He was the tenth Fatimid sovereign and the tenth descendant of ʿUbayd Allah al-Mahdī. When the Prince was slain, an Armenian mamluk (1) from among the caliph’s pages seized control of Egypt and held absolute authority for three days, until Abū ʿAlī Aḥmad ibn al-Afḍal ibn Badr al-Jamālī arrived. The latter installed as caliph al-Ḥāfiẓ Abū al-Maymūn ʿAbd al-Majīd, son of the emir Abū al-Qāsim ibn al-Mustanṣir bi-Allah, who was then fifty-eight years old. Yet having set him up, Abū ʿAlī kept the reins of power for himself, confined the caliph to his audience chamber—[no one could enter his presence save whomever he permitted] (2)—and transferred the palace treasure to his own residence, so that al-Ḥāfiẓ was left with nothing but the title.

[Among the notable figures who died that year] was Ibrāhīm ibn ʿUthmān (3) ibn Muḥammad, Abū Isḥāq (4) al-Ghazzī al-Kalbī (5), a native of Gaza who lived beyond eighty years and was renowned for his fine verse. Of his poetry on the Turks are the following lines:

[Basīṭ] (6)
Among youths of the Turkish hosts whose charges
have left the thunder no voice (7) and no renown;
People who, when confronted, appear as angels in beauty,
yet when fought, show themselves as raging demons. (8)

He also said, in the Kāmil metre:

Would that the one who burdened me with love apart from you,
O tyrant mine, would apportion affection between us!
I face the lion, unafraid of its leap,
yet the glance of the gazelle, when it rests on me, unnerves me.

And in the Khafīf metre:

This life is but a fleeting provision;
The heedless fool is he who opts for it.
What has passed is gone, what is hoped for is unseen;
Yours is only the moment you now possess.

He also composed (9): [Kāmil]