During Ramaḍān rumors spread among the populace concerning the caliph al-Qādir Billāh [that he had died] (1). He therefore presented himself to the people on a Friday after the congregational prayer, wearing the mantle and holding the staff. Shaykh Abū Ḥāmid al-Isfarāʾīnī came forward, kissed the ground before him, and recited: “If the hypocrites, those in whose hearts is sickness, and the alarm-mongers in the city do not desist, We shall surely set you against them; then they will not remain your neighbors there but a little while (60) accursed! Wherever they are found they shall be seized and ruthlessly slain” [Al-Aḥzāb: 60–61]. At this the assembly was moved to tears, they offered supplications, and departed [in joy] (2).
In the same year news arrived that al-Ḥākim had sent emissaries to the house of Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad al-Ṣādiq in Madinah. They removed from it a Qurʾanic codex and various objects, for the house had remained unopened from the time of its owner’s death until that day. With the codex were a wooden bowl banded with iron, a panel of bamboo, a spear, and a couch. A group of ʿAlids carried the whole collection to Egypt, where al-Ḥākim (3) bestowed upon them many beasts of burden and ample stipends. He returned the couch but kept the rest, saying, “I have a stronger claim to it.” They went back censuring him [and praying against him] (4).
That same year al-Ḥākim built a Dār al-ʿIlm (House of Knowledge) and seated jurists there, but three years later he demolished it and executed a great many of those within—jurists, ḥadith scholars, and people of piety and devotion.
He also constructed the mosque that bears his name in Egypt, the Jāmiʿ al-Ḥākim, lavishing exceptional care on its architecture.
In this year, in Dhū al-Ḥijjah, the Umayyad al-Muʾayyad Hishām ibn al-Ḥakam ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān was restored to his kingdom after a long period of deposition and imprisonment.
The khuṭbah in the Two Sanctuaries this year was delivered in the name of the ʿUbaydid ruler of Egypt and Syria, al-Ḥākim.
[Among the notable deaths of this year was] [Abū Aḥmad al-Musawī, the naqīb] (5) al-Ḥusayn ibn Mūsā ibn Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Mūsā ibn Jaʿfar—Abū Aḥmad al-Musawī al-Naqīb, father of al-Raḍī and al-Murtaḍā. He held the office of naqīb of the Ṭālibids in Baghdad on roughly five occasions, being dismissed and reinstated repeatedly; he was finally confirmed in the post at the end of his life. He died at the age of ninety-seven (6); al-Murtaḍā led the funeral prayer over him, and he was buried in the mausoleum of al-Ḥusayn.