خلافة الحاكم بأمر الله

The caliphate of al-Ḥākim bi-Amr Allāh

[001] Allegiance was sworn to Abū ʿAlī al-Manṣūr, son of al-ʿAzīz bi-llāh, and he was given the regnal title al-Ḥākim bi-Amr Allāh. He took his seat on Thursday, the last day of Ramaḍān in the year 386, when he was eleven years and five months old. A group of the leading men of Kutāma came before him and stipulated that no Easterner was to have oversight of their affairs. He therefore appointed a shaykh of theirs named al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAmmār to oversee conditions and administer affairs, and on Sunday, three days into Shawwāl, gave him the title Amīn al-Dawla.

[002] A group of Turks fled toward Syria for fear of Ibn ʿAmmār, but they were turned back partway along the road. During his tenure, ʿĪsā ibn Nasṭūrus had imposed unjust assessments among the taxes and had introduced levies beyond those customarily collected. Ibn ʿAmmār abolished all of them and restored matters to their former state. On Tuesday, with eleven nights of Shawwāl remaining that year, he arrested and imprisoned Ibn Nasṭūrus; he then killed him in Ṣafar 387. Through Ibn ʿAmmār the Maghribis took control of the administration of the state, the affairs of the Easterners came to a halt, and a number of provincial officeholders were replaced by Maghribis.

[003] Banjutakīn became apprehensive and wrote to the emperor Basil, professing submission and obedience to him and seeking to win him over to support Banjutakīn and reinforce him with his armies. Basil, however, did not think it right to support him against his master or assist him in rebellion. When Banjutakīn despaired of receiving the emperor's aid, he set out from Damascus with the Arabs and others who were with him and who had joined him, heading for Egypt to support the Easterners. Ibn ʿAmmār sent Abū Tamīm Sulaymān ibn Falāḥ and his brother to meet him.

[004] They met him outside Ascalon on Friday, four days into Jumādā I 387. The Turk was defeated and fled to Damascus, and a number of his pages and companions were killed in the engagement. When he reached Damascus its people rose against him and drove him out. He fled with several of his pages, while the populace plundered his house and the houses of a number of commanders.

[005] The Turk asked for safe-conduct and permission to enter Egypt. Ibn Falāḥ granted it and sent his son with him. They reached Egypt on Friday, with eight nights of Rajab remaining that year; Banjutakīn received a robe of honor and was treated well. Ibn Falāḥ then went to Damascus. A fierce war broke out between him and its inhabitants, after which he entered the city by a settlement. The Kutāma gained complete control of the state. An exchange of words between some of them and some Easterners ended in the killing of a Maghribi. The Maghribis demanded that the culprit be surrendered as blood recompense, but an agreement was reached that they should be paid one thousand dinars. The Kutāma nevertheless mounted up, fell upon the culprit, and killed him.

[006] The Easterners rose up, and a great battle between them and the Maghribis began on Monday, with seven nights of Shaʿbān 387 remaining. They continued fighting for three days. The Kutāma then went in to Ibn ʿAmmār and compelled him to ride out with them to the battle. The fighting intensified, but the Kutāma were defeated. Ibn ʿAmmār's house and the houses of a number of Kutāma were plundered. Fearing for his life, Ibn ʿAmmār withdrew to his house in the city and hid there for a time; he was later killed in Shawwāl 390.

[007] When Ibn ʿAmmār went into hiding, al-Ḥākim restored oversight of affairs to the eunuch Barjawān. Barjawān relied upon his secretary, the Christian Abū al-ʿAlāʾ Fahd ibn Ibrāhīm, to act as his deputy. Fahd was given the title al-Raʾīs; he undertook the administration, gained control of it, and his orders ran throughout all the provinces of the realm. He restored the stipends of a number of secretaries and others that Ibn ʿAmmār had cut off.

[008] The inhabitants of Damascus, together with the Eastern retainers who were there, rose against Ibn Falāḥ. He fled the city and was routed back to Egypt. The urban militias took control of Damascus under a man from among them known as al-Duhayqīn. In Tyre, too, a rebel against al-Ḥākim appeared, a man known as ʿAllāqa. He seized the city, and its militiamen and rabble gathered around him. He struck coin in his own name, inscribing it: “Might after destitution for the emir ʿAllāqa.” He appealed to the emperor Basil for help and guaranteed that he would surrender the city to him. Basil sent him a relief force by sea.

[009] Ibn Ḥamdān, the eunuch Fāʾiq al-Barāz, and a group of slave soldiers were already besieging Tyre with a fleet sent from Egypt. Al-Ḥākim's armies, which had marched toward Damascus with Jaysh ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Ṣamṣāma to confront the Damascenes and al-Duhayqīn, who controlled the city, now turned toward Tyre. Al-Duhayqīn, meanwhile, went voluntarily to Egypt, where he received a robe of honor and was pardoned.

[010] Tyre was taken by the sword in Jumādā II 388. A ship of the Byzantine fleet carrying two hundred souls was captured, and every one of them was killed. ʿAllāqa was taken prisoner. The city was plundered, and a number of its inhabitants who had joined him were killed or carried off into captivity. They were brought to Egypt in Shaʿbān of that year. ʿAllāqa was paraded through Fusṭāṭ, flayed, and crucified at the place called al-Manẓar between Cairo and Fusṭāṭ; the other captives were killed.

[011] That same year a fire broke out in the fortress of Apamea and consumed all the provisions and other supplies in it. Abū al-Faḍāʾil ibn Saʿd al-Dawla, lord of Aleppo, and Luʾluʾ marched with an Aleppan army, descended upon Apamea, and fought there for a time to deliver it from the Maghribis. When Damian Dalassenos, the doux of Antioch, learned that it was empty of provisions and weapons, he marched against it. Out of concern for Apamea's inhabitants in the face of the Byzantine emperor, the Aleppans gave them all the food and weapons they had with them and returned to Aleppo. The doux descended upon the fortress with a powerful army, besieged it with the utmost severity, and came close to taking it.

[012] The commander stationed there, known as al-Malāyiṭī, wrote from Damascus to Jaysh ibn Ṣamṣāma—whom al-Ḥākim had sent there—begging for rescue and aid. Jaysh marched to him with enormous forces in Shaʿbān of that year, and battle was joined. The doux gained the upper hand and inflicted a great slaughter upon them; the Bedouin seized the baggage of the Maghribi army, and the rout reached as far as Baalbek. During the rout, however, the doux received a spear-thrust in his side and was killed on Tuesday, the nineteenth of Tammūz in the year 1309. The rout then turned against the Byzantines. About six thousand of them were killed, and the sons of the doux and a group of the army's commanders were captured and taken to Egypt. They remained there for ten years, after which they were ransomed and returned to Byzantine territory.

[013] After the doux was killed, Jaysh ibn Muḥammad ibn Ṣamṣāma marched as far as Antioch and camped at its Gate of the Gardens. A clash took place between him and its inhabitants. He remained four days, then turned back toward the lands of Islam. Thereafter the emperor himself set out on campaign against the lands of Islam and encamped at the New Bridge, six nights into Shawwāl 389.

[014] Basil proceeded to Shayzar, descended upon it in the middle of Dhū al-Qaʿda, besieged it, and broke the water channel supplying those inside. Its governor on behalf of al-Ḥākim was a man named Ḥamlān, known as Ibn Qarādis. The emperor wrote to entice him to open the town, but he refused. When the encampment dragged on and the people of the fortress remained cut off from water, Ibn Qarādis sought safe-conduct. He stipulated that, on leaving the town, he would not have to tread upon a carpet laid down for him, and that neither he nor any of his companions who chose to go with him would be molested. The emperor agreed and sent him his cross as a guarantee. Ibn Qarādis opened the gate and departed with a group of the inhabitants for Hama and thence for Aleppo.

[015] The emperor garrisoned Shayzar with Armenians. He went on to the fortress of Abū Qubays and took it under safe-conduct, then to the fortress of Maṣyāth, which he also captured and demolished. He proceeded to Rafaniyya, burned it, and carried off its people. Burning, destroying, and taking captives as he went, he reached Homs and encamped there. Several people took refuge in the city's church of Saint Constantine, seeking its sanctuary. When the Rusʾ among his troops learned of this, they burned it. It was a wonder-working church, and its brass and lead were carried away. The emperor then marched to the vicinity of Baalbek.

[016] From Damascus, Jaysh—al-Ḥākim's commander—sent letter after letter crying out to Egypt for aid. He described the multitude of Byzantine troops and his dread of meeting them, and asked for money, men, and weapons with which to strengthen himself. Several armies were dispatched to him and everything he requested was sent; every governor in Syria was ordered to march with him, and they all hurried to do so. Thus an army assembled in Damascus such as, I believe, had never before assembled there for Islam.

[017] The emperor returned by the coastal road. He burned ʿArqa and demolished its fortress, then descended upon Tripoli on Tuesday, with six nights of Dhū al-Ḥijja 389 remaining. His army attacked the fortress on Thursday, the third day after his arrival. He dug a trench around his camp and cut off the fortress's water conduit. Two chelandia reached him carrying provisions and fodder, providing his army with abundance. He sent a detachment to Beirut and Jubayl; it captured some people, loaded the captives aboard the two chelandia, and sent them to his country. War broke out by land and sea between his men and the people of the fortress of Tripoli. They fought on Tuesday, the first of Muḥarram 390, and many of his men were killed or wounded. On Saturday, five nights into Muḥarram, he departed from them and headed for Antioch by way of Latakia. From his arrival at the New Bridge to his departure from Tripoli, the emperor had spent two months less one day in the lands of Islam. He appointed the magistros Nikephoros, the count who had been sent as an envoy to ʿAḍud al-Dawla Fannākhusraw in Baghdad when Skleros was with him, as governor of Antioch.

[018] The emperor remained with his armies in the districts of Mopsuestia and Tarsus for six months, intending to return to the lands of Islam. Then news reached him that David the kouropalates, king of the Khazars, had died in the city of al-Nayy. The emperor went there, followed with the armies by the magistros who governed Antioch. The emperor took possession of all the lands of the Khazars and appointed Byzantines to govern them on his behalf. The Kurdish emir Mumahhid al-Dawla Abū Manṣūr Saʿīd ibn Marwān, lord of Diyār Bakr, came before him and trod his carpet. The emperor made him a magistros and doux of the East, treated him well, bestowed gifts upon him, and sent him back to his own lands.

[019] Before setting out for the lands of Islam, the emperor had sent two envoys to al-Ḥākim to settle a truce and peace between them. One returned with the reply to their message, while the other remained in Egypt awaiting an answer. When the envoy who had stayed behind learned that the emperor had entered the lands of Islam, what he had done there, and the places he had conquered, he feared for his life and asked to be allowed to return to his master. His request was refused several times. Only when repeated reports confirmed that the emperor had departed from the lands of Islam and returned to his own territory was the envoy granted what he sought.

[020] Orestes, patriarch of Jerusalem, was appointed to travel with the envoy to establish the truce and conclude the peace. He and the envoy were brought together in the presence of Barjawān, the administrator of the state's affairs, and the envoy was told: “Whatever this patriarch settles, our master will carry out and approve.” Each of them received precious robes of honor and a generous gift. They traveled to the emperor's court, and Patriarch Orestes concluded a ten-year truce between the two rulers. He remained in Constantinople for four years and died there.

[021] Once the truce between the emperor and al-Ḥākim had been established, the emperor returned to campaign against Bulgaria. He remained there four years and won a great ascendancy over the Bulgarians through captivity and killing. Their king, the komētópoulos, fled before him. Basil captured a number of their fortresses, demolishing some and retaining the others.

[022] On Thursday, with four days of Rabīʿ II 390 remaining, al-Ḥākim killed the eunuch Barjawān. He confirmed Barjawān's Christian secretary, Fahd ibn Ibrāhīm, in the entirety of his service as al-Raʾīs, and appointed al-Ḥusayn ibn Jawhar alongside him, giving the latter the title Qāʾid al-Quwwād.

[023] Elias, patriarch of Alexandria, died in Fusṭāṭ on the fourth of Jumādā I 390. Arsenius, the bishop and brother of Orestes, patriarch of Jerusalem, attended the prayers over him. Yaʿqūb also arrived to attend, as an envoy drawn from the trusted pages, and the two instructed all the Melkite Christians to make Arsenius patriarch of Alexandria. They answered that they heard and obeyed. Anbā Elias was carried to Alexandria the day after his death. Anbā Arsenius summoned the bishops of the Alexandrian see and brought them there; the bishops performed the prayers over him on Monday, eleven nights into Rajab 390. Arsenius then toured the whole of his jurisdiction and its sees and returned to Fusṭāṭ, where he continued to reside until he was killed.

[024] In the twenty-sixth year of Basil's reign, Sergius al-Mānūyīlīs was made patriarch of Constantinople. He held the office for nineteen years and died.

[025] Al-Ḥākim repeatedly went down to Fusṭāṭ by night in disguise and took turns roaming its alleys and streets with only a few of his intimates. The officials responsible for Fusṭāṭ ordered the merchants to light lamps at their shops and houses and to conduct their buying and selling at night. At night, therefore, the streets and markets became as busy as by day. This state of affairs continued for a long time.

