—his brother— and bestowed upon him the title al-Mustaʿlī. Nizār fled to Alexandria; the populace there rallied to him and gave him their pledge of allegiance. Jalāl al-Dīn ibn ʿAmmār assumed authority, whereupon al-Afḍal marched against him and besieged the city. Nizār fought, but al-Afḍal routed them, captured both the qāḍī and Nizār, executed the qāḍī, and confined Nizār between two walls until he died. Thus al-Mustaʿlī was firmly established in the caliphate at the age of twenty-one.

Muhammad ibn Abī Hāshim, Emir of Mecca (1)
His death occurred this year; he was a little over ninety years of age.

Maḥmūd, son of Sultan Malik Shāh (2)
His mother had conferred the kingship upon him and spent vast sums on his behalf (3). His brother Barkiyāruq contested the throne, overcame and defeated him, and he withdrew to Isfahan, where he died this year. His body was carried to Baghdad and buried in the Nizāmiyya cemetery. He was counted among the handsomest and most refined of men; his death fell in Shawwāl of this year.

His mother, the khātūn Turkan Shāh, also died in Ramaḍān of this year, and thereafter his affairs unraveled. She had assembled the armies for him, placed the reins of government in his hand, acquired ten thousand Turkish mamluks, and spent nearly three million dinars on the venture; yet the whole order collapsed and nothing lasting was gained. Allah, exalted is He, knows best (4).

Then came the year 488 AH.

In it: Yūsuf ibn Abq (5), the Turkmen, arrived as emissary of Taj al-Dawla Abū Saʿīd Tutush ibn Alp Arslān, lord of Damascus, to proclaim Tutush’s cause in Baghdad. Tutush had already set out to fight his nephew in the region of Rayy. When his envoy entered Baghdad the people were awestruck and fearful. The caliph summoned him, received him graciously, and he kissed the ground before the caliph. The inhabitants of Baghdad prepared themselves, dreading that he might plunder the city. While matters stood thus, a messenger from Tutush’s nephew arrived and informed him that Tutush had been among the first to fall in the engagement; his death occurred on the seventeenth of Ṣafar of this year (6). Barkiyāruq’s authority thereupon swelled, and he stood independent.