In this year:
The caliph dismissed his vizier and appointed Abū Naṣr Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Jahīr as vizier, having summoned him from Mayyafariqīn.
In the same year: cheap prices prevailed throughout the whole land, to the point that in Basra one thousand ratls of dates sold for eight qirats [and no one performed the Hajj that year]. Allah knows best.
Among the notable deaths this year were:
Thimāl ibn Ṣāliḥ (1), Muʿizz al-Dawla, lord of Aleppo. He was generous, forbearing, and dignified. Ibn al-Jawzī relates that a chamber servant came forward to pour water over his hands, and the ewer’s spout struck one of his incisors, knocking it into the basin. He pardoned the man—may Allah Most High have mercy on him.
Al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad (2) [Abū Muḥammad] al-Jawharī. Born in Shaʿbān 363 AH, he heard hadith from many scholars and was unique in narrating from numerous teachers, among them Abū Bakr ibn Mālik al-Qaṭīʿī, who was the last to transmit from him. He died in Dhū al-Qaʿdah of this year.
Al-Ḥusayn ibn Abī Zayd (3), Abū ʿAlī al-Dabbāgh, said: “I saw the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—in a dream. I said, ‘O Messenger of Allah, pray to Allah that He let me live upon Islam.’ He replied, ‘And upon the sunnah, and upon the sunnah, and upon the sunnah.’” May Allah Most High have mercy on him.
Saʿd ibn Muḥammad ibn Manṣūr (4), Abū al-Maḥāsin al-Julakī (5), was one of the elder notables. Around the year 410 AH he dispatched an envoy to King Maḥmūd ibn Subuktakīn. A jurist-scholar, many students graduated under him, and he narrated hadith from numerous teachers. Judicial sessions were convened for him in many towns. He was wrongfully killed in Istarabād in Rajab of this year—may Allah Most High have mercy on him and on us by His grace and generosity.
Then came the year 455 AH.
In it: Sultan Ṭughril Beg entered Baghdad. The caliph intended to go out to meet him, then abandoned the idea and sent his vizier Abū Naṣr in his stead. Because of the roughness of the sultan’s troops, the people along the way suffered much harm, and the womenfolk were molested,