At this, Shaykh Abu al-Qasim ʿAbd al-Karim ibn Hawazin al-Qushayri (1) raised an outcry and composed a treatise that he entitled “A Complaint of the People of the Sunnah Concerning the Ordeal that Has Befallen Them.” The sultan summoned a number of the leading Ashʿarīs, among them al-Qushayri, and asked them about the report that had reached him. They denied that al-Ashʿarī had ever said such things. He replied, “We only cursed whoever says that.” Grave and protracted turmoil followed.
In the same year King Fulasun (2) Abu Manṣur, son of the king Abu Kalijar, seized Shiraz, and his brother Abu Saʿid (3) left the city.
In Shaʿban or Shawwal, al-Bāsāsīrī marched against Kurds and Bedouins who were sowing corruption in al-Bawazij (4). He routed them and seized their property.
No one from Iraq performed the pilgrimage that year.
[Among the notable deaths in this year]
Aḥmad ibn ʿUmar ibn Rawḥ (5) Abu al-Ḥusayn (6) al-Nahrawani. He supervised the assay of coins at the mint and composed fine poetry. He recounted:
“One day I was on the bank of the Nahrawan when I heard a man in a boat drifting downstream singing:
‘They sought nothing but my death—
so little did I care for what they sought.’
I stopped him and said, ‘Add something else to it as well:
‘For my killing the beloved ones—
by persisting in estrangement—have prevailed.’” (7)