[026] Subjects and rabble gathered before him in the markets to wrestle, shove one another, and box. This led to a severe war between the militias of Fusṭāṭ and those of Cairo on Thursday, with six nights of Jumādā I 392 remaining. The people had split into factions behind two men who were wrestling before him, and fighting broke out at the place by the river called Qabr al-Ḥammār. They separated that day. Three days later, on Saturday, they assembled for a meeting they had agreed upon, carrying weapons and having made ready the implements of war. They fought fiercely, and many on both sides were killed. The people of Fusṭāṭ were defeated and pursued by the people of Cairo, who stripped the spectators of their clothing and plundered al-Qarāfa and al-Maʿāqir.

[027] On Wednesday, seven days into Jumādā I 393, al-Ḥākim killed Fahd ibn Ibrāhīm al-Raʾīs and confirmed al-Ḥusayn ibn Jawhar in oversight of affairs. On Monday, fourteen nights into Jumādā II that year, al-Ḥākim arrested and imprisoned the Christian secretaries of the government bureaus. A week later they were released at the request of his Christian physician Abū al-Fatḥ Sahl ibn Miqshar, who enjoyed a position of special favor with al-Ḥākim and had already held an honored and secure place with al-ʿAzīz. Each secretary was restored to the work he had previously overseen.

[028] The Jacobite Christians had begun to rebuild an ancient ruined church outside Fusṭāṭ at the place known as Rāshida. A group of Muslims rose up and demolished what had been built. Al-Ḥākim erected a great congregational mosque on its site. Two neighboring churches—one belonging to the Jacobites, the other to the Nestorians—were also demolished and made into two further mosques.

[029] The Melkite Greeks had a quarter in Cairo in which they lived. They were expelled from it; their houses and the two churches there were demolished, and the whole quarter was made into a single mosque called al-Azhar. The Greeks were transferred to the place known as al-Ḥamrāʾ. They made a quarter for themselves there and built three churches in place of those demolished in the former quarter.

[030] Al-Ḥākim prohibited the sale or public display of wine. Everything belonging to the taverners and brothel keepers was smashed, the wine was poured away, and the places to which people of corruption and debauchery repaired and in which they assembled were eliminated. Their gatherings were dispersed. He forbade women to uncover their faces behind funeral processions, prohibited weeping and wailing and the appearance of hired mourning women with drums and pipes for the dead, and forbade interference with the other singing girls.

[031] In the year 395 a man of ascetic manner named Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥusayn, known as al-Aṣfar, appeared in the districts of Aleppo. He dressed as one of the poor, and many people from the Maghrib and Muslim villagers followed him. An Arab notable known as al-Jamalī joined him. He descended upon Shayzar, led a night march with a group of Arabs and others who had rallied to him, encountered a Byzantine force, and attacked the governor of Artāḥ by surprise. He then moved toward the New Bridge, intending to reach Antioch by way of the Iron Bridge. At Mahrūna he was met by a patrikios named Bīghās, a page of the domestikos, who had an army with him. Bīghās killed al-Jamalī, and al-Aṣfar fled to the district of Sarūj.

[032] The magistros learned that al-Aṣfar was staying in al-Jazīra at a village in the district of Sarūj called Kafr ʿAzzūz, a populous and walled settlement. He crossed the Euphrates and descended upon it with forces from the frontier regions. Most of the people of those districts had gathered there because it was fortified. After remaining before it for twenty-eight days, he took it, captured twelve thousand people, seized an immense quantity of booty, and took al-Aṣfar's womenfolk. Al-Aṣfar himself escaped by night.

[033] All the Arab Banū Numayr and Banū Kilāb had gathered against the magistros with Waththāb ibn Jaʿfar, lord of Sarūj—about six thousand horsemen. He met and defeated them, then returned victorious and laden with booty to Antioch. The magistros pursued al-Aṣfar with determination and demanded that Waththāb, lord of al-Jazīra, surrender him. Waththāb did not think it prudent to do so, for fear of rousing the Muslims against him. Luʾluʾ the Elder, then lord of Aleppo, mediated an agreement between them: al-Aṣfar was to be imprisoned forever in the citadel of Aleppo. He was taken there in Shaʿbān 397, and Luʾluʾ put him in chains and confined him in the citadel. He remained imprisoned there until Aleppo fell to the Maghribis in the year 406.

[034] On Friday, the thirteenth of Muḥarram 395, al-Ḥākim ordered all Christians and Jews, apart from the Khaybarites, to wear belts around their waists and black turbans on their heads. This order was obeyed throughout all the provinces of his realm. He also commanded that curses against Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, ʿUthmān, Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān, other Companions, and all the Abbasid caliphs be written on congregational mosques, ordinary mosques, walls, and streets. This weighed heavily upon the Muslims who adhered to the Sunni school, and every kind of contempt and humiliation befell them.

[035] He prohibited people from drinking fuqqāʿ, and from eating the vegetable called mulūkhiyya, the vegetable known as arugula, ṭilnīs, and every kind of scaleless fish. Whenever anyone was found selling or buying any of these things, that person was punished and paraded in disgrace; few escaped being killed. He also ordered that no one enter a bathhouse without a waist-wrapper covering his private parts. Bathhouses were raided repeatedly, and a number of men found without wrappers were disciplined and paraded.

[036] He gave free rein to his sword in shedding the blood of people of every rank, until he had destroyed the shaykhs of Kutāma, the great men of his state, and their lesser men. He killed everyone in the prisons, which remained empty for a long time. Whenever anyone fell under suspicion, whether in a small matter or a great one, he killed and burned him. He persisted in this conduct for a time. Then the Kutāma assembled and appealed to him for protection, as did all the secretaries, officials, soldiers, merchants, subjects, Christians, and Jews, asking him to pardon them. He issued a written guarantee of safety to each group, gave one like it to the people of every market, and gave guarantees of safety to the subjects. He ordered that all the dogs in Fusṭāṭ be killed except hunting dogs, because they barked at night when he passed through the streets and roads. This was in Rabīʿ I 395.

[037] That year he established the “House of Knowledge” in Cairo and transferred to it many books from his treasuries, encompassing every branch of learning and letters. He installed a librarian and doorkeepers and paid them stipends from his own funds. He permitted all people without distinction to copy whatever they wished and to read whatever they desired, and he appointed people there to teach the sciences. A short time later he killed some of them, while the others went into hiding for fear of being killed.

[038] In the land of Barqa there appeared an Andalusi man known as al-Walīd ibn Hishām, who claimed descent from ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān. He settled among the Berber households of that region. They professed the Sunni school of Islam, and he became a teacher to their children. During his stay he set about strengthening them and encouraging them to help him wage war and fight under his command. He declared that he had no desire to establish a kingdom for himself: his purpose, he said, was to support the religion of Islam and to show indignation at the abuse and cursing of the Lawgiver's Companions and wives, since they were the imams and pillars of the religion and through them the dominion of Islam had arisen. He promised that, if the sovereignty for which he hoped became his, he would endow every man among them, grant him authority, and favor him in proportion to his deserts and what his deeds revealed. He won their hearts, and they submitted to what he asked.

[039] He also drew in the Arab tribe known as the Banū Qurra, encouraged them, and addressed them just as he had addressed the Berbers. He won them over, they too joined his following, and he took the oath of allegiance from Arabs and Berbers at the place known as ʿUyūn al-Naẓar in the mountain of Barqa on Saturday, seventeen nights into Jumādā II 395. They all returned to Barqa and descended upon it on Thursday evening, the last day of Jumādā II. That night they fought an army of al-Ḥākim stationed there with his governor, a eunuch named Sandal, and killed many of al-Ḥākim's troops. They returned to their camp below the southern mountain. On Friday, the first of Rajab, they went back to the city, displayed the banners of the rebel al-Walīd ibn Hishām, and took up positions before the wall to its south. The people fortified themselves within the city and shut its gates.

[040] Fierce fighting took place between the two armies at the city's southern gate. It continued for three days and many on both sides were killed. On the fourth day the rebels withdrew from the city. They had also learned that an army of the Lawāta, a Berber tribe, had arrived with a man known as Ibn Ṭaybūn to support its inhabitants. The rebel marched with his forces to meet them. The two sides met at a place on the road called Asqafiyya and fought fiercely. The Lawāta army was defeated; a great number were killed, Ibn Ṭaybūn among them, and their baggage was plundered. Those who survived fled wherever they could.

[041] Strengthened by the weapons he had taken as booty, al-Walīd ibn Hishām returned with his forces to Barqa on Wednesday, thirteen nights into Rajab. During his absence the people of the city had rebuilt the wall and dug trenches, and their spirits were high. He used threats and inducements to bring them into his obedience, but they refused and reviled him, so he fought them with the utmost force. He distributed his troops around the city walls, took part in combat himself, made the circuit of the city by night, and put to a most cruel death anyone he found outside it foraging, in order to terrify the people. He constructed three mangonels and used them throughout the fighting. He constricted the inhabitants, held the roads, and prevented any provisions or other supplies from entering. Their plight became severe, their circumstances grew straitened, and their food ran out. He maintained the siege in this manner for five months less ten days.

[042] Al-Ḥākim sent a large army from Egypt to confront him under a tall Turkish page named Yanāl. Yanāl approached the districts of Barqa, and the rebel advanced to meet him with all the Arabs and Berbers who followed him, about five thousand men. The armies met at ʿUyūn al-Naẓar in the district of Barqa, the place where the Arabs and Berbers had sworn allegiance to him. They fought for three consecutive days in Dhū al-Qaʿda 395. Most of Yanāl's army was killed. Yanāl was captured and put to death, and the Arabs pursued the survivors of his army, sparing none whom they caught.

[043] When the military and civilian population of Barqa learned of this, already weakened and besieged as they were, they could no longer remain. They fled, as did the governor Sandal, and took ship. Some went to Egypt and others by sea to Tripoli in the Maghrib. Al-Walīd ibn Hishām entered the city on Wednesday, the third of Dhū al-Ḥijja 395. He made public there his rite, the Sunni rite of the people, and was styled “Commander of the Faithful, al-Nāṣir li-Dīn Allāh.” He placed this title on his coinage, had the bidding prayer proclaimed for himself, and was nicknamed Abū Rakwa by the Egyptians. He laid hands upon the goods and property of the inhabitants of Barqa and took possession of them; they suffered great harshness at his hands.

[044] In Barqa and throughout the Maghrib there was a great dearth and severe epidemic that year, until bread could no longer be found in Barqa. On the first night of Rajab 396 a violent wind arose by night in Fusṭāṭ, so that the people cried to God Almighty for help. An intense redness like blazing fire could be seen at the corners of the sky. On Friday, the third day thereafter, there was also violent thunder in Fusṭāṭ, and enormous hailstones of a kind never before seen or known there fell to the ground. This was confined to the area around Fusṭāṭ and Cairo.

[045] On Tuesday night, two nights into Shaʿbān of that year, a great star appeared in the sky. It had a dazzling radiance, much agitation, and a light as bright as moonlight; on moonless nights it illuminated the darkness like the moon. It remained in this state for four months, then faded away and disappeared. Another great star, shining intensely, appeared in the west at the fall of dusk on Saturday night, the ninth of Shawwāl that year. It lengthened and grew, then divided into three parts and disappeared. That year, too, a town in the East known as Dīnawar was swallowed by the earth, and many of its inhabitants perished.

[046] When the dearth in Barqa became severe and food failed al-Walīd ibn Hishām and his followers, he left with the Arabs who had joined him and the Berbers who had gathered around him, together with their wives, children, mounts, and livestock. They went as though migrating from one land to another, and only a few remained behind. They traveled from Barqa until they reached the districts of Alexandria. Al-Ḥākim sent against them an Armenian page named Qābil with an army. They fought at Dhāt al-Ḥammām in the district of Alexandria, and Qābil and many of his companions were killed.

[047] Abū Rakwa descended upon Alexandria and fought hard for it, but accomplished nothing there. Al-Ḥākim summoned the Tamīmī Arabs who lived in the Syrian desert and called for al-Mufarrij ibn Daghfal ibn al-Jarrāḥ and three of his sons—ʿAlī, Ḥassān, and Maḥmūd—to come with a very large body of Arabs. Al-Ḥākim lavished stipends upon them and distributed weapons among them. He appointed al-Faḍl ibn Ṣāliḥ to go out against Abū Rakwa and lead the armies, giving him a great host that included most of the men of the realm, Easterners and Maghribis alike.

