He was born in Baghdad on the 10th of Rajab, 553 AH, was invested with the caliphate after his father’s death in 575, and died this year at the age of sixty-nine years, two months, and twenty days. His tenure as caliph lasted forty-seven years less one month—no Abbasid before him had ever remained in office so long—and no caliph at all exceeded the reign of al-Mustansir the Fatimid, who ruled in Egypt for sixty years. Fourteen caliphs are joined together in his lineage, and, as you have seen, he designated heirs-apparent.(1) The rest of the Abbasid caliphs were all his uncles and cousins.

His illness was protracted, most(1) of it due to a severe urinary obstruction, even though water was brought for him from several stages outside Baghdad so that it might be purer. His private part was incised several times on that account, yet such precautions did him no good.

The one who washed his body was Muḥyī al-Dīn, son of Shaykh Abū al-Faraj ibn al-Jawzī. He led the funeral prayer over him, and he was first buried in the Palace of the Caliphate; on the 2nd of Dhū al-Ḥijjah of that same year he was transferred to the cemetery of al-Rusafa—a day that drew a great crowd.

Ibn al-Saʿī said: “His conduct has already been set forth in the account of events.”

Ibn al-Athīr, in al-Kāmil,(2) writes: “Al-Nāṣir li-Dīn Allāh remained for three years completely unable to move; one of his eyes was gone and with the other he saw only dimly. In the end he contracted dysentery for twenty days and died. Several viziers(3) served under him, as has already been mentioned. During his illness he did not repeal the unjust imposts he had introduced. He treated his subjects badly and oppressed them: in his days Iraq was laid waste, its people scattered through the lands, and he seized their wealth and property. He would do a thing and then its very opposite. Thus he established hostels(4) where people could break the fast in Ramadan, and others(5) to lodge the pilgrims, then abolished them; he removed certain tolls and later reinstated them, and he devoted most of his energy to shooting pellets, pedigree birds, and the ‘futuwwa trousers’.”(6)

Ibn al-Athīr adds: “If what the Persians charge him with is true—namely, that he was the one who enticed the Mongols into these lands and corresponded with them—then that is the supreme calamity beside which every other great sin appears small.”

I say: Strange things have been reported of him; among them, that he would say to the envoys who came before him, “You did such-and-such in such-and-such a place …”