—a course that was anything but upright, being tainted by rejectionism and other deviations(1).

He said: On Thursday, the tenth of Dhu al-Qaʿda, the Caliph al-Ṭāʿiʿ li-llāh married Shāh Nāz, the daughter of ʿIzz al-Dawla, with a dowry of one hundred thousand dinars(2).

At the close of that same month, the qāḍī Abu ʼl-Ḥasan Muḥammad ibn Ṣāliḥ ibn Umm Shaybān was dismissed, and the office was entrusted to Abū Muḥammad ibn Maʿrūf(3).

That year the pilgrimage rites were conducted(4) by the agents of al-Muʿizz the Fatimid, and in the Two Holy Sanctuaries the khuṭbah was delivered in his name rather than that of the Caliph al-Ṭāʿiʿ(5). Allah, Exalted is He, knows best(6).

Account of the seizure of Damascus from the Fatimids

Ibn al-Athīr relates in his al-Kāmil that Aftakin, the mamlūk of Muʿizz al-Dawla who had previously broken with his master, as mentioned above(7), was joined by forces of Daylamites, Turks, and Bedouins. In this year he descended upon Damascus to wrest it from the Fatimids. The city was then under the command of Riyyān the chamberlain, appointed by al-Muʿizz the Fatimid. When Aftakin encamped outside its walls, the city’s notables and elders came out to him and described(8) the oppression and tyranny they were enduring, together with the doctrinal deviations imposed upon them by Fatimid rule. They begged him to press on and liberate the city, so he resolved to do just that. He persisted until he had taken Damascus, expelled Riyyān the chamberlain, and assumed full control. He crushed the evildoers there(9), exalted the virtuous, established justice, suppressed the devotees of play and frivolity, and restrained the Bedouins who had been ravaging the land, occupying most of the Marj and the Ghūṭa and plundering their inhabitants.

Once affairs had been set in order under his authority and the situation of the people of Syria improved, al-Muʿizz the Fatimid wrote to him from Egypt, thanking him for his efforts and inviting him to come so that he might robe him in honor and appoint him as his deputy. Aftakin declined, fearing treachery. He abolished the khuṭbah for al-Muʿizz in Syria and had it delivered instead for al-Ṭāʿiʿ the Abbasid. He then marched on Sidon, where a host of Maghrebis under Ibn al-Shaykh had gathered, among them Zālim ibn Marhūb al-ʿUqaylī—the man who had previously served as al-Muʿizz’s deputy in Damascus—