In Rajab the cost of provisions rose sharply in Baghdad and the rest of Iraq, and no one from those regions made the pilgrimage that year.
In the same year a deadly pestilence swept through India, Ghazna, Khurasan, Gurgan, Rayy, and Isfahan; in the briefest span forty thousand funerals were conducted. A severe share of the same outbreak—smallpox—also struck the districts of al-Jabal, Mosul, and Baghdad, leaving scarcely a house without a victim. Ibn al-Jawzi states in al-Muntaẓam (1) that it lasted through June, July, August, September, October, and November, being worse in summer than in autumn.
A Sunni man of Isfahan dreamed that a herald cried out in a booming voice: “O people of Isfahan: silence, speech; silence, speech!” He awoke in fright, unable to interpret the words. When the matter was put to a perceptive man he said, “Beware, O people of Isfahan, for I have read in the verse of Abū al-ʿAtāhiyah:
Time was silent about them for a while,
Then, when it spoke, it made them weep tears of blood.”
Soon afterward King Masʿūd ibn Maḥmūd ibn Subuktikīn arrived and killed great numbers of them, even slaying worshippers in mosques and hermitages. Indeed, to Allah we belong and to Him we shall return.
In this year as well King Abū Kālijār laid hold of the eunuch Ṣandal and executed him. Ṣandal had taken the reins of the kingdom, leaving Abū Kālijār ruler in name only; thus he was rid of him at last.
That same year the great Turkic sovereign who ruled Transoxiana—his name was Badr Khān—died. Allah, exalted is He, knows best.
Among the notable persons who passed away this year were:
• Rawḥ ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad, Abū Zurʿah al-Rāzī (2).
Al-Khaṭīb (3) said: “He studied under many scholars and came to us as a pilgrim, so I wrote from him. He was truthful, intelligent, and cultured, a Shāfiʿī jurist who served as judge of Isfahan. I was informed that he died in al-Karkh in 423 AH.”
• ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad ibn Nuʿaym ibn al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, known as al-Nuʿaymī (4), a ḥāfiẓ of hadith, poet, theologian, and Shāfiʿī jurist.