[Then the year 375 AH began.]

In that year the Caliph bestowed robes of honour upon Ṣumṣāmah al-Dawlah, girded and collared him, and set him upon a horse whose saddle was of gold, while a led horse of the same kind was paraded before him (1).

During the same year word reached Baghdad that two Qarmaṭian leaders—Isḥāq and Jaʿfar—had entered Kūfah at the head of a large host. Hearts were alarmed, for the pair were famed for severity and boldness, and because ʿAḍud al-Dawlah, valiant though he was, had long sought to placate them, granting them lands in Wāsiṭ, as ʿIzz al-Dawlah had done before him. A force was therefore dispatched from Baghdad; it expelled them from the districts where they had sown corruption, and the dread they had inspired in the populace was lifted—praise be to Allah.

In this year Ṣumṣāmah al-Dawlah resolved to levy a tax on silk garments (2). The people gathered in the Manṣūr Mosque and threatened to suspend the Friday prayer; general unrest spread and civil strife was on the verge of breaking out, whereupon the proposal was withdrawn.

In Dhū al-Ḥijjah news arrived of the death of Ibn Muʾayyad al-Dawlah (3). Ṣumṣāmah sat to receive condolences, and the Caliph al-Ṭāʾiʿ came to him clad in black, preceded by Qurʾān-reciters and pious men. Ṣumṣāmah rose, touched the ground before him with his forehead, and the two exchanged consolatory words in gracious terms. The Caliph then returned to his residence; it was an occasion long remembered.

[Among those who died this year was] the shaykh Abū ʿAlī ibn Abī Hurayrah (4)—his given name was al-Ḥasan ibn al-Ḥusayn—one of the senior Shāfiʿī authorities, renowned for many unusual and distinctive juristic opinions within the school (5). We have set out his biography in full in the “Ṭabaqāt” (6).

Al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā (7), Abū Aḥmad al-Naysābūrī, known as Ḥusaynak (8), likewise passed away.