright that the night
appeared as dawn, when dawn itself had seemed dark;
Now friends envy me—whereas before your gifts
even an enemy would meet me with pity. ⦗7⦘