[048] The vanguards of the two armies met in Dhū al-Qaʿda that year at a place in the district of Alexandria called Tarrūja, and fighting broke out between them. Abū Rakwa's forces reached the Fayyum, seized it and the neighboring villages, and ravaged and plundered them. The people of Fusṭāṭ became disturbed and exceedingly afraid. Al-Ḥākim detached an army under ʿAlī ibn Falāḥ to guard and secure Giza. When Abū Rakwa learned this, he sent a detachment of the Arabs who had joined him toward Giza. On Friday, with eleven nights of Dhū al-Qaʿda remaining, they surprised Ibn Falāḥ in his camp. Battle was joined at the place called Arḍ al-Khamsīn, and a number of Ibn Falāḥ's men were killed—many of them. They were routed, and a large number drowned in the Nile. Abū Rakwa's men took possession of the equipment and matériel that Ibn Falāḥ had with him, withdrew at the end of that day, and went to the Fayyum, where their forces assembled.

[049] The disquiet and alarm of the people of Fusṭāṭ increased, and prices rose still further. It was therefore proclaimed: “Whoever raises a price thereby makes himself liable to death.” Prices returned to their former level. Al-Faḍl ibn Ṣāliḥ brought the forces attached to him to the Fayyum to meet Abū Rakwa. On Friday, three days into Dhū al-Ḥijja 396, the two sides met at a place in the Fayyum called Raʾs al-Birka. Abū Rakwa and his Arabs were defeated, and most of the Berbers were killed. Only a few women and children escaped. They were taken to Fusṭāṭ and released, but smallpox and epidemic disease struck them, and not one survived. Those who had remained behind in Barqa were overcome by hunger and died after some had eaten others because of the famine. Abū Rakwa escaped with the Arabs.

[050] Al-Faḍl ibn Ṣāliḥ offered the Banū Qurra a large sum of money to surrender him. They refused but dispersed from around him. Armies spread through the regions of Upper Egypt in search of him. When their stay grew long, the Tamīmī Arabs entered Fusṭāṭ, were treated well, and returned to their homelands.

[051] Al-Faḍl ibn Ṣāliḥ learned that the Arabs had carried Abū Rakwa to the edge of Nubian territory and that he intended to enter it. He sent to Hindīl, emir of the Arabs who administered the region of the Sudan, offering money and an iqṭāʿ for his capture. Hindīl pursued him to the territory of the Master of the Horses, who was stationed at the beginning of the Nubian province. He told that official about the rebel, his presence in their territory, and Hindīl's arrival in pursuit of him, warning that if he were not surrendered the armies would enter their lands and lay them waste. The official replied that only two Christians riding two Beja camels had crossed. “Those are the two I seek,” Hindīl said. The official answered: “If you find them, take them.”

[052] Hindīl searched and learned that the two were in one of the monasteries. He went to that monastery and found the two Beja camels with a boy. He asked the boy about his master, and there the man came, carrying a basket on his head between the two camels. Hindīl said to him: “Peace be upon you, Commander of the Faithful.” Abū Rakwa was left helpless in his hands. Hindīl seized, bound, and brought him to al-Faḍl, who carried him captive to Fusṭāṭ. He was paraded there on Sunday, with thirteen nights of Jumādā II 397 remaining. That same day he was killed at a place known as Masjid Tibr, crucified there, and burned with fire. Two years had elapsed from the day allegiance was sworn to him in Barqa to the day he was killed.

[053] During Abū Rakwa's uprising, the subjects in Fusṭāṭ resumed selling fuqqāʿ, mulūkhiyya, ṭilnīs, scaleless fish, and everything else that had been forbidden, though no order permitting them to do so had been issued. During that period al-Ḥākim ordered the inscriptions cursing Abū Bakr and the other named men to be scraped from the streets and elsewhere.

[054] We have already related that he had prohibited wine, forbidden its public display, renounced it, and abstained from drinking it. His physician Abū al-Fatḥ Manṣūr ibn Sahlān ibn Miqshar died, and in his place he employed Abū Yaʿqūb Isḥāq ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Anasṭās. This man advised him to drink wine and explained its benefits. Al-Ḥākim inclined to his advice and turned a blind eye to his former prohibition. He summoned singers and entertainers to his gathering, drank while they sang, cast restraint aside in their company, and treated them generously. People returned to their former practice of selling fuqqāʿ, mulūkhiyya, ṭilnīs, and every kind of scaleless fish.

[055] After a time the physician Abū Yaʿqūb ibn Anasṭās died. Al-Ḥākim then reversed himself and prohibited the drinking of wine with the greatest severity, making the prohibition stricter time after time. He even forbade the sale or transport of raisins and honey. Some was burned, and a great quantity belonging to merchants and worth a vast sum was sunk in the Nile. The vessels in which wine was stored were broken, and their manufacture was forbidden.

[056] In the year 397, corresponding to the year 1318 of Alexander, all the Christians in every region fell into great disagreement and considerable doubt over the calculation of Easter. Some held that in that year Christian Easter fell on April 6, the fifteenth day of the lunar month of Rajab. Others held that it fell on the following Sunday, April 13, the twenty-eighth day of the lunar month of Rajab.

[057] This doubt arose from the calculation of the Jewish Passover. It was commonly understood that the calculation of Christian Easter was derived from that of the Jewish Passover: on whatever weekday the Jewish Passover fell, the following Sunday would be Christian Easter. Thus, if the Jewish Passover fell on Saturday, Christian Easter would be the next day, Sunday; if the Jewish Passover fell on Sunday, that Sunday would be Palm Sunday and the following Sunday Christian Easter, for the two Passovers never fall on the same day.

[058] Some of the calculations on which they relied to determine this required the Jewish Passover to fall on Saturday, April 5, corresponding to the fourteenth day of the lunar month of Rajab. By that reckoning Christian Easter had to fall on the next day, Sunday. Other calculations required the Jewish Passover to fall on Sunday, April 6, corresponding to the fifteenth of Rajab. By this reckoning, too, the calculation required Christian Easter to fall on the Sunday following it. Some of the tables in which the Easter computation was set out supported the position of the first party, and others vindicated that of the second. Their disagreement continued for a long time.

[059] Letters went back and forth among all the different places, each community asking the others what sound conclusion they had reached, so that the letters of these people went to those and the replies of those returned to these, in order that they might follow whatever agreement they reached. This occurred in the seventh year of Arsenius's primacy.

[060] At that time Jerusalem had no patriarch. Since Orestes, patriarch of Jerusalem, had died in Constantinople, Arsenius, patriarch of Alexandria, had administered the see of Jerusalem. He ordained metropolitans and bishops for that see and consecrated its leaders. The leaders of the Jacobites and Nestorians also wrote to their adherents resident in Syria and elsewhere, informing them of what the people of Egypt had agreed upon and that it was correct. The letters arrived and everyone accepted them except the people of Jerusalem, who did not agree with them and held that the view upon which they themselves relied was correct.

[061] When this reached Arsenius, patriarch of Alexandria, he wrote to refute their position, telling them that the conclusion upon which they had agreed was mistaken and that the correct position was the one agreed by the people of Egypt. His letters reached them on Thursday evening in the week when the Melkites abstain from eating meat, a fast attributed to the emperor Heraclius. The people of Jerusalem had already prescribed those four days and eaten meat during them before the patriarch's letters reached them, and they had resolved that their fast and Easter should follow the reckoning they had agreed upon.

[062] At that point all the Christians in Egypt—Melkites, Nestorians, and Jacobites—agreed that the Jewish Passover was Saturday, April 5, the fourteenth of Rajab, and that Christian Easter was the next day, Sunday. The people of Jerusalem held the second view and relied upon it. Their letters and those of the people of Syria reached Egypt, each asking the others what had been agreed. Arsenius, patriarch of Alexandria, wrote to the people of Jerusalem with the conclusion he had verified in the position agreed by the people of Egypt, telling them that this was the correct view on which they must rely. When his letters reached them, they accepted them, abandoned their former view, fasted on the following Friday, and removed meat from their tables that night. The people of Antioch agreed with the position adopted by the people of Egypt.

[063] The Jews resident in Syria and Egypt celebrated their feast on Saturday, April 5, the fourth of Rajab. Christian Easter in every place was on Sunday, April 6, the fifteenth of Rajab, except among a group of Jacobites in Upper Egypt, who celebrated Easter on the following Sunday.

[064] I intend to compose a separate treatise explaining how this doubt arose, how it ought to be guarded against, and in which years it occurs. I had intended to set down here in this book a summary of what I mean to include in that treatise, but I saw that it lay outside the purpose I had set myself. Had what I have related not formed part of the body of events that ought to be recorded in histories and biographies, I would have passed over it.

[065] I direct anyone who wishes to learn, through an extended explanation, how the Christian Easter and fast are computed to the second treatise in the book of Patriarch Saʿīd ibn Biṭrīq, to which this composition of ours is a continuation and supplement. He devoted that entire treatise to explaining the basis for calculating the Jewish Passover and how the Christian Easter and fast are derived from it—especially in the second recension, which he altered and definitively established, for it is enlarged to twice the size of the first recension that he changed and replaced.

[066] Let us now return to the history where we left it. In the year 397 the Nile's rise reached fourteen cubits and sixteen fingerbreadths, then receded. Prices of wheat, all other grains, and provisions in Fusṭāṭ became unsettled and rose. Acute illnesses, diseases, and epidemics accompanied the high prices and struck down many of Fusṭāṭ's people.

[067] In Rajab 398 there was heavy rain in Fusṭāṭ, and much hail fell during the night. It continued until twilight disappeared. After the first sleep of the night, a great torrent descended from the mountain upon Cairo. In the quarter once known as that of the Greeks and later as that of the Kutāma, it brought down about three hundred houses, and many people died beneath the rubble. It also brought down structures belonging to the caliphal palace and several places in the quarter of ʿUbayd al-Shirāʾ, and killed many more people.

[068] Each year on Palm Sunday, the Christians in Jerusalem had been accustomed to carry a great olive branch from the church known as the Lazarion to the Church of the Resurrection, although the distance between them was considerable. They passed through the city's streets with readings and prayers, carrying the cross openly, while the governor of the city rode with them in full procession and protected them.

[069] In Fusṭāṭ and the other cities, too, it was customary on this feast to adorn the churches with olive branches and palm hearts and to distribute them to people that day so that they might receive their blessing. In this year al-Ḥākim forbade the people of Jerusalem to observe their custom. He ordered that on that day it was not to be practiced anywhere in his realm: not one olive leaf or palm frond was to be carried in any church, and none was to be seen in the hand of a Muslim, a Christian, or anyone else. He prohibited it in the strongest terms.

[070] On Saturday, the tenth of Rajab 398, the endowments of all churches and monasteries, recent and ancient, in Egypt alone and not in the other provinces, were seized and registered in his name. Qāʾid al-Quwwād al-Ḥusayn ibn Jawhar was removed from the administration of affairs. Ṣāliḥ ibn ʿAlī al-Duwaydārī was appointed to it in Shaʿbān 398 and, in Ramaḍān 399, was given the title Thiqat al-Thiqāt, al-Sayf wa-l-Qalam.

[071] Some secretaries denounced a Christian secretary known as Manṣūr ibn ʿAbdūn, who administered the Bureau of Syria, together with a group of Christian secretaries in the government bureaus of Fusṭāṭ and several Muslim secretaries. They were required to account for what they had administered and were subjected to confiscation. Al-Ḥākim ordered the Christians among them in particular to be tortured. A number were suspended by their hands. All their property was taken, and they remained hanging for days in the cold air, the heat of the sun, and the pouring rain, until several died under torture. Some then became Muslims and were released; the remainder were pardoned upon accepting Islam, and the claims against them were dropped. Manṣūr ibn ʿAbdūn worked hard to obtain their release without himself becoming a Muslim.

[072] The Nile fell to an extraordinary low level. Navigation ceased in the eastern channel from Tinnīs and al-Maḥalla, which became fords through which animals could wade. Its smell changed so much that people drew their drinking water from the Giza channel, outside al-Mukhtāra opposite Būlāq. The Nile's water also stopped rising in 398 and receded without reaching the required level. The disorder in prices in Fusṭāṭ increased, provisions became scarce, and people openly ate dogs and carrion. The epidemic grew severe and continued until the end of 399.

[073] That year al-Ḥākim ordered Christians to distinguish themselves from Muslims in the bathhouses by wearing a cross suspended from their necks, and Jews to distinguish themselves with a bell in place of the cross. They continued doing so for a time, after which the requirement lapsed. He wrote to Damascus ordering the demolition of the Church of the Lady, the Catholic church, a large and beautiful building. It was demolished in Rajab that year.

[074] In Ramaḍān he ordered that the qunūt prayer, which we have related had been discontinued in 370, be recited again according to the old custom; that anyone who wished might also perform the ḍuḥā prayer, which he too had forbidden; that no one abuse the early authorities and Companions whose names he had ordered to be displayed and cursed; and that every person might swear by whatever oath he wished and favored, in accordance with the predilections of the people. A short time later he prohibited all of this again and killed a number of those who had engaged in it.

[075] On a Sunday in Dhū al-Ḥijja that year, the Church of Mary al-Qanṭara in Fusṭāṭ was demolished down to its foundations, and its furnishings were plundered. It had many Christian tombs and burial places. Blacks, slaves, and rabble opened every one of them, dug up the bodies buried inside, and scattered their bones; dogs ate the flesh of those only recently buried. Beside this church stood a Jacobite church dedicated to Saint Cosmas. It too was seized and torn down.

