al-Rāshid. He entered Isfahan, where one of his Khurasani attendants (1) murdered him. He had only just recovered from an illness, yet they slew him on the twenty-fifth of Ramadan and buried him at Shahristan, outside Isfahan. He was fair-skinned, handsome, remarkably strong, and imposing; his mother had been a slave-concubine. May Allah Most High have mercy on him.

In that same year:
A merchant called Rast (2) the Persian provided the Ka‘ba with a new covering at the cost of eighteen thousand dinars, for no official kiswah reached it that year because of the rivalries among the kings (3).

A violent earthquake struck Syria, al-Jazira, and Iraq; many houses collapsed, and a vast multitude perished beneath the rubble (4).

A severe famine befell Khurasan, to the extent that people ate dogs (5).

King ʿImād al-Dīn Zangī captured the city of Homs in Muharram. In Ramadan he married Lady Zumurrud Khātūn, mother of the ruler of Damascus; the outer Khātūniyya quarters are named after her.

The Byzantine ruler seized the town of Bizaʿah (6), six farsakhs from Aleppo. Survivors of the massacre and enslavement came to Baghdad seeking aid from the Muslims; the Friday sermon was consequently suspended in the city, and prolonged unrest ensued.

That year also witnessed the birth of Sultan al-Malik al-Nāṣir Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb ibn Shādhī in the citadel of Tikrit (7).

The pilgrimage was led, as in the preceding years, by Emir Naẓar the chamberlain—may Allah reward him.

Sultan Masʿūd married Safrāʾ, daughter of Dubays ibn Ṣadaqah, and Baghdad was adorned for seven days. Ibn al-Jawzī (8) remarks that this occasion produced widespread and far-reaching corruption (9). The sultan subsequently married his cousin, and Baghdad was again decorated for three days.