a “mountain” (4) of ruby that had once belonged to the Buyids. He had bought it for an enormous sum and dispatched it together with one hundred thousand dinars in ready cash, in addition to other gifts.

Abū ʾl-Qāsim al-Maghribī served as his vizier twice, and Abū Naṣr Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Jahīr, titled Fakhr al-Mulk, also held the vizierate under him. His territories were counted among the safest, pleasantest, and most justly governed of all lands.

It reached him that in winter the birds, driven by hunger, would quit the mountains for the villages where people trapped them. He therefore ordered the granaries (1) opened and enough grain poured out to sustain them for the whole season, so that the birds remained as his guests every winter for the rest of his life. He died this year, having nearly reached—or perhaps surpassed—eighty years of age.

Ibn Khallikān (2) relates that Ibn al-Azraq, in his History, says: “He never confiscated the property of any of his subjects save one man. Despite his constant indulgence in pleasures he never missed a prayer. He kept three hundred and sixty favored concubines, spending a night with each over the course of a year, and he left behind many children. He continued in that state until he died on the twenty-ninth of Shawwāl of this year. May Allah Most High have mercy upon him.”

Then came the year 454 AH.

In it: numerous letters arrived from Sultan Ṭughril Beg complaining of the caliph’s lack of fairness toward him and of the caliph’s failure to match the favors and benefits he had bestowed upon the kings of the frontier regions and upon the Chief Judge, Ibn al-Dāmghānī. When the caliph saw this—and learned that the sultan had instructed his deputies to place the caliphal estates under sequestration—he was disturbed and wrote to Ṭughril Beg consenting to his requests. When the letter reached the sultan he was overjoyed and ordered his deputies to release the caliphal properties. When the mounted couriers bearing the decree reached Baghdad, the drums of good tidings were beaten in the palace, the riders were paraded to the accompaniment of kettledrums and trumpets, and the populace rejoiced that the caliph had granted the sultan’s petition (3). Agreement was restored after having nearly been lost.

The caliph appointed agents to conclude the marriage contract and issued a formal power of attorney to that effect. The contract was then executed in the city of Tabriz, in the presence of Sultan Ṭughril Beg, and a magnificent banquet was prepared. When the power of attorney was brought in, the sultan rose to receive it, kissed the ground upon seeing it, and offered many prayers for the caliph. The contract fixed a dowry of four hundred thousand dinars, and people multiplied their supplications for the caliph. This took place on Thursday, the thirteenth of Shaʿbān of this year.

Later, in Shawwāl, the khātūn Arslān—the sultan’s niece and the caliph’s bride—sent lavish gifts: great sums of gold, numerous priceless jewels, and splendid presents for the bride’s mother and all her family. The sultan then proclaimed publicly: “I am but a slave, a bondsman of the caliph as long as I live; I own nothing except the clothes I am wearing.”