In Ṣafar of that same year the vizier of Sultan Maḥmūd, Abū Ṭālib al-Sumayrimī, was assassinated by a Bāṭinite. He had set out for Hamadān, while his wife had departed ahead of him with one hundred serving-girls riding in gold-plated litters. When news of his death reached them, they turned back barefoot and with their faces unveiled (1), fallen from their former eminence. The sultan then appointed Shams al-Mulk (2) ʿUthmān ibn Niẓām al-Mulk to the vizierate.
In that same year Aq-Sunqur al-Bursuqī met Dubays ibn Ṣadaqa in battle. Dubays defeated him and slew a great many of his soldiers. The sultan thereupon seized Mansūr ibn Ṣadaqa, Dubays’s brother (3), together with his son, put them in shackles, and confined them in the citadel. In retaliation Dubays devastated the region, plundered the countryside, shaved his head, donned black, and even seized the caliph’s revenues in those lands. A call was therefore sounded in Baghdad to march out against him.
The caliph himself emerged with the army, wearing a black robe, a black turban and its veil, the mantle (burdah) across his shoulders, a staff in his hand, and a girdle of Chinese silk (4) around his waist. With him were his vizier Niẓām al-Dīn Aḥmad ibn Niẓām al-Mulk, the naqīb al-nuqabāʾ ʿAlī ibn Ṭirād (5) al-Zaynabī, and the shaykh of the shaykhs Ṣadr al-Dīn Ismāʿīl. Aq-Sunqur al-Bursuqī came out to receive him with the troops, kissed the ground, arranged the battle lines, and stationed the Qurʾān-reciters before the caliph. Dubays advanced, preceded by slave-girls beating tambourines and effeminate performers playing their instruments.
The two forces engaged. The caliph had drawn his sword, proclaimed the takbīr, and gone forward toward the fight. ʿUnayz ibn Abī al-ʿAskar (6) charged the caliph’s right wing, broke it, and killed its commander. He charged a second time and scattered them as before, whereupon ʿImād al-Dīn Zangī ibn Aq-Sunqur counter-charged, capturing ʿUnayz and, with him, Burayk ibn Zāʾida (7). Dubays’s army fled and threw themselves into the water, so that many drowned. The caliph ordered the prisoners beheaded in his presence, and Dubays’s wives and concubines were taken captive (8).
The caliph then returned to Baghdad, entering the city on the Day of ʿĀshūrāʾ of the following year—a day long remembered. His absence from Baghdad had lasted sixteen days.