almost three years.⦗1⦘
On the second day after his arrival he held a public audience for congratulations and for the recitation of panegyrics and odes composed in his honor; this occurred during the last ten days of Ramadan.
In the closing ten days of Shawwal the people assembled to pledge allegiance to Bahāʾ al-Dawla, the Caliph investing him with authority over everything beyond the palace gate, and it was a day long remembered.
The Caliph al-Qādir bi-Allāh was one of the upright caliphs and a leading scholar of his age—open-handed in charity and sound in creed. He composed a creed⦗2⦘ that extolled the merits of the Companions and other matters. It was read aloud every Friday in the ḥadīth circles at the al-Mahdī Mosque, and throughout his reign people gathered to hear it. He would often chant, in a melodious voice, these verses by Sābiq al-Barbarī⦗3⦘:
The decree has already passed concerning all that shall be;
By Allah, O man, your provision is guaranteed.
You weary yourself over what is already secured for you
And neglect that which truly deserves your care,
As though you were safe from calamity.
Do you not see this world and the fate of its people?
Then work for the day you must part from it, O betrayer!
Know—may you be left fatherless!—that what you are hoarding today
You are merely storing up for someone else.
O builder of the world, do you furnish a dwelling
Where, once death arrives, no inhabitant remains?
Death is a matter you know with certainty to be true,
Yet in remembering it you grow heedless.
When destiny overtakes a man it does not consult him⦗4⦘,
Nor does it ask his leave.
On the eighteenth of Dhu al-Ḥijjah of that same year⦗5⦘—the day of Ghadīr Khumm—a violent clash erupted between the Rāfiḍīs and the Sunnis; they fought, and many lives were lost. The people of the Basra Gate⦗6⦘ gained the upper hand and burned the Sultan’s banners. Several men suspected of the deed were executed and crucified on the bridge as a deterrent to others.
In this year as well, Abū al-Futūḥ al-Ḥasan ibn Jaʿfar al-ʿAlawī, the governor of Mecca, rose there and claimed the caliphate, and he named—