In Dhu al-Hijjah of that same year: construction began on the Nizamiyyah Madrasa in Baghdad, and numerous houses lying between Mashraʿat al-Zawāyā and the Basra Gate were pulled down to make room for it.
In that year as well: bitter fighting flared up between Tamīm ibn al-Muʿizz ibn Bādīs and the sons of Ḥammād, together with the Bedouin, the Maghrebis, and the tribes of Ṣanhāja and Zanāta.
The pilgrims setting out from Baghdad were led by the naqīb Abū al-Ghanāʾim.
During the same year ʿAmīd al-Mulk al-Kundarī (1) met his death. He was Manṣūr ibn Muḥammad (2) Abū Naṣr, vizier to Ṭughrul-Beg. After spending a full year in prison he was executed, whereupon his body was carried to the village of Kundar in the district of Turaithīth and buried beside his father—not to be confused with the Kundar situated near Qazwīn (3). The sultan confiscated all his possessions and holdings. Al-Kundarī was quick-witted, eloquent, and a fine poet, endowed with many virtues and an agile tongue.
When Sultan Ṭughrul-Beg sent to the caliph requesting the hand of the caliph’s daughter, the caliph flatly refused. Al-Kundarī thereupon recited the line of al-Mutanabbī:
“Not everything a man desires he attains,”
and then completed it himself:
“The winds blow counter to what the ships desire.”
The caliph fell silent and lowered his gaze. Al-Kundarī was a little over forty years old when he was killed.
Among his choice verses are these:
If men find no room to contend with me,
death has made the world spacious enough for all.
I moved on, while the spiteful loser trailed behind—
every soul shall drink, cup in hand, the draught of fate.
On one occasion the sultan sent him to Khwārazm-Shāh to seek a woman’s hand on the sultan’s behalf; instead, he married her himself. The sultan had him castrated yet left him in office. Thus his virility was interred in Khwārazm; his blood was shed when he was slain at Marw al-Rūdh; his body was buried in Kundar; his severed head was laid to rest in Naysābūr; and his skull was later moved to Kirmān.
[And I bear witness that Allah will gather all created beings at a fixed time on a known Day, wherever they may be and in whatever state they find themselves—glorified and exalted be He.]