[076] Al-Ḥākim seized all the real property of his mother, sister, paternal aunts, consorts, and the women closest to him, together with their estates and all their grants of houses, orchards, and bathhouses in Fusṭāṭ and Cairo, and took possession of them.

[077] He wrote to Barūkh in Ramla ordering him to demolish the Church of the Resurrection and eliminate its monuments, tearing out every trace of its venerated remains. Barūkh sent his son Yūsuf and al-Ḥusayn ibn Ẓāhir al-Wazzān, and with them Abū al-Fawāris al-Ḍayf. They took an inventory of the objects in it and razed the entire building to the ground, except for what proved impossible to demolish and too difficult to uproot. They demolished the Akrāniyūn, the Church of Saint Constantine, and everything within their precincts, making a thorough effort to eliminate the holy remains.

[078] Ibn Abī Ẓāhir strove to uproot the Holy Tomb and obliterate every trace of it. He broke up and removed most of it. Nearby was a women's monastery known as Dayr al-Sirrī, which was also demolished. The dismantling began on Tuesday, five days into Ṣafar 400. All its properties and endowments were seized, and all its vessels and metalwork confiscated.

[079] On Monday, with eleven nights of Ṣafar remaining that year, Ṣāliḥ ibn ʿAlī was dismissed from the administration of affairs. Oversight was returned to the Christian secretary Manṣūr ibn ʿAbdūn, who had previously suffered confiscation; after he had administered for a time, he was given the title al-Kāfī. When Ṣāliḥ ibn ʿAlī was dismissed, he was confined to his house. He remained there for eight months and some days. Although al-Ḥākim had issued him a strong written guarantee against himself, he betrayed and killed him in Shawwāl that year.

[080] On the night of al-Ḥamīm, the Christians in Fusṭāṭ had been accustomed to see the officer in charge of the lower police ride out early in the night in a great procession, handsomely attired, with processional candles and many torches burning before him. He went through the streets and proclaimed that Muslims were not to mingle with Christians that night or spoil their feast. At dawn the Christians went out to the bank of the Nile, and many immersed themselves in it.

[081] On that night the Melkites in particular used to leave the Catholic church in Qaṣr al-Shamʿ, known as the Church of Michael, in a great throng, with melodic readings, resounding chants, crosses displayed openly, and candles burning. They went in a bāʿūth procession to the Nile bank and prayed, openly all along their route. The bishop who presided over them preached in Arabic on the bank, and they prayed for the ruler and whichever of his intimates they wished. They returned to their church in the same fashion and completed their prayers there. In many years al-Ḥākim attended in disguise and watched them.

[082] The people of Fusṭāṭ—people of the court and adherents of its different religions—experienced at this feast a delight and joy they had at no other day or feast of the year. In 400 al-Ḥākim forbade everyone to do any of it. No person at all was to engage in any such practice that night. To this day it has been disregarded and dismissed from memory, treated like every other day, without preparation or celebration.

[083] On Tuesday, the eighth of Ramaḍān 400, al-Ḥākim also ordered the demolition of Dayr al-Quṣayr, a Melkite monastery on the Muqaṭṭam hills built over the tomb of Saint Arsenius, and the plunder of everything it contained. Arsenius, patriarch of Alexandria, was then residing there in devotion. He and all the monks who inhabited it were expelled. Patriarch Arsenius had surrounded the monastery with a strong wall, restored and renovated it, and built many structures inside it. All were demolished and the monastery laid waste.

[084] Outside it the Melkite Christians had tombs and burial places for their dead. Subjects and slaves opened every one, dug up those buried there, took their coffins, and scattered their limbs. It was an appalling thing, the like of which had neither been witnessed nor occurred in former times. When news reached al-Ḥākim, after it was too late, he ordered an end to the opening of graves and forbade interference with the dead.

[085] He also sent orders to Damietta, where the Church of Mart Maryam, known as the Old Woman's Church, began to be destroyed on Friday, twelve nights into Ramaḍān that year. It too contained many burial places belonging to the city's Melkite Christians; these were dug up. The church was devastated, its traces entirely removed, and its vessels and all its endowments seized. It was said that, after the Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem, no church like it existed in the many lands under Islamic rule: its construction was beautiful, its fabric vast, and it possessed implements and vessels of gold and silver, many other objects, and much real property. A guard post was built on its site and a mosque established within it.

[086] Arsenius, patriarch of Alexandria, was secretly killed on Tuesday evening, with eight nights of Dhū al-Qaʿda 400 remaining—the fourth of Tammūz in the year 1329 of Alexander. He had held the primacy for ten years and eleven solar days. In his last days he had followed a good path, imposing upon himself prayer, fasting, worship, and ascetic practice, in all of which he went very far.

[087] Al-Ḥākim increased his killing of everyone in his service. He gave free rein to his sword against the leading men of the realm and its chief supporters—secretaries, commanders, soldiers, and subjects—and cut off their hands. He carried this to excess, so that his lands fell into disorder and the chiefs among his men perished. Al-Ḥusayn ibn Jawhar, Qāʾid al-Quwwād, began to fear for his life, since no other renowned or distinguished chief of the state remained. He fled with his sons, his son-in-law ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Nuʿmān, and the latter's two sons. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz had held the office of chief judge before he was replaced by Mālik ibn Saʿīd ibn Mālik. All of them went to the Banū Qurra in the region of Alexandria, joined them, and sought their protection. They secretly carried with them whatever coined money they could. The Banū Qurra received them well and they remained among them, while all their properties in Fusṭāṭ and elsewhere were seized. Their grants were confiscated, everything in their houses was removed, and all was placed under guard.

[088] On an earlier occasion, the two men had likewise learned that al-Ḥākim intended to kill them. On Wednesday, eleven nights into Jumādā II 399, they fled together with their sons and went to the Muqaṭṭam hills. They remained there three days, until hardship overwhelmed them and they came close to dying of hunger and thirst. They returned in the deep darkness of Saturday night, fourteen nights into the month, sought sanctuary at al-Ḥākim's palace, and cast themselves down at its gate. He summoned and questioned them. They explained that fear and dread of being killed had driven them to flee in search of safety. He reassured them and sent them home, invested them in robes from his own wardrobe, and issued a written guarantee for their lives, their sons, their households, their property, and all their possessions. It was read to them in the caliphal palace in the presence of the people of his realm.

[089] When Qāʾid al-Quwwād and his sons fled on this second occasion, all who remained in the state became convinced that they would be destroyed. When this reached al-Ḥākim, he issued a renewed guarantee to every group of people and had the guarantees read in his palace. He reassured everyone and gave them security through his pardon. He immediately ordered that the qunūt and ḍuḥā prayers be resumed, and that the phrase “Come to the best of works” be dropped from the call to prayer. This addition had not previously been known in the call to prayer; Jawhar alone had added it when he entered Egypt.

[090] Al-Kāfī Manṣūr ibn ʿAbdūn was removed from the administration of affairs and killed a short time after his dismissal. On the very day of his dismissal, Thursday, the fourth of Muḥarram 401, affairs were entrusted to Aḥmad ibn al-Qaṣūrī; al-Ḥākim killed him as well on the ninth day of his administration. In his place he appointed the Christian Zarʿa ibn ʿĪsā ibn Nasṭūrus and, after Zarʿa had administered for several days, gave him the title al-Shāfī.

[091] When al-Ḥusayn ibn Jawhar and those who had fled with him had remained among the Banū Qurra for a long time, al-Ḥākim wrote asking them to return to his court. He promised to treat them well and gave them a second guarantee for their persons and all their possessions in which they could place their trust. He issued a diploma that was read publicly at his palace and had Chief Judge Mālik ibn Saʿīd ibn Mālik and a group of the ashrāf witness his pledge to fulfill its terms.

[092] They agreed to return and entered Fusṭāṭ in Muḥarram 401. With al-Ḥākim's permission all the people of the realm went out to meet them. He issued them another renewed guarantee containing a solemn oath and confirmed covenants, and had Chief Judge Mālik ibn Saʿīd and a group of his upright witnesses attest what he had affirmed against himself. He restored everything taken from them. Al-Ḥusayn ibn Jawhar sent a copy of the guarantee to Mecca and had it hung on the Kaaba, to press al-Ḥākim to fulfill its terms.

[093] This availed them nothing. In that same month al-Ḥākim betrayed them and arrested al-Ḥusayn ibn Jawhar and ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn al-Nuʿmān when they had ridden to the palace. When word reached their sons, Jaʿfar ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn Jawhar went into hiding. He was sought but not found. The roads were closed and searched, and an exhaustive hunt failed to catch him. When al-Ḥākim despaired of finding him, Chief Judge Mālik ibn Saʿīd came and placed al-Ḥusayn ibn Jawhar and ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz under oath that they would not flee, disappear, go into hiding, or leave the city, and that they would present themselves whenever summoned. They were released. Jaʿfar emerged from hiding, received a robe of honor, and was reassured and treated with familiarity.

[094] On Friday, the twelfth of Jumādā II 401, al-Ḥusayn and ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz rode to the palace as usual. They were arrested and killed. Ismāʿīl ibn Ṣāliḥ, brother of al-Faḍl ibn Ṣāliḥ, was killed with them; al-Faḍl himself had been killed about nine months earlier.

[095] Jaʿfar and Abū Jaʿfar, the two sons of al-Ḥusayn ibn Jawhar, and their underage younger brother, named Jawhar, fled to Syria when Ibn al-Jarrāḥ was master of it, intending to seek the emperor Basil. They wrote to Michael, the patrikios governing Antioch and known as al-Qaṭṭāniyūs, for permission to come there. He ordered them to wait until he could seek the emperor's permission on their behalf. They could not afford to wait and resolved to go to Iraq instead. They approached Ḥassān ibn al-Mufarrij ibn al-Jarrāḥ and asked him to send them on their way.

[096] Al-Ḥākim offered Ḥassān two hundred thousand dinars to seize them. By way of deception, Ḥassān told them, “Bestir yourselves on your own behalf,” and sent them on until they encamped at a place called al-Suwaydāʾ, one day's journey from Damascus. He secretly advised Mukhtār al-Dawla Abū ʿAbd Allāh ibn Nazzāl to hurry against them. They were seized and killed in Damascus, and their heads were carried to Fusṭāṭ in Rabīʿ II 403.

[097] In Muḥarram 401 al-Ḥākim ordered the protected Christians and Jews to replace the colored belts they wore and to wear only black belts, together with black turbans. In Ramaḍān that year he renewed the warning against making or drinking wine, secretly or openly. He ordered the jars, vessels, gourds, large wine-jars, all musical instruments, and everything else of the kind in people's possession to be smashed. He warned them not to keep, make, or use any of it and threatened severe punishment. A great quantity of wine was smashed in the streets and musical instruments burned; the order was obeyed throughout his realm.

[098] He forbade Christians anywhere in his realm to present wine or use it as an offering in their Eucharists. The Christians came to offer in place of wine water in which raisins or a vine cutting had been soaked.

[099] He closed the kitchens and daily tables maintained for him, as well as the public banquets prepared on the great feasts. He restricted his food to what came to him each day from his mother, the Lady. Boats called ḥamāʾim arrived from Tripoli in Syria bearing a gift of dried and fresh fruit and other foods. He ordered all the boats sunk in the Nile at the place called al-Maqs and had the sailors aboard them killed. The manufacture at Tinnīs and Damietta of the clothing made for his use also ceased.

[100] Al-Ḥākim placed the Turk Barūkh, titled ʿAlam al-Dawla, in command of all his armies, gave him the title Commander of Commanders, appointed him governor of Syria, and sent him there. Barūkh took his wife, the daughter of the vizier Yaʿqūb ibn Yūsuf ibn Killis, together with all their baggage and precious possessions. A caravan of merchants accompanied him with extensive wealth and much baggage. Al-Mufarrij ibn Daghfal ibn al-Jarrāḥ and his sons intercepted them on the road outside Gaza, attacked them, seized everything they carried, captured Barūkh, and killed him.

[101] Ibn al-Jarrāḥ marched to Ramla and entered it. He allowed the Arabs to plunder the city. They took the people's baggage; he arrested those present, subjected them to confiscation, and took their money, so that a number of people there were reduced to poverty. He had the bidding prayer proclaimed for Abū al-Futūḥ al-Ḥasan ibn Jaʿfar al-Ḥasanī, then emir of Mecca, named him Commander of the Faithful, gave him the title al-Rāshid li-Dīn Allāh, and struck coin in his name. The Arabs took possession of Syria and ruled it from al-Faramā to Tiberias. They besieged the coastal fortresses for a long time but could take none of them.

[102] Al-Mufarrij ibn al-Jarrāḥ compelled the Christians to rebuild the Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem. He placed its reconstruction under a bishop of the city of Jubayl named Anbā Theophilus, who held office for eight years and died. Al-Mufarrij ibn al-Jarrāḥ supported him in rebuilding the Church of the Resurrection, and he restored parts of it as far as his means and ability allowed.

