Among the notable figures who died that year were:

• al-Ḥusayn ibn Aḥmad ibn Jaʿfar ibn ʿAbd Allah (1), known as Ibn al-Baghdādī. He had transmitted ḥadith and was an ascetic worshipper given to strenuous spiritual discipline; he would not sleep unless overpowered by drowsiness, never entered a public bath, and washed his clothes with nothing but water. May Allah have mercy on him.

• al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿUthmān ibn ʿAlī (2), Abū ʿAbd Allah, the blind Qur’an-reciter al-Mujāhidī. He studied the Qur’an with Ibn Mujāhid while still a boy and was the last of that master’s students to survive. He died in Jumādā al-Ūlā of this year, having passed one hundred years of age, and was buried in the Razāzīn cemetery (3).

• ʿAlī ibn Saʿīd al-Iṣṭakhrī (4), one of the Muʿtazilite shaykhs. For the caliph al-Qādir bi-Allah he composed The Refutation of the Bāṭinīs, whereupon the caliph granted him a handsome stipend. He lived in Darb Rabāḥ and died in Shawwāl, past the age of eighty.

Then the year 405 AH began.

In that year the ruler of Egypt, al-Ḥākim, forbade women to leave their homes, to look out from rooftops or windows, to visit bathhouses, or even to have cobblers make shoes for them. He put to death many women who disobeyed him, demolished certain bathhouses over their occupants, and dispatched numerous old women to roam the houses, investigating the condition of the women—who among them loved or was loved—recording their names and the names of those who approached them. [Whomever he found in such a state he extinguished and destroyed.] He himself increased his patrols of the city, night and day [in pursuit of that purpose], and drowned many of those—men, women, [and boys]—who were discovered in immoral behavior. Restrictions tightened around women and libertines alike, and hardly anyone could reach another except rarely.

A certain woman, [who was passionately in love with a man and was close to perishing when the authorities separated her from him], cried out to the Chief Judge of Egypt, Mālik ibn Saʿīd al-Fāriqī. She adjured him by al-Ḥākim’s right when he halted for her; he listened to her words [and took pity on her] and stood still. She wept bitterly, [using guile, stratagem, and deceit], and said [to him, “O judge,] I have a brother—no one else—and he is at the point of death. I implore you [by al-Ḥākim’s right upon you] to take me to him so that I may look upon him before he dies, [and your reward is with Allah].” The judge’s heart softened toward her.