He wore out his life in constant travel and exile, and he reached Baghdad in the year 432 AH (1). There he transmitted reports from Abū Bakr ibn Abī al-Ḥadīd al-Dimashqī and Abū al-Ḥusayn ibn Jumayʿ al-Ghassānī. He was trustworthy, truthful, cultivated, and an accomplished poet.
[Then came the year 433 AH]
In that year:
• Tughril Beg conquered Gurgān and Ṭabaristān, after which he returned to Nīshāpūr aided by Allah, triumphant and secure.
• Ẓuḥayr al-Dawlah, Abū Manṣūr ibn ʿAlāʾ al-Dawlah Abū Jaʿfar ibn Kākūyah, assumed power on the death of his father, whereupon dispute broke out between him and his two brothers, Abū Kalījār and Karshāsf (2).
• Abū Kalījār entered Hamadhān and repelled the invading forces from it.
• The Turkish troops in Baghdad rioted because their stipends were late, and the Zurayq bridge over the Nahr ʿĪsā collapsed, as did the old bridge adjacent to it.
• A man of the Bulghars came to Baghdad intending the pilgrimage. Claiming to be one of their chiefs, he was lodged in the Caliphal Palace and granted a stipend. He reported that his people were of mixed Turkic and Slavic origin, that they lived in the remotest of the Turkic lands, that their daylight sometimes shrank to only six hours—and the night likewise—and that they enjoyed springs, cultivated fields, and fruit sustained by both rainfall and irrigation.
• That same year the Qādirī Creed, compiled earlier by the Commander of the Faithful al-Qādir billāh, was publicly read. The signatures of scholars and ascetics were taken upon it, affirming that it represented the creed of the Muslims and that whoever opposed it was guilty of unbelief and depravity. The first to sign was Shaykh Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn ʿUmar al-Qazwīnī; the other scholars followed suit. Abū al-Faraj ibn al-Jawzī has reproduced it in full in his work al-Muntaẓam (3); it contains an excellent summary of the creed of the salaf (4).
Among the notables who died this year was Bahrām ibn Māfanah (5), Abū Manṣūr, vizier to Abū Kalījār. He was chaste, scrupulous, upright, and just in his conduct. In the city of Fīrūzābād he endowed a library holding seven thousand volumes, including four thousand folios penned by Abū ʿAlī and Abū ʿAbd Allāh, the two sons of Muqla.