[103] Ibn al-Jarrāḥ summoned Abū al-Futūḥ al-Ḥasanī from Mecca. He traveled to Syria and reached Ramla on Saturday, with six nights of Ṣafar 403 remaining. He entered riding a horse fitted with an iron saddle and bridle and lodged in the governor's residence. He drew up a document, read to the people, stating that no one was to kiss the ground before him, for this was something reserved for God Almighty alone. He had brought much wealth from the Hijaz; the Arabs consumed it, kept him under restraint, and did not give him the position for which they had prepared him. His authority came close to collapse.

[104] Al-Ḥākim had offered Ḥassān ibn al-Mufarrij large sums to act against Abū al-Futūḥ without his father's knowledge. Ḥassān advised Abū al-Futūḥ to leave and sent with him one of his trusted pages, known as Abū al-Ghūl, who brought him to safety. When Abū al-Futūḥ returned to Mecca, he restored the bidding prayer for al-Ḥākim according to the former custom, after having proclaimed it for himself. He wrote asking al-Ḥākim to accept his excuse and pardon him. Al-Ḥākim accepted his excuse, sent him a gift, and treated him well.

[105] Syria remained in the hands of the Banū al-Jarrāḥ, who held it by force until Muḥarram 404. Their repeated confiscations and their oppression of the people grew severe. Many Christians resident in Syria fled; all went to Byzantine territory, most making for Latakia and Antioch and settling there.

[106] In Jumādā I 402 al-Ḥākim ordered the expulsion of all singers and entertainers and their dispersal through the provinces. They assembled and appealed to him for protection, asking his pardon. They were allowed to repent and were placed under oath never again to practice it or have anything to do with it.

[107] He imposed restrictions on raisins and honey and seized control of them. They were released little by little: raisins were sold in quantities of five raṭls or less and honey in quantities of three raṭls or less to people who used them for sustenance. Trustees were stationed with their vendors to supervise this. When word reached him that the two commodities were being purchased and used to make the forbidden intoxicant, he made the restrictions stricter and prohibited their sale altogether. He then ordered the raisins burned; about five thousand qinṭārs were burned in Fusṭāṭ. The honey was likewise diverted, poured into the Nile, and submerged. Their importation and any future public display were forbidden. When the grapes ripened and people began secretly purchasing and pressing them, he ordered the grapes too to be thrown into the Nile and forbade their sale or consumption.

[108] The Christian al-Shāfī Zarʿa ibn ʿĪsā ibn Nasṭūrus died on Monday, twelve nights into Ṣafar 403. His conduct had been good and his way of life praiseworthy, and he had been loved by his ruler and all the soldiers and secretaries. On Tuesday, with eleven nights of Rabīʿ I remaining that year, al-Ḥusayn ibn Ṭāhir al-Wazzān was appointed after him to administer affairs. Al-Ḥākim later gave him the title Amīn al-Umanāʾ, and killed him on Monday, the eleventh of Jumādā II 405.

[109] On Friday, eight days into Rabīʿ II 403, al-Ḥākim ordered Christians and Jews, apart from the Khaybarites, to wear pitch-black ṭaylasān mantles and black turbans and to suspend wooden crosses from their necks in addition to the belt. They were not to ride horses, but to use wooden stirrups and saddles and bridles made of black straps, with no ornament or trace of silver visible upon them; nor were they to employ a Muslim. They were compelled to observe this throughout every province of his realm. They wore crosses one handspan long. After a month he altered the requirement and made them a span by a span.

[110] He immediately ordered the names to be recorded of all unemployed Muslim secretaries and former secretaries fit for service in his government bureaus and provincial administrations, so that he might use them to replace the Christians. All his secretaries, servants, and the physicians of his realm were Christians, apart from a few secretaries. Ugly accusations and alarming rumors about them multiplied.

[111] All the Christian secretaries, officials, physicians, and others in Fusṭāṭ therefore assembled with their bishops and priests and went to his palace on Thursday, the twelfth of Rabīʿ II that year. At the Cairo Gate they uncovered their heads and proceeded barefoot, weeping and crying out to him for protection, asking pardon and forgiveness. All along their way they continued to kiss the earth until they reached his palace in that state. He sent one of his companions to them, who took a petition they had written asking for his pardon and the removal of his wrath. The messenger returned to them with a gracious reply. Al-Ḥusayn ibn Ẓāhir al-Wazzān addressed their elders gently on the matter and made promises that gave their minds confidence and set their hearts at rest. They began to believe their condition would improve and that his intentions toward them were good, and consoled themselves with the hope of a decree proclaiming their security and peace of mind.

[112] On Sunday, the fifteenth of Rabīʿ II, they were instead ordered to enlarge the crosses on their necks. Each was to be a royal cubit long and equally wide, with an opening two-thirds of a span and a thickness of one finger. His purpose was to torment them, especially his own government secretaries and those employed in his service, for whom he could find no replacements.

[113] Most astonishing of all, in Ṣafar 402 he had ordered that no cross be displayed or even seen and that no bell be struck. The crosses had accordingly been removed from the churches, and every trace of them effaced from the exteriors of churches and sanctuaries. Now he ordered the cross to be displayed in this conspicuous fashion.

[114] The Jews had worn nothing made of wood with their distinctive black clothing. It was therefore immediately proclaimed among them that they too must suspend from their necks wooden spheres weighing five raṭls, signifying the head of the calf they had formerly worshiped. Threats were made against the Christians, terror was spread among them, and rumors and accusations multiplied.

[115] Many senior Christian secretaries, administrators, and others became Muslims, followed by a great many common Christians. A group of Jews also became Muslims. The rumors against those Christians who remained unconverted grew still more intense. It was proclaimed that their limbs would be cut off and their property and households made lawful plunder for the slaves and retainers. Men were sent to seek and keep watch on anyone who absented himself. A group of secretaries and administrators hid; the houses of those in concealment were plundered and their estates seized. Most became Muslims, each following the example of the others, until only a few individuals remained. For several days no Christian was seen in the streets.

[116] Most Jews held fast, and only a few became Muslims. Christians in the other cities likewise held to their religions; only a few in the other provinces of the realm converted. The people of Fusṭāṭ alone were in the condition we have described because they saw what was happening at close hand and recognized the evil intent directed toward them.

[117] In the midst of what befell them during those days, al-Ḥākim granted all the churches and monasteries, old and new, in Fusṭāṭ and throughout the provinces of his realm to the military. There were many thousands, together with all their objects, metalwork, and furnishings. He gave them away so that the soldiers could demolish them and take the rubble. All were demolished, and a few were made into mosques. He sent written orders to every province that the churches' landmarks be effaced from the face of the earth and all trace of them removed. This was done: their foundations were torn out of the ground. In a number of cities, the bones of the dead were removed from churches and used by people as fuel in bathhouse furnaces. The manuscripts and books found in the churches were burned. In each city the Christians who had administered them were made to provide the money paid to the workers and demolition crews who destroyed the churches.

[118] Every church in the provinces of his realm was thus destroyed except the monastery in the Mareotis district of Alexandria long famous as Scetis and known as the Monastery of Abū Maqār, together with the neighboring monasteries. He learned that the two Arab tribes known as the Banū Qurra and Banū Kilāb were defending it and would allow no one to approach it, because it provided them benefits. Against his will, he left it alone.

[119] He granted the churches of al-Qulzum, Dayr Rāya, and the Monastery of Mount Sinai to an Arab known as Ibn Ghiyāth and instructed him to demolish the Monastery of Mount Sinai and build a mosque there. Ibn Ghiyāth demolished some of the churches of al-Qulzum and took all their objects. He demolished one of the two churches at Dayr Rāya and took its furnishings and objects as well. Then he went to the Monastery of Mount Sinai to carry out his orders.

[120] At Mount Sinai there was then a secretary named Salmūn ibn Ibrāhīm, one of the prominent men of Fusṭāṭ, who had recently become a monk and taken up residence there. He was an elderly man of wisdom, intelligence, and tact. He went out to meet Ibn Ghiyāth, received him graciously, and told him that the bishop and monks would assist him in whatever he sought and would not prevent him. He surrendered all the monastery's objects and its gold and silver metalwork. Addressing him courteously, he explained that demolishing the monastery would be difficult for Ibn Ghiyāth and everyone else because it was fortified and solidly built; it would require the expenditure of a large sum exceeding what he would gain from it. He offered him money to withdraw, leave it alone, and refrain from any action against it. An amount acceptable to Ibn Ghiyāth was agreed and paid, and he departed without touching the monastery.

[121] In Rajab 403 al-Ḥākim forbade people to kiss the earth before him, kiss his hand, cast themselves down in prostration to the ground, or address him as “Our Master.” The only form of address and greeting was to be: “Commander of the Faithful, and the mercy and blessings of God.” He made a display of asceticism. He wore wool next to his skin and a cloth on his head, then began to wear a black woolen turban and made all his clothing woolen. He let his hair grow, stopped riding horses, and continued to ride donkeys with an iron saddle and bridle. He mingled with the people without a parasol, outriders before him, or anyone to screen the people or keep them away. He took their petitions and met their needs, gave gifts to those who begged from him, and greatly increased his alms to the poor and those seeking charity. He took many mounted attendants into his service and bestowed abundant favors and kindness upon them. He summoned a group of Quran readers, required them to reside in his palace, and granted them generous stipends, allowances, and substantial iqṭāʿs.

[122] He appointed two upright legal witnesses to the police in Fusṭāṭ and every city. He ordered that no prescribed punishment was to be imposed upon anyone guilty of an offense or perpetrator of a crime until the two witnesses had verified that he deserved it. The punishment applicable to a person like him was then to be imposed and he was to be released. No one was to be fined a dinar or dirham for an offense, and anyone against whom the allegation and accusation was not proved by evidence before the two witnesses and whose alleged act was not verified was to be left alone. The same applied to judgments and all other claims. He manifested a justice the like of which had never been heard.

[123] By my life, throughout his days the people of his realm remained secure in their property, though not at ease about their lives. He never reached out to take anyone's money. On the contrary, his generosity was great, his largesse abundant, and his gifts extensive. He killed an innumerable number of chiefs of his state and people of his realm who possessed immense wealth, yet he did not seek to take the property of any one of them for himself—especially when a man had an heir. When someone had no heir, his estate was requested from al-Ḥākim, and in most cases he gave it away.

[124] He abolished all customary assessments and taxes. He ordered that anyone from whom real estate or other property had been taken without right or through confiscation in his days or those of his father and grandfather was to have it released. A great many people recovered real estate and unrecoverable debts owed them by his treasuries, large sums of which they had wholly despaired. Similarly, one after another, he granted and gave away most state-owned villages, provincial revenues, real estate, and estates to those who requested them, so that by the time he disappeared little remained.

[125] He won over most inhabitants of distant places to his allegiance and support. The bidding prayer was proclaimed for him in Kufa. His mission reached the gates of Baghdad and all the lands of Rayy. He sent lavish and substantial sums to governors and rebels in Iraq to draw them to him.

[126] An Iraqi merchant met him and appealed for justice. He said that he had carried his merchandise through dangerous places and traveled with it among Bedouin and highwaymen, and it had remained safe, only to be taken from him in his own country. He asked al-Ḥākim, if he saw fit, either to replace it for him at once or to write him a memorandum so that it could be replaced when al-Ḥākim entered Baghdad and took possession of it. The merchant was certain that al-Ḥākim would take Baghdad and other realms then outside his grasp. Al-Ḥākim admired his words, granted what we have mentioned, and the man received from him coined money amounting to thousands of dinars.

[127] In Shawwāl that year, he ordered an end to the abuse and cursing of Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, the other Companions, and the early authorities. He invoked God's mercy upon them, recounted their merits, and described the honor and veneration that the revealed law required for them.

[128] In Muḥarram 404 he ordered the expulsion of all astrologers and practitioners of judicial astrology. They assembled and cried to him for protection. He allowed them to repent and placed them under oath never to engage in, practice, or study judicial astrology. If any had a stipend from him, he continued it and did not withhold it.

[129] That same month he emancipated every one of his male and female slaves, setting them all free for the sake of God Almighty. He gave them control of their own persons and the freedom to dispose as they chose of everything they owned and had acquired from him and his father.

[130] Before this he had expelled from his palace a number of his concubines and the mothers of his children, despite his great passion for sexual intercourse. He had even drowned some in boxes made for them: the boxes were nailed shut around them, weighted with stones, and thrown into the Nile. The Lady, his sister, took into her protection the mother of his son and her child Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī, fearing for them both. They remained in her palace, far from him, until he disappeared.

[131] Word reached al-Ḥākim that a group of Christians had grown apprehensive, feared remaining in his lands, and found the distinctive dress burdensome; they were secretly slipping away to Byzantine territory and bribing the officers at posts and roads to let them pass. In Ṣafar of that same year he therefore authorized the Christians and Jews, by a diploma that was read publicly, to go to Byzantine territory with their families, property, and everything in their possession, and to dispose of it as they chose, in safety and peace of mind. This was an act of kindness and clemency toward them. No one was compelled to leave; the choice was theirs. He wrote accordingly to every province of his realm, and the order was obeyed.

