His territories enjoyed such perfect security and prosperity that if a traveller’s camel—or any mount—grew too weary to carry its load, the owner would simply leave the animal with its baggage in the open country, confident that it would be returned to him, sooner or later, without a single thing missing. When some of his commanders began to sow corruption in the land, he invited them to a splendid banquet but placed no bread on the table. They sat waiting for it, and when the delay became excessive they enquired about the matter. He replied, “If you lay waste to the fields and wrong the farmers, from where do you expect bread to come?” Then he declared, “From this day on, if I hear of anyone corrupting the land, I shall spill his blood.”

On one of his journeys he passed a man who had bound up a bundle of firewood and was weeping. “What makes you weep?” he asked. The man answered, “I had two loaves with which I meant to sustain myself, but one of the soldiers took them from me.” “Would you recognise him if you saw him again?” Badr asked. “Yes,” said the man. Badr kept him at a narrow point in the road until the troops rode by; when the wood-gatherer pointed out the culprit, Badr ordered the soldier to dismount and carry the bundle all the way to the city for the man. The soldier offered a large sum of money to ransom himself, but Badr refused, and in so doing disciplined the entire army.

Every Friday he distributed 10,000 (1) dirhams to the poor, widows, and orphans; every month he allotted 20,000 dirhams for the shrouding of the dead. Each year he set aside 1,000 dinars for twenty people to perform the pilgrimage on behalf of his parents and on behalf of ʿAḍud al-Dawla, who had helped secure his rule. Annually he earmarked 3,000 dinars for the blacksmiths and cobblers who assisted stranded travellers between Hamadhān and Baghdad, repairing their footwear and the shoes of their mounts. Every year he sent 100,000 dinars to the Two Sanctuaries as charity for the residents there, for the maintenance of public water-cisterns, the repair of the water-supply along the Ḥijāz route, the liberation of those held for debt, and the digging and refurbishment of wells. Whenever, on his travels, he passed by running water, he would build a village beside it, and during his lifetime he erected more than two thousand mosques and caravanserais.

All this was in addition to the stipends, maintenance funds, alms, and gifts disbursed from his official treasury to every class of person: jurists, judges, muezzins, the Prophet’s descendants, legal witnesses, the poor and destitute, orphans, the weak, and widows. Despite all this activity he was constant in prayer and remembrance, and he kept more than twenty thousand mounts tethered for the cause of Allah. He died this year, slightly over eighty years of age, after ruling for thirty-two years. He was buried at the Shrine of ʿAlī and left fourteen thousand full money-bags, plus a little over forty more—each bag containing ten thousand coins. May Allah have mercy on him.

• al-Ḥasan ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn Ḥamakān (2), Abū ʿAlī al-Hamadhānī, was a Shāfiʿī jurist of Baghdad. At first he applied himself to hadith, amassing a prodigious collection—it was said that in Basra alone he wrote from nearly five hundred shaykhs. He later turned to jurisprudence, studying under Abū Ḥāmid al-Marwazī. Al-Azharī transmitted from him and remarked, “He was weak; he counted for nothing in hadith.”