When that took place, the caliph rode out with his army, boats were brought, and the troops embarked in them (1). Baghdad burst into screams, as though the very earth had quaked. The populace joined the caliph’s soldiers, routed the sultan’s forces, killed a number of emirs, took others captive, and plundered the sultan’s residence, the house of his vizier, and the home of his physician Abū al-Barakāt, seizing the deposits stored there. An (2) immense (3) commotion ensued; they even (4) looted the Sufis in the ribāṭ of Bahrūz (5). Many further events unfolded, of grave consequence, and the commoners turned on the sultan, shouting, “O bāṭinī! You abandon the fight against the Franks and the Byzantines, yet you fight the caliph.”

The caliph then withdrew to his own residence on the seventh of Muḥarram. When the day of ʿĀshūrāʾ arrived (6), the tension flared again, and the sultan asked the caliph for safe-conduct and a truce. The caliph inclined to this, and the people rejoiced at the prospect of peace. Accordingly, the caliph sent to him (7) the Niqīb al-Nuqabāʾ, the Chief Judge, the Shaykh al-Shuyūkh, and a little over thirty witnesses. The sultan detained them for six (8) days, which distressed the populace and made them fear a new fitna (9) worse than the first. Yaranqash al-Zakwī, the military governor of Baghdad, kept inciting the sultan to let the city be plundered, but he would not agree. At length he permitted the delegation to enter; they (10) came to him at sunset, the Chief Judge led him in prayer (11), and they read the caliph’s letter aloud. He rose to his feet, accepted everything the caliph had proposed, and peace was concluded with the oaths duly sworn. The sultan’s army then entered Baghdad (12), exhausted for want of food in the camp. They said, “Had we not reached a settlement (13) we would have died of hunger” (14). The sultan showed great forbearance toward the commoners—praise be to Allah.

The caliph ordered that whatever had been looted from the soldiers’ houses be returned, declaring that anyone who concealed any of it would forfeit his own life (15).