[132] Many Christians who had held to their religion and many who had become Muslims then openly departed from Syria, Egypt, and elsewhere. After selling the estates and furnishings too burdensome to carry, they went to Latakia, Antioch, and other places in Byzantine territory. No one interfered with them or searched them.

[133] Al-Mufarrij ibn Daghfal ibn al-Jarrāḥ had held Syria and ruled it for two years and five months, during which al-Ḥākim sent neither an army nor a force against him. In Muḥarram 404, however, al-Ḥākim sent Quṭb al-Dawla ʿAlī ibn Falāḥ to confront him with a great army containing most of the men of his realm, and ordered the troops in Damascus and the coastal districts to meet him as well. The forces advanced from both directions. Al-Mufarrij ibn Daghfal ibn al-Jarrāḥ happened to die just then. When his sons learned that the armies were advancing, they withdrew with the Arabs into the desert and abandoned Ramla and the other cities they had seized.

[134] Quṭb al-Dawla ʿAlī ibn Falāḥ entered Ramla. Anbā Philotheos, patriarch of Jerusalem, fled from Jerusalem and remained in hiding for a time. He later returned to Jerusalem and received good treatment from Quṭb al-Dawla.

[135] In Rabīʿ I 404 al-Ḥākim designated Abū al-Qāsim ʿAbd al-Raḥīm ibn Ilyās ibn Aḥmad ibn al-Mahdī bi-llāh, Commander of the Faithful, as his heir and made him caliph after him. The bidding prayer was proclaimed for ʿAbd al-Raḥīm from the pulpits throughout the realm; his name was inscribed on coinage, official textiles, and banners; and all the retainers and soldiers swore allegiance to him. The caliphal mounts, robes, jewels, and all the other regalia except the parasol were brought to him, and he was permitted to array himself with them. The heir rode the bejeweled caliphal mounts, wearing the caliphal robes and jewels, while al-Ḥākim rode a donkey. He wore white and then black woolen clothes, a blue cloth and black turban on his head, and had an iron saddle beneath him.

[136] Al-Ḥākim ordered women to remain in their homes. He forbade free women and slave women, young and old alike, to go out into the street or appear in any fashion, warning them in the strongest terms. If necessity required the attendance of a washerwoman or midwife for a woman giving birth or dying, or of some other woman who had to travel or leave her house, permission was requested in a petition submitted to him. He endorsed its reverse in his own hand to the officer in charge of the police, who assigned someone he trusted to escort the woman sought from her residence to her destination. Women remained confined in this manner until 409.

[137] The Arabic text marks a lacuna at this point.

[138] Al-Ḥākim had brought the black eunuch ʿAyn into his favor, but then took offense at him and cut off his right hand. Afterward he singled him out for even greater favor, giving him the titles Qāʾid al-Quwwād and Ustādh al-Ustādhīn, bestowing a kunya upon him, and promoting him over all the men of his state and chiefs of his realm. His inclination and attachment to ʿAyn grew. He entrusted him with important governorships, granted him precious state estates and generous iqṭāʿs, and sent him fine objects of great value. After a time he again turned against him and cut out his tongue.

[139] He cut off the two hands of ʿAyn's secretary, ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad al-Jarjarāʾī. After cutting ʿAyn's tongue, al-Ḥākim followed the deed by increasing his gifts and favors and advancing him still further, doubling what he had previously bestowed.

[140] He also became intimate with Chief Judge Mālik ibn Saʿīd, Amīn al-Umanāʾ al-Ḥusayn ibn Ṭāhir al-Wazzān, the physician Ghiyāth ibn Sibāʿ, and a group of his relatives descended from al-Mahdī. He ordered them to remain with him when he rode and during his private hours, inclined toward them, bestowed favors upon them, and promoted them handsomely. He then killed them one after another, in accordance with his customary treatment of those whom he singled out and drew near. He killed so many chiefs of his state—emirs and commanders, eminent secretaries, and mounted attendants he had taken into his service—that listing them all would take too long.

[141] Once a boil appeared on him and caused pain. A common practitioner of surgery came and, when the material in it had fully ripened, applied something that opened it. Al-Ḥākim found relief and ease. He nevertheless became angry with the surgeon who had treated him from the beginning of the illness and killed him, together with other physicians serving him at the time.

[142] On another night he passed the shop of a man carving and selling roast meat. He took the man's cleaver and, at the gate of the lower police in Fusṭāṭ near the shop, used it to kill one of the favored mounted attendants who was making the rounds with him. He went on his way. The dead attendant remained where he lay, and no one dared approach him for the rest of that night or part of the following day. Al-Ḥākim then sent a splendid shroud and a great quantity of perfume, ordered the man washed, embalmed, shrouded, and buried, invoked God's mercy upon him, and built a domed structure over his grave.

[143] After killing Mālik ibn Saʿīd, al-Ḥākim entrusted the office of chief judge to Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh on Sunday, with nine nights of Shawwāl 405 remaining. A group of Egyptians met al-Ḥākim and asked him to qualify them as upright witnesses. He gave them permission. Others imitated them in meeting him and making the same request, and he granted theirs as well, recognizing somewhat more than twelve hundred men as upright witnesses. Chief Judge Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad then informed him that many did not merit that standing and could not be trusted to give testimony. Al-Ḥākim permitted him to examine them and retain those he saw fit, and the judge qualified in their place a group of trustworthy men who exceeded them in number.

[144] After Amīn al-Umanāʾ al-Ḥusayn ibn Ṭāhir was killed, oversight of affairs was returned to the brothers al-Ḥusayn and ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, sons of Abū Sayyid, on Saturday, thirteen nights into Shaʿbān 405. They administered for two months. Al-Ḥākim killed them on Thursday, the fifteenth of Shawwāl that year.

[145] Al-Faḍl ibn Jaʿfar ibn al-Furāt was appointed to administer affairs and oversee finances on Saturday, the first of Dhū al-Qaʿda. He held office for five days, and al-Ḥākim killed him on the sixth day of his administration. Al-Ḥākim then remained without an intermediary for four months. The officials of the bureaus entered his presence, sought permission in matters that required it, and received his orders in each area.

[146] On Thursday, with two nights of Ṣafar 406 remaining, al-Ḥākim appointed the designated heir ʿAbd al-Raḥīm ibn Ilyās to act for him in this work. ʿAbd al-Raḥīm remained administrator until he departed for Syria.

[147] Al-Ḥākim had closed the chamber in which allegiance was taken from his adherents and readings from his doctrines were given to them each week; it remained closed for a time. He now gave Khutakīn al-Ḍayf the title Dāʿī al-Duʿāt, restored the chamber to his charge, and ordered him to resume the former practice there. He later added to his title “al-Ṣādiq al-Amīn al-Maʾmūn,” and likewise bestowed titles upon the other men of his state, including the emirs, commanders, and most secretaries.

[148] Luʾluʾ, the page of Ibn Ḥamdān, and his son Manṣūr ibn Luʾluʾ had taken control of Aleppo after the death of Abū al-Faḍāʾil ibn Saʿd al-Dawla ibn Ḥamdān. Manṣūr ibn Luʾluʾ placed the two sons of Abū al-Faḍāʾil under such severe constraint that they secured their release by agreeing to leave Aleppo, and they made their way to al-Ḥākim.

[149] Abū al-Hayjāʾ ibn Saʿd al-Dawla also escaped from Aleppo disguised as a woman and sought refuge with Basil, emperor of the Byzantines. Luʾluʾ died in Muḥarram 399, and the emirate passed to his son, Murtaḍā al-Dawla Abū Naṣr Manṣūr ibn Luʾluʾ. Many Aleppans disliked him and wanted Abū al-Hayjāʾ, as did the emirs of the Banū Kilāb who administered the territory of Aleppo.

[150] Abū al-Hayjāʾ's brother-in-law, Mumahhid al-Dawla Abū Manṣūr Aḥmad ibn Marwān, lord of Diyār Bakr and son of the sister of Nādā the Kurd, urged him to leave Byzantine territory for Aleppo. Ibn Marwān asked the emperor to release Abū al-Hayjāʾ, saying that he would support him in recovering the emirate and would require no aid from the emperor's realm in either men or money. The emperor permitted Abū al-Hayjāʾ to act as he chose. He went to Mayyāfāriqīn, where his father-in-law Ibn Marwān sent with him one of his companions and fewer than two hundred horsemen. He proceeded to al-Jazīra. A group of emirs of the Banū Kilāb met him and pledged to fight at his side and support him until he achieved his aim.

[151] Manṣūr ibn Luʾluʾ became afraid of him. He conciliated the Banū Kilāb by promising many iqṭāʿs and a share alongside him in the villages and revenues outside Aleppo. He also appealed to the Maghribis for support, asking them to hasten an army to him and offering to surrender the citadel of Aleppo to them. ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd al-Wāḥid ibn Ḥaydara, qāḍī of Tripoli—who then controlled the administration of Tripoli and all the fortresses—hurried to him with a powerful army. He reached Aleppo just when Abū al-Hayjāʾ descended nearby.

[152] Manṣūr ibn Luʾluʾ admitted ʿAlī ibn Ḥaydara to the citadel and asked him to write from there to al-Ḥākim by carrier pigeon. ʿAlī instead hastened out to meet Abū al-Hayjāʾ and his men, surprising them just as they had settled down to eat. Upon his arrival the Banū Kilāb dispersed, in accordance with a secret agreement they had made with Manṣūr ibn Luʾluʾ. Abū al-Hayjāʾ was defeated; his tents were plundered and everything he had with him taken. He returned toward Melitene and asked the emperor Basil for permission to return to his court. The emperor had turned against him and dissembled, intending to expel him from his lands. When Ibn Luʾluʾ learned this, he interceded with the emperor to restore Abū al-Hayjāʾ to his former place at court, lest he go to Muslim territory, rally new forces, and harm him. The emperor then permitted Abū al-Hayjāʾ to return to Constantinople, treated him well, and bestowed favors upon him. He remained there until he died.

[153] As for ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd al-Wāḥid ibn Ḥaydara, Ibn Luʾluʾ sent him away from Aleppo, and he returned to Tripoli with the forces that had come with him. The Banū Kilāb asked Manṣūr ibn Luʾluʾ to fulfill the promises of iqṭāʿs, favors, and other benefits that he had made them. He put them off.

[154] They took control of the territory of Aleppo, fought Ibn Luʾluʾ, and pressed him so hard that he was unable to resist them. He professed a desire to restore good relations and invited their emirs and leading men to enter Aleppo, attend a meal, and receive written grants of their iqṭāʿs. About seven hundred men entered, including all the emirs of the Banū Kilāb and every man of rank and courage among them. Manṣūr ordered food prepared and a banquet spread for them. When they reached his residence, however, they demanded that he first complete their business and relieve them by issuing the signed documents. He immediately arrested every one and ordered the sword used against them. A group were killed at once; their emirs were carried to the citadel and imprisoned separately, heavily loaded with irons, while the remainder were committed to the prisons. This was on Saturday, with two nights of Dhū al-Qaʿda 402 remaining.

[155] The rest of the Bedouin broke camp outside Aleppo and fled with their households. The Arabs who had been arrested remained in prison for two years. Ibn Luʾluʾ killed a number of their notables, and many died from confinement and hardship. He won some over and released them in Shawwāl 403.

[156] Among the emirs imprisoned in the citadel was Ṣāliḥ ibn Mirdās. At many of his drinking bouts, while drunk, Manṣūr ibn Luʾluʾ deliberately sought to do him harm because of his resentment at Ṣāliḥ's long-standing opposition and courage. Ṣāliḥ therefore loosened a stone in the wall of his prison and removed it. As the days passed, he took out one stone after another until he had made an opening through which he could escape. One of the two rings of the fetter on his leg obstructed him. He opened it but could not free his other leg, so he bound the chain around his waist, went through the hole by night, and threw himself down from the summit of the citadel to the ground outside. This was on the night before Friday, the first of Muḥarram 405.

[157] He traveled through the night. At daybreak he hid in a cave on Mount Jawshan. Although a great search was made, no news of him was found. He reached his family in the encampment, joined his kinsmen, and their spirits rose at his deliverance. Six days after his escape he captured one of Ibn Luʾluʾ's pages. Ibn Luʾluʾ had given the man the sword Ṣāliḥ was wearing when arrested, and Ṣāliḥ recovered it from him. The remainder of his kinsmen, the Banū Kilāb, gathered around him. He strengthened and reunited them; all submitted to his judgment. He encamped with the tribal camps near Aleppo, and war broke out between him and Ibn Luʾluʾ.

