—all seven of them. Now, six have converged there while Saturn is absent, so a flood must strike somewhere, and Baghdad is the most likely place.”
The caliph therefore ordered his vizier to repair the drainage channels and every spot where the water might burst forth (1).
People waited in anxious expectation. Presently word came that the pilgrims had been hemmed in at Wādī al-Manāqib beyond Nakhlah; a mighty torrent swept over them, and only those who clung to the mountaintops were saved, while the water carried off men and baggage alike (2). The caliph then bestowed a robe of honor upon that astrologer and assigned him a regular stipend.
In the same year: the amir Qawām al-Dawlah Abū Saʿd Karbūqā captured Mosul, slew Sharaf al-Dawlah Muḥammad ibn Muslim ibn Quraysh, and drowned him after a siege of seven months.
Also that year: Tamīm ibn al-Muʿizz ibn Bādīs seized the city of Qābis and drove out his brother ʿAmr. On that occasion the preacher of Sūsa declaimed:
Time, once seen scowling, burst out laughing (3)
when by your sword’s edge you opened Qābis.
You came to her a virgin bride and gave her
no dowry but lances, flashing swords, and horsemen.
God knows: whatever fruits you now harvest (4)
were saplings your father before you had planted (5).
Whoever fells firewood with blue-tipped spears
will find the crowns of cities turned into brides for him.
In Ṣafar, Shaykh Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ṭabarī began teaching at the Niẓāmiyyah, an appointment granted him by Fakhr al-Mulk ibn Niẓām al-Mulk, vizier to Sultan Barkiyārūq ibn Malikshāh.
That same year the Khafāja tribe raided the territories of Sayf al-Dawlah Ṣadaqa ibn Mazīd ibn Manṣūr ibn Dubays. They headed for the shrine of al-Ḥusayn at al-Ḥāʾir and there openly committed abominations and acts of corruption. The said amir Ṣadaqa attacked them and slew great numbers of them, even within the precincts of the tomb. One of the marvels reported is that one of the raiders hurled himself and his horse from the top of the wall, yet both he and the animal came away unharmed (6).
The leader of the pilgrimage that year was the amir Khumārtakīn al-Jastānī.