In this month news arrived that the Yemeni Corner of the Sacred Mosque had been chipped away, that a wall facing the Prophet’s grave—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—had collapsed, and that the great dome had fallen onto the Rock in Bayt al-Maqdis (Jerusalem). Such a concurrence of events was among the strangest and most astonishing ever reported.

In the same year the Shiʿah living in the territories of Ifriqiyah were put to the sword and their wealth plundered; none were spared except those whose identity was unknown.

Within this year the Alid dynasty made its first appearance in al-Andalus. Its ruler was ʿAli ibn Hammud ibn Abi al-Aysh (1) al-ʿAlawi. He entered Cordoba in Muharram of this year, killed Sulayman ibn al-Hakam the Umayyad—slaying Sulayman’s father as well, a righteous elder—and received the people’s pledge of allegiance, adopting the title al-Mutawakkil ʿala Allah. On the eighteenth of Dhu al-Qaʿdah, however, he was assassinated in a bathhouse at the age of forty-eight. Authority then passed to his brother al-Qasim ibn Hammud, who assumed the honorific al-Maʾmun and ruled for six years; he was followed by their nephew Yahya, then by Yahya’s brother Idris. After them the Umayyads returned to power, then various outsiders, until rule finally settled with the Commander of the Muslims, ʿAli ibn Yusuf ibn Tashfin.

Also in this year Mahmud ibn Subuktakin, Yamīn al-Dawlah, annexed the land of Khwarazm after the death of its king, Khwarazm Shah [Maʾmun ibn Maʾmun].

During the same year Sultan al-Dawlah ibn Shujaʿ appointed Abu al-Hasan ʿAli ibn al-Fadl al-Ramhurmuzi as vizier in place of Fakhr al-Mulk, bestowing upon him the robes of office.

Because of unrest in the provinces, the insecurity of the roads, and the depredations of the Bedouin tribes, no one from the Iraqi lands performed the pilgrimage this year.

[Among the notable figures who died this year]
Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Yusuf ibn Dust (2), Abu ʿAbd Allah al-Bazzar: he was among the leading hadith memorizers (huffaz) and a jurist of the Maliki school. He would engage in scholarly discussion in the presence of al-Darqutni, speaking on hadith criticism; it is said that al-Darqutni therefore spoke against him, as did others, though nothing seriously damaging was established.

Al-Azhari said, “I saw all of his books in pristine condition. He used to relate that his original, time-worn manuscripts had been lost by drowning. He dictated hadith from memory while al-Mukhallis and Ibn Shahin were both alive and present.”

He passed away in Ramadan at the age of eighty-four; may Allah Most High have mercy on him.

The vizier Fakhr al-Mulk (3) Muḥammad ibn ʿAli ibn Khalaf, Abu Ghalib, the minister, was from Wasit, and his father