[158] On Thursday, five days into Ṣafar, one of Ibn Luʾluʾ's officers went out with a group of pages, attacked the Arabs, plundered much baggage from their camps, captured fifty men, women, and children, and returned to Aleppo that day. This made Ibn Luʾluʾ overconfident. He assembled his troops and compelled whatever market people, rabble, Christians, and Jews he could to march with him to Tall Ḥāṣid to fight Ṣāliḥ. He departed after sunset on the night before Thursday, the twelfth of Ṣafar, accompanied by his brothers Abū al-Jaysh and Abū Sālim, the two sons of Luʾluʾ. At daybreak they met the Arabs, and battle began. His brothers and a group with them were defeated and hurried back into Aleppo. The rest of the people were also routed and put to the sword. About two thousand men were killed. Manṣūr ibn Luʾluʾ, Sālim ibn Mustafād, and a group of prominent commanders and pages were captured. Forty-one days had elapsed from Ṣāliḥ's escape from Ibn Luʾluʾ's prison to his capture of Ibn Luʾluʾ.

[159] Abū al-Jaysh ibn Luʾluʾ and Ṣāliḥ exchanged letters concerning his brother Manṣūr. After messages had passed back and forth, they agreed upon these terms: fifty thousand dinars in coin were to be paid to Ṣāliḥ; one hundred and twenty raṭls by Aleppan weight of silver vessels and five hundred pieces of cloth of different kinds were to be handed over; everyone from the Banū Kilāb and their womenfolk held in the prisons or otherwise in Manṣūr's custody were to be released; and Manṣūr was to divorce two women of the Banū Kilāb whom he had married after arresting their people. Ṣāliḥ further required Manṣūr ibn Luʾluʾ to give him his daughter in marriage, to make a further payment to him, and to grant Ṣāliḥ and the Banū Kilāb half the territory of Aleppo as an iqṭāʿ. No request from any of them was to be met without a letter from Ṣāliḥ. Once agreement had been reached, Ṣāliḥ released him.

[160] Manṣūr ibn Luʾluʾ entered Aleppo on Saturday, with seven nights of Ṣafar 405 remaining, and resumed his emirate. Each Arab sold the captives who had fallen into his hands for whatever price he could obtain. Once Ibn Luʾluʾ was back in Aleppo, he did not fulfill his agreement to pay Ṣāliḥ and give him and the Banū Kilāb half the territory of Aleppo, nor did he fulfill the marriage agreement concerning his daughter. Ṣāliḥ resumed the war against him, constricted the inhabitants of Aleppo, and prevented provisions and other supplies from entering.

[161] Ibn Luʾluʾ asked the emperor Basil to support him with infantry for use against the Bedouin. Basil sent him one thousand Armenians, with whose aid Ibn Luʾluʾ gained the upper hand in the war. Ṣāliḥ then wrote professing submission to the emperor and enumerating how Ibn Luʾluʾ had betrayed him yet again, even though Ṣāliḥ had overcome and spared him. Knowing that Ṣāliḥ's account was true, the emperor recalled the infantry he had sent to help Ibn Luʾluʾ and advised Ibn Luʾluʾ to fulfill his agreement with Ṣāliḥ. Ibn Luʾluʾ's position became still weaker, while Ṣāliḥ took heart from the emperor's evident goodwill toward him. He sent his son to the imperial court to confirm the submission and sincere allegiance he had offered.

[162] Ibn Luʾluʾ became unable to bear Ṣāliḥ's resistance. He blamed his entire predicament on his companion Fatḥ, who was stationed in the citadel: Ṣāliḥ's escape, he said, had been made possible by Fatḥ's failure to guard carefully against him and his laxity in taking precautions. He threatened Fatḥ and resolved to remove him from the citadel and entrust its command to someone else.

[163] When Fatḥ learned of this intention, he became afraid and feared that Ibn Luʾluʾ's wrath would descend upon him. He reached an agreement with a group of trusted men and companions resident with him in the citadel to revolt against Ibn Luʾluʾ. In the last third of the night before Saturday, with six nights of Rajab 406 remaining, trumpets and drums sounded atop the citadel. They raised the slogans of al-Ḥākim and Ṣāliḥ, crying: “Ḥākim, yā Manṣūr! Ṣāliḥ, yā Manṣūr!”

[164] Manṣūr ibn Luʾluʾ supposed that Ṣāliḥ had entered the citadel and that the city had been seized over his head. He immediately fled Aleppo for Byzantine territory to seek refuge with the emperor Basil, accompanied by his two brothers, his sons, and the pages who followed him, all mounted on their beasts. The inhabitants of Aleppo plundered Luʾluʾ's house, his brothers' houses, and the houses of some Christians and Jews. Ibn Luʾluʾ and his companions entered Antioch on Thursday, with five nights of Rajab remaining that year.

[165] Fatḥ took control of Aleppo. He summoned ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad al-Ḍayf, governor of Apamea, asking him to hurry to Aleppo with his men and strengthen him. Al-Ḍayf quickly complied, reached Aleppo, and lodged in Ibn Luʾluʾ's residence in the city, while Fatḥ remained in the citadel as before. Fatḥ removed from Aleppo all the womenfolk of Ibn Luʾluʾ, his brothers, and his sons and handed them over to Ṣāliḥ to send to Ibn Luʾluʾ in Antioch. Ṣāliḥ took them to the tribal encampment. He retained the daughter whom Manṣūr ibn Luʾluʾ had agreed to give him, married and consummated the marriage with her, and sent the other womenfolk on to him. Ṣāliḥ took possession of all the districts and villages that Ibn Luʾluʾ had agreed to give him.

[166] The emperor instructed the katepanō of Antioch to receive Manṣūr ibn Luʾluʾ well and honor him, maintaining the protection and respect customarily shown him while he was emir of Aleppo. He granted generous allowances to Ibn Luʾluʾ, his household, and his relatives. The katepanō was ordered to enroll with him all his pages, companions, and other Muslim soldiers who came seeking safe-conduct, so that they would form part of his retinue and service. Seven hundred mounted and foot pages were registered with him and received monthly stipends and allowances from the emperor's funds.

[167] The emperor prohibited travel and commerce from all his lands to any district of Syria or Egypt. Ṣāliḥ ibn Mirdās asked that commerce be permitted to his associates, and the emperor allowed it for them alone. He summoned Abū al-Jaysh and Abū Sālim, the two sons of Luʾluʾ, and Abū al-Ghanāʾim and Abū al-Barakāt, the two sons of Manṣūr ibn Luʾluʾ, appointed them to high rank and important governorships, and sent them back to him.

[168] He granted Ibn Luʾluʾ revenue-producing real estate in Antioch and the village outside it known as Saḥḥ al-Ablūn. Ibn Luʾluʾ restored its fortress and moved there, so that it would be easier for him to learn what he needed about affairs in Aleppo. At this time the emperor ordered the citadel of Antioch built.

[169] After ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad al-Ḍayf, governor of Apamea, reached Aleppo, some Maghribi troops joined him. He took from Fatḥ, the governor of the citadel, the money he had expended upon them. The Hamdanids and Maghribis agreed to march against the encampment of Ṣāliḥ ibn Mirdās, release the Arabs to plunder it, and seize their baggage. Ṣāliḥ sent them word that he stood ready to hear and obey. The Arab encampments set out for Qinnasrīn. The Maghribis came out, seeking to seize the howdahs in which the womenfolk were traveling, and the two sides skirmished for a long time. Then the Bedouin charged the Maghribis, routed them, and killed a number of prominent Maghribis. Having gained the upper hand over them, they thereafter ceased their provocations against the Bedouin and their threats against them.

[170] Al-Ḥākim conferred on Fatḥ the title Mubārak al-Dawla (“Blessing of the State”); on ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad al-Ḍayf, the title Sadīd al-Dawla (“Right Guidance of the State”); and on Ṣāliḥ ibn Mirdās, the title Asad al-Dawla (“Lion of the State”). He offered to give Fatḥ, in exchange for Aleppo and its citadel if he surrendered them to him, Tyre, Sidon, and Beirut as a grant for the duration of his life, and to let him keep everything in the citadel. Fatḥ resolved to accept.

[171] Ṣāliḥ wrote to Fatḥ advising him to remain in the citadel while Ṣāliḥ stayed outside Aleppo, to expel the Maghribis from Aleppo, and to join with him in resisting anyone from any quarter who sought to take Aleppo. Fatḥ decided to do this.

[172] When the people of Aleppo heard, they assembled beneath the citadel and said, “We want only the Maghribis; we have no desire for the Bedouin.” A disturbance broke out. Sadīd al-Dawla al-Ḍayf asked al-Ḥākim to reinforce him with armies so that he would be strong enough to oppose Ṣāliḥ ibn Mirdās. Every governor in Syria came to him with infantry. With them came Ḥassān ibn al-Mufarrij ibn al-Jarrāḥ and his Arab kinsmen of Ṭayyiʾ, as well as Sinān ibn Sulaymān, emir of the Kalbids, with his kinsmen. They encamped outside Aleppo.

[173] Al-Ḥākim sent Fatḥ messages holding out hopes and promises of beneficence and bounty. He augmented his title to Mubārak al-Dawla wa-Saʿduhā wa-ʿIzzuhā (“Blessing, Good Fortune, and Glory of the State”). Fatḥ's companions gathered around him and advised him to surrender. He agreed to descend from the citadel and delivered it to Sadīd al-Dawla ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad al-Ḍayf. Fatḥ took all the money, gold and silver vessels, other precious goods, and weapons in it—everything he could carry—and all the soldiers departed with him.

[174] He went to Tyre and remained there until the days of al-Ẓāhir ibn al-Ḥākim. He was expelled because of the enormity of his disobedience, after all the money he had with him had over time been drawn from him. He had also sold, little by little, what he had brought with him, and its price was taken from him bit by bit as a loan for expenditure on the armies. He was transferred to the governorship of Jerusalem; Tyre, Sidon, and Beirut were taken from him. He remained there for some time, was dismissed, and was returned to Tyre. He died poor.

[175] After Fatḥ's departure, al-Ḥākim entrusted Aleppo to ʿAzīz al-Dawla Fātik, a page of Waḥīd. He entitled him “Emir of Emirs” and dispatched him there. He entered Aleppo on Sunday, the first day of Ramaḍān 407 [31 January 1017]. Sadīd al-Dawla al-Ḍayf left the city.

[176] Twice the Maghribis attacked the monastery of Simeon near Aleppo. They killed and captured those whom they found there—the elder of the monastery, monks, and other Christians.

[177] Relations between ʿAzīz al-Dawla and Ṣāliḥ ibn Mirdās became orderly. ʿAzīz al-Dawla wrote to the emperor Basil, offering him submission and allegiance. In his correspondence with the emperor and with the neighboring Byzantine governors to whom he wrote, he ceased using his own honorific title. He obtained permission from the emperor to trade in the adjoining Byzantine territory, used this to enhance his standing with al-Ḥākim, and took possession of Aleppo and all the districts attached to it. He dismissed al-Ḥākim's governors there and appointed his own men over them.

[178] In the year 407 [1016–17], one of the Bulgarian chiefs, called Aaron, rose against their king al-Qimṭūriyās, a page of Samuel, killed him, and seized the Bulgarian kingdom. This Aaron belonged to a family whose ancestors had long-standing claims to rule them. He sent letters to the emperor Basil, offering him obedience and allegiance and promising that, in administering the kingdom he had seized, he would act in a manner pleasing to Basil and would not transgress his commands in anything Basil disliked. Aaron remained king for one year and was himself killed by one of his companions. The Bulgarian chiefs wrote to the emperor Basil, professing themselves his servants, asking him to take possession of the fortresses and territories in their hands, and requesting permission to come to him and conduct themselves according to his orders.

[179] The emperor accordingly marched into Bulgaria in Shawwāl 408 [February–March 1018]. A group of its chiefs met him; Aaron's wife and children also came out to him. He took possession of their fortresses and treated them well, assigning each of them a station appropriate to his deserts. He retained the impregnable fortresses and appointed Byzantine governors over them, while demolishing the rest. He set Bulgarian affairs in order and established basilikoi there, officials charged with all administrative and fiscal business. The Bulgarian kingdom was incorporated into the Byzantine Empire, and he made it a katepanate. This occurred in the forty-fourth year of his reign—[the year 1330 and the year 409]. He returned to Constantinople, married Bulgarian girls to Byzantine boys and Byzantine girls to Bulgarian boys, and mingled the two peoples. In this way he removed the old enmity between them. Later, new troubles arose for them, which we shall describe in their place.

[180] Al-Ḥākim continued riding night and day without respite or rest, accompanied by only a small number of his intimates.

[181] A foolish idea occurred to him, contradicting the asceticism he displayed. He would go by night to one of the markets of Fusṭāṭ, preceded by a debauched old man from among the rabble called al-Rajjāʿ. Al-Ḥākim would say to him, “Show me your moon,” and the man would uncover his anus. Al-Ḥākim would order one of his Sudanese grooms to expose his penis and penetrate the man in full view of al-Ḥākim and the assembled crowd. In the course of it, because of the pain he claimed to suffer, al-Rajjāʿ would speak to al-Ḥākim in broken cries and adjure him to order the black man on top of him to be gentle and not treat him roughly. Al-Ḥākim would laugh at his screams and delight in them. He continued in this practice for some time.

[182] Then he abandoned it, fell ill, and became too weak to ride. He had a litter made in which he could sit or recline. Four of the grooms whom he had taken into his service carried it about night and day. Once he had recovered from his illness and regained his strength, he resumed riding his donkey as usual and mingling with the common people. Anyone who needed something from him could meet him and ask for what he wanted; anyone who wished to solicit his generosity could do so.

[183] When al-Ḥākim decided to meet someone's need, he designated the day on which the petitioner was to meet him again and the place where he should wait for him. He carried in his sleeve, for each petitioner, the gift, diploma, or rescript the man had requested to meet his need. On the appointed day and at the appointed place, he handed it to him with his own hand.

[184] He commanded and prescribed that the lines in petitions submitted to him be written separately, and that anyone who greeted him or asked him for something should stand only on his right. He let his hair grow until it became long and fell over his shoulders. He stopped cutting it and stopped trimming his nails. He exchanged the white woolen garments he had worn for black ones, and his blue turban for a black one. He would wear a single outfit for so long that it became matted and caked with the effects of constant sweat and the continual dust that settled upon it.

[185] He continued roaming the deserts and wastes. He would go to the Muqaṭṭam hills, separate himself from the grooms accompanying him, leave them a great distance behind, and travel on alone wherever he wished. He would then return to the place where the grooms were waiting for him.

[186] It is said that when he was alone in the hills, he would call on God Most High for help, asking that God speak to him in secret and reveal things to him, just as He spoke in secret and made revelation to Moses and His other prophets.

[187] His condition came to resemble that of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, of whom the truthful prophet Daniel related that the wilderness became his dwelling like the beasts: his nails grew until they resembled an eagle's talons, and his hair became long like a lion's, as punishment for his destruction of the Lord's Temple in Jerusalem, his profanation of the sacred vessels, and his dispersal of the people of Israel into exile.

[188] The cause that drove al-Ḥākim toward all the strange, contradictory actions that occurred to his mind and that he carried out one after another—although this lies outside the historical subject with which we are occupied—was a type of pathological imbalance in his brain. From his youth, it produced in him a form of melancholy and consequent corruption of thought. It is well known in the art of medicine that those afflicted by this disease may entertain delusions and imagine extraordinary things. Each one is entirely certain that the things he imagines and all his actions are right; no one can turn him from them or restrain him. Some of them suppose themselves to be prophets, and some imagine themselves to be God Himself—far exalted is He above that.

[189] In some of these people, confusion and disorder of speech become outwardly apparent, so that their condition is revealed to anyone who sees and converses with them and no doubt remains from the first encounter. At times, however, a person's confusion in speech is concealed, and these imaginings and corrupt notions occur in matters hidden from the common people. To them he has the appearance of a rational man: they think well of him and regard him as they would the most excellent of men. But if they observe him over a long period, the defect that was hidden from them becomes apparent.

[190] This was the form al-Ḥākim's condition took. His defect became apparent to anyone who associated with him for a long time; to those at a distance, his deeds made it plain.

[191] Evidence of the true nature of the disease that had mastered him is that in his youth he had suffered convulsions caused by a dry pathological imbalance in his brain—the imbalance found in patients that gives rise to melancholy. Among the treatments he required, alongside the other remedies administered to him, was to sit in violet oil and be moistened with it. His prolonged wakefulness, his passion for riding without interruption, and his ceaseless wandering were likewise among the consequences of the imbalance just mentioned.

[192] When Abū Yaʿqūb Isḥāq ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Anasṭās—may God have mercy on him—entered al-Ḥākim's service, he induced him to permit himself to drink wine and listen to singing after he had forsaken these practices and forbidden everyone else to engage in them. His character improved, the disposition of his brain became moister, and his bodily condition grew sound. When Abū Yaʿqūb died and al-Ḥākim returned to abstaining from wine and listening to song, he reverted to his former condition, and the harm to him increased. His affairs reached the state we have described and the state we shall describe hereafter.

[193] A man from Acre came from Syria to Egypt in the year 408 [1017–18]. Dressed like an emir, he claimed descent from the ʿAlid al-Mahdī. He sat near al-Ḥākim's palace selling ink and pens. He resembled al-Ḥākim. Al-Ḥākim stopped before him and asked about his circumstances. The man told him that he was his brother, born to a slave woman who had been expelled from the palace while pregnant by al-ʿAzīz bi-llāh and had subsequently given birth to him. Al-Ḥākim made a point of stopping before him from time to time and conversing with him, and he gave him gifts and enough to maintain himself. The Egyptians consequently entitled him “the Lookalike.” He remained constantly at the place where he had set himself up and continued earning his living in this fashion for the rest of al-Ḥākim's days. When al-Ḥākim disappeared, the man was arrested and detained for a time. Al-Ẓāhir had him brought before him so that he could see him. The man complained to al-Ẓāhir about his condition and began addressing him as “son of my brother.” Al-Ẓāhir showed his displeasure at this and returned him to confinement. He died a few days later.

[194] Al-Ḥākim appointed Quṭb al-Dawla ʿAlī ibn Jaʿfar ibn Fallāḥ as his vizier and conferred on him the title “Vizier of Viziers, Possessor of the Two Offices, the Victorious Emir, Quṭb al-Dawla.” He ordered him to travel to Alexandria and tour and inspect the neighboring administrative districts recently established in Egypt. When he returned, al-Ḥākim killed him.

[195] Al-Ḥākim appointed his cousin, the emir Ibrāhīm Abū Hāshim, who bore the title Heir Apparent of the Commander of the Faithful, to supervise many affairs.

[196] The emir Shams al-Mulk Masʿūd ibn Ṭāhir attended al-Ḥākim's court. At that time he administered and supervised all the government bureaus. A number of the most distinguished bureau officials attended with him, and their opinion was sought on matters that required it. This arrangement remained in force until al-Ḥākim disappeared.

[197] In the year 408 [1017–18], a Persian missionary named Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl, known as al-Darazī, came to Egypt seeking al-Ḥākim's service. Al-Ḥākim treated him well and bestowed favors upon him. Al-Darazī called on people to believe that al-Ḥākim was God, Maker of the worlds and Creator of all creatures. He proclaimed his summons openly and disclosed his doctrine, but al-Ḥākim did not repudiate what he said.

[198] By my life, the ʿAlid caliphs among his forefathers, from the first appearance of their dynasty in the Maghrib, had already advanced a claim to a doctrine not far removed from this belief: that they were gods who had descended to earth in human forms. From the Most High there came to them, they held, a divine light that indwelt them and appeared in every age and time in the form of some human person; the world and its kings alike belonged to them; and no one among mankind was worthy of them. They had never ceased concealing this doctrine from those who opposed them. To the rest of the Muslim commonalty, they declared that the one among them who held command was God's imam, His caliph on earth, and His proof to His creatures; that the imamate was more exalted in rank than prophecy; that it had resided in Adam and passed to Noah, Abraham, Moses, so-and-so, so-and-so, and so-and-so, and thence to his descendant al-Ḥusayn; that it then passed, one after another, through his descendants for a long time until ʿAbd Allāh, the ʿAlid al-Mahdī who appeared in the Maghrib [in the year 260, though his origin was in the East]; and that after him it passed, one after another, through his descendants who held command.

[199] According to them, this succession would continue forever, and one of their number would arise who would rule the whole inhabited world, unite its government under his doctrine, and remain forever in his sovereignty until God raised those in the graves.

[200] When al-Ḥākim's time came, he resolved to reveal his doctrine and make public what his forefathers had covered up and concealed. He decided to lead people gradually toward his intended goal. The force of his assaults, his readiness to shed blood, and the fact that he spared neither the person whose offense was small and trivial—much less the person whose crime was grave and enormous—had established awe of him in everyone's soul. He permitted himself what no one else could.

[201] Indeed, some people were compelled by their affairs to seek an encounter with him; when he came into their view, they fell to the ground in terror of him and became speechless when addressing him. He compelled the Muslims to swear allegiance to him and not to continue expressing the enmity and curses his ancestors had directed against Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, ʿUthmān, Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān, and others. He concerned himself with this and enforced it strictly for a period.

[202] After a while, he issued decrees that were read publicly, prescribing that each Muslim might profess whatever belief he wished and openly express love for whichever of those early figures he thought deserved his allegiance. He closed the door of the assembly in which their doctrines were read and where those attending who followed his Shiʿi teaching were made to swear allegiance. A number of people were deceived by the license he had granted them and thought it arose from a sincere inner conviction. They openly disclosed the aversion they harbored toward the doctrine to which he had summoned them and their love for those whom he believed should be hated. A short time later he opened the assembly again, repudiated the license he had previously granted, tracked down those who had spoken openly, and killed them.

[203] In the course of this, a petition bearing the following verses was presented to him:

With tyranny and injustice we have been content,
but not with unbelief and folly.
If you have been given knowledge of the unseen,
tell us who wrote the note.

[204] Then, after another interval that was not long, he once again permitted them to practice their schools and creeds as they preferred. He turned his attention to the Christians and Jews and persecuted them into entering Islam. Those among them whose resolve was too weak to endure his severe threats and great wrath complied with him. Later, when he recognized their inward beliefs and their irresolution in Islam, he permitted them to move to Byzantine territory and return to their own religion.

[205] Many of his slaves were sons of Byzantines. They had embraced Islam under persecution and were among those accused of trying to flee to Byzantine territory. He emancipated the rest of his slaves and gave them control over their own persons and the freedom to dispose as they wished of the money, furnishings, and real estate they owned and had acquired. He granted this freedom to all the Christians, both those who had embraced Islam and those who held fast to their religion. He put an end to interference with them and with the money and possessions they took along, as we explained above.

[206] Once the population under his power had been brought into submission, he found that most of them could easily be led wherever he inclined them and induced to accept it. He judged that the goal on which he had resolved was near attainment. He assumed the appearance of asceticism and piety, renounced bodily pleasures, and restricted his food and drink to what was needed to sustain the body without excess or extravagance. His clothing was wool; he rode donkeys with cheap iron trappings. He mingled with the common people and attracted people to himself by means of justice, the abolition of tolls and oppressive dues, and generous gifts and benefactions. Many were deceived by him and turned to follow him, competing with one another in loyalty to him. Every disgraceful thing he did amid all this—killing, folly, and other blameworthy acts—they represented in the most favorable light. They devised various kinds of interpretation for them, arguing that all his deeds contained hidden mysteries and obscure purposes that human beings had not been permitted to discover or to understand their causes.

[207] When al-Darazī appeared and summoned people to his doctrine, many of the rabble responded. He led al-Ḥākim to imagine that many of the inhabitants of the world held the same belief about him that al-Darazī held and to which he had summoned people. Al-Ḥākim listened to what he said; his inclination toward it overcame his reason, and he ordered al-Darazī to urge people by means of written notes and summon them through these to his doctrine.

[208] Al-Darazī wrote a note to the officer in charge of the Turkish pages, summoning them to come to him so that they might learn the revelation that had reached him from God. He also wrote to Jatkin, the Chief Missionary, to the Heir Apparent of the Muslims, to the Chief Missionary and al-Muwaffaq fī al-Dīn ʿAmīd al-Muʾminīn, and to others, summoning them to his teaching. They informed al-Ḥākim of what al-Darazī had written to them and asked what his own view was of what al-Darazī had told them and whether it had been done at his command. Seeing how gravely they regarded it and how strongly they recoiled from it, al-Ḥākim outwardly repudiated him.

[209] Al-Ḥākim subsequently abolished titles and the styles of emir and commander for everyone at his court and throughout all his territories, with the exception of nine persons: the Heir Apparent of the Muslims; Sharaf al-Dawla, lord of Ifrīqiya; Thiqat al-Dawla, lord of Sicily; the latter's son, Tāj al-Dawla; [Sharaf al-Dawla], the Emir of Emirs, Possessor of the Two Competencies; the Chief Qāḍī Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh; the Chief Missionary Jatkin; and al-Muwaffaq fī al-Dīn ʿAmīd al-Muʾminīn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ṣāliḥ. He struck from the government registers all the other emoluments associated with the ranks of emir and commander.

[210] People spread the report that al-Darazī had advised him to do this in order to draw the whole community to his doctrine, willingly or unwillingly. All the Easterners and many of the Maghribis were indignant at this, at its enormity, and at what was intended for them.

[211] One of the Turkish pages determined to kill al-Darazī. He attacked and killed him while al-Darazī was in al-Ḥākim's procession, and al-Darazī's house was plundered. Cairo fell into turmoil and its gates were shut. The disturbance lasted three days, during which a number of al-Darazī's followers were killed. The Turkish man who had killed al-Darazī was later arrested and put to death on a charge fabricated against him.

[212] Al-Ḥākim restored the honorific titles and the styles of emir and commander.

[213] In the year 408 [1017–18], the Nile rose very high. Many villages were inundated together with their inhabitants. The water entered Cairo and almost flooded it, had a channel not been constructed to divert it, at the cost of a great sum of money. In Fusṭāṭ the water reached the market known as al-Ṣaffayn. Many houses in Cairo and Fusṭāṭ collapsed; numerous houses in both cities fell down. The flood caused extensive devastation, trