On one occasion Dāwud mounted a surprise attack, and Masʿūd was put to flight. Dāwud seized his stores and tents, sat upon his throne, and distributed the booty. For three days his troops remained on horseback, never dismounting for fear of a sudden counter-attack. By such vigilance they accomplished what they had set out to do and attained everything they had hoped for.

Another stroke of their good fortune was that King Masʿūd set off for the Indian lands to winter there, leaving behind with his son Mawdūd a large army to wage war against the Seljuks. Once he had crossed the bridge over the river Sīhūn, however, his soldiers plundered his baggage train, gathered around his brother Muḥammad, and deposed Masʿūd. Masʿūd returned to confront them, fought, but they routed him and took him captive.

His brother said to him, “By Allah, I will not repay your ill-treatment in kind. Choose instead any land where you and your family may dwell.” Masʿūd chose a great fortress and settled there.

King Muḥammad—Masʿūd’s brother—then appointed his son Aḥmad as heir, and the army pledged allegiance to him. Aḥmad, however, was rash and lacking in judgment. He joined forces with their uncle Yūsuf ibn Subuktakīn to kill Masʿūd so that power might be theirs unhindered. Without his father’s knowledge Aḥmad went to Masʿūd and murdered him. When his father learned of the deed he was furious, rebuked his son severely, and dispatched a message to his nephew apologizing and swearing that he had known nothing of it.

Mawdūd ibn Masʿūd wrote back to him, saying,

“May Allah grant your witless son some sense to live by! He has committed a monstrous act, daring to shed the blood of a king such as my father—whom the Commander of the Faithful entitled ‘Master of Kings and Sultans.’ You will soon learn into what injustice you have plunged yourselves and what evil you have shouldered. ‘And those who do wrong will come to know to what return they shall return’ [al-Shuʿarāʾ 26:227].”

Mawdūd then advanced against them with great armies, fought, defeated, and captured them. He executed his uncle Muḥammad, Muḥammad’s son Aḥmad, all his other cousins except ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, and a host of their leading commanders.

He built a settlement there which he named Fatḥ Ābād, then marched to Ghazna and entered it in Shaʿbān. He upheld justice and followed the policy of his grandfather Maḥmūd; the people obeyed him, and the frontier commanders wrote pledging submission and loyalty. Yet by these actions he had destroyed his own kinsmen with his own hand—and this counted among the many strokes of fortune bestowed upon the Seljuks.

In this same year:
(1) The sons of Ḥammād rebelled against al-ʿAzīz Bādīs, ruler of Ifriqiyyah. He marched against them and besieged them for nearly two years. That year Ifriqiyyah was struck by a severe famine because the rains failed to arrive.

Baghdad also witnessed a great civil strife between the Rāfiḍis and the Sunnis—the people of al-Karkh and of the Bāb al-Baṣrah quarter—in which many from both sides were killed.

That year no one from Iraq, its surrounding regions, or Khurasan performed the pilgrimage.

[Among the notable deaths of the year] Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn al-Faḍl ibn al-ʿAbbās (2), Abū Yaʿlā al-Baṣrī the Sufi, passed away.