In Rajab the Chief Judge Abū al-Ḥasan ibn al-Dāmaghānī accepted the legal testimony of Abū al-Ḥusayn and Abū Ḥāzim, the two sons of the judge Abū Yaʿlā ibn al-Farrāʾ.

During the same year ʿĪsā ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Ghaznawī—also called al-Qūnawī—arrived. He preached to the people, adhering to the Shāfiʿī school in jurisprudence and to the Ashʿarī creed. A disturbance therefore erupted in Baghdad between the Ḥanbalīs and the Ashʿarīs.

That year as well, a great fire swept through Baghdad, and the pilgrimage was led by Ḥumayd al-ʿUmrī, the lieutenant of Sayf al-Dawla Ṣadaqa ibn Manṣūr ibn Dubays, lord of al-Ḥilla.

Among the notable deaths of the year:

Abū al-Qāsim, ruler of Egypt⦗1⦘, entitled al-Mustaʿlī. He died in Dhu l-Ḥijja of this year, after which authority passed to his nine-year-old son Abū ʿAlī⦗2⦘, who received the title al-Āmir bi-Aḥkām Allāh.

Muḥammad ibn Hibat Allāh⦗3⦘, Abū Naṣr al-Ḍarīr—the qāḍī of Bandanīj—a Shāfiʿī jurist. He studied under Shaykh Abū Isḥāq al-Shīrāzī, then spent more than forty years in Mecca issuing fatwas, teaching, and transmitting hadith. He was considered one of the marvels of his age.

Some of his poetry reads:
“May I forfeit my very self before I ever tire of your demands,⦗4⦘
while my brothers⦗5⦘ and the companions of my affection have already gone their way.
I pledge myself to my Lord, then break that pledge,
abandoning my resolve whenever desire confronts me.
My provisions are scant—I cannot see them carrying me through;
should I weep for the meagerness of my supplies, or for the length of my journey?⦗6⦘”

[Then the year 496 AH began.]

In that year Sultan Barkiyāruq besieged his brother Muḥammad in Isfahan. Livelihoods there became straitened, prices soared to an extreme, and Sultan Muḥammad confiscated the townspeople’s property, while the besieging forces encircled the city from without—so that many hardships converged upon them.