[Then the year 501 AH began]

• In that year the Caliph renewed the bestowal of robes of investiture upon his new vizier, Abū al-Maʿālī Hibat Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Muṭṭalib (1), honoring and exalting him.

In Rabīʿ al-Ākhir of the same year, Sultan Muḥammad entered Baghdad. The vizier and the city’s notables went out to receive him; he treated its inhabitants kindly, and none of his troops molested anything.

• Sultan Ghiyāth al-Dīn Muḥammad (3) became angry (2) with Ṣadaqa ibn Manṣūr al-Asadī, lord of al-Ḥillah and Tikrīt, because he had given refuge (4) to one of the sultan’s enemies, a man named Abū Dalaf Sarkhāb al-Daylamī (5), ruler of Sāwah. The sultan wrote, demanding that he hand the man over, but he refused. The sultan therefore sent an army against him and routed his forces, although they numbered twenty thousand cavalry and thirty thousand infantry. Ṣadaqa was killed in the battle; a number of the leading men among his followers were captured, and from his wife were seized five-hundred-thousand dinars together with precious jewels.

Ibn al-Jawzī said: “In this year a blind young girl appeared who spoke of people’s secrets. People employed every possible stratagem (6) to discover her true state, but they could not.”

Ibn ʿAqīl (7) said: “Her affair confounded scholars, dignitaries, and commoners alike. She would be asked about the engravings on signet-rings, the colors of their stones, the descriptions of people, and what lay inside sealed containers—wax, clay, assorted grains, or beads—and she would answer correctly. One man even went so far as to place his hand on his private part, and when she was asked, ‘What is in his hand?’ she replied, ‘He is carrying it to his wife and children.’ (8)”

• Also in this year the judge Fakhr al-Mulk Abū ʿAlī ibn ʿAmmār (9), ruler of Tripoli, arrived in Baghdad to rally the Muslims