In that same year:

– The emirate of Mecca passed to the sharif ʿĪsā ibn Qāsim ibn Abī Hāshim (1); some authorities, however, state that it was Qāsim ibn Flaytah (2) ibn Qāsim ibn Abī Hāshim who assumed the post.

– The caliph al-Mustanjid ordered that the shop stalls which narrowed the streets be dismantled and that no vendor sit in the middle of the roadway (3), lest this cause inconvenience to pedestrians (4).

– A sharp decline in prices occurred in Baghdad.

– The school (madrasa) built by Ibn al-Shamaḥl in the Maʾmūniyya quarter was opened. Its first lecturer was Abū Ḥakīm Ibrāhīm ibn Dīnār al-Nahrawānī, the Ḥanbalī (5). He died at the end of the year, whereupon Shaykh Abū’l-Faraj Ibn al-Jawzī took over the chair; Ibn al-Jawzī had been his assistant tutor and, on his teacher’s death, resigned from another professorship he held at Bāb al-Azaj.

Among the notable figures who died this year was Ḥamza ibn ʿAlī ibn Ṭalḥah, Abū’l-Futūḥ the chamberlain (6). He enjoyed special favor with al-Mustarshid and likewise with al-Muqtafī. He built a madrasa beside his residence, performed the pilgrimage, and returned in an ascetic frame of mind, remaining in seclusion at his house (7)—highly esteemed—for nearly twenty years. He died this year, and a poet praised him (8) with the following verses:

[of the Sarīʿ metre] (9)
O buttress of Islam, whose noble resolve
Has ever soared toward the loftiest height;
The world lay in your grasp, yet you spurned its kingdom,
Choosing instead to abide in the life to come.

[Then the year 557 AH began]

In it: the Georgians penetrated Muslim territory, slew great numbers of men, and carried off whole communities of women and children,