Then the year 410 AH began, and in it:
A letter arrived from Yamin al-Dawla Maḥmūd ibn Subuktikin reporting the territories of India he had conquered during the previous year. It stated that he had entered a city containing roughly one thousand well-built palaces and a thousand idol-houses, filled with countless idols. The gold contained in a single idol was estimated at close to one hundred thousand dinars, while the idols of silver numbered more than one thousand. Among them was a greatly venerated idol whose age, in their ignorance, they claimed to be three hundred thousand years. “We seized all of that,” the letter said, “and more besides—beyond calculation—and the mujāhidūn took abundant spoils in this campaign. They set the city ablaze until only ruins remained. About fifty thousand Hindus were killed, some twenty thousand embraced Islam, and the one-fifth share of captives came to fifty-three thousand souls. We captured three hundred fifty-six elephants, and the wealth obtained amounted to twenty million dirhams, in addition to a large quantity of gold.”
In Rabīʿ al-Ākhir, al-Qādir bi-Allah held court. The investiture decree of the king Abū al-Fawāris was read out; he was granted the honorific title Qawām al-Dawla, and robes of honor sent to him for the governorship of Kirmān were bestowed upon him (1).
No one from Iraq performed the ḥajj this year because Bedouin brigands had rendered the roads unsafe.
Among the notable deaths this year were:
• al-Aṣayfir al-Muntafiqī (2), who used to safeguard the pilgrims;
• Aḥmad ibn Mūsā ibn Mardawayh ibn Fūrak (3), Abū Bakr al-Ḥāfiẓ al-Iṣfahānī, who died in Ramaḍān of this year;
• Hibat-Allah ibn Salāmah (4), Abū al-Qāsim, the blind Qurʾān-reciter and exegete. He was among the most learned of people and the most proficient in memorizing tafsīr, and he conducted a teaching circle in the Manṣūr Mosque.
Ibn al-Jawzī, transmitting with his own chain, said: “We had a shaykh with whom we used to read. One of his students died, and the shaykh saw him in a dream and asked him, ‘What has Allah done with you?’ He replied, ‘He forgave me.’ He then asked, ‘How did you fare with Munkar and Nakīr?’ He said, ‘When they seated me and questioned me…’”