In this year the caliph resolved to hold the ṭuhūr (circumcision) of his sons and his brother’s sons—twelve boys in all. Baghdad was adorned for seven days with decorations the like of which had never been seen, and the people displayed jewelry, ornaments, and garments unrivalled in splendor (1).

In Shaʿbān of the same year, Asʿad al-Mīhanī arrived to serve as professor at the Niẓāmiyya in Baghdad and as its superintendent, replacing al-Bāqirḥī (2). A dispute (3) then flared between him and a number of jurists because he dismissed several of them and contented himself with eighty students; many of them found this intolerable.

In this year the sultan Maḥmūd marched against the land of the Georgians. Hostilities had broken out between them and the Qipchaqs, and he killed and routed them—praise be to Allah—before returning to Hamadhān, aided and victorious.

That same year Tughtikīn, lord of Damascus, seized the city of Ḥamāh after the death of its ruler, Maḥmūd ibn Qarājā, [a harsh and oppressive man. In this year the naqīb of the Alids was deposed, and the house of ʿAlī] (4) ibn Aflah was demolished because both had acted as spies for Dubays (5). The office of naqīb of the Alids was conferred upon ʿAlī ibn Ṭarād al-Zaynabī in addition to his post as naqīb of the ʿAbbāsids.

Among the notable deaths this year was Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Yaḥyā ibn Ṣadaqa al-Taghlibī, known as Ibn al-Khayyāṭ (6), the Damascene poet and accomplished scribe. He left a celebrated dīwān (poetry collection) (7). Al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn ʿAsākir (8) said: “With him the register of poets in Damascus came to an end.” He was a masterly, prolific poet, skilled in composition and thoroughly acquainted with the verse and lore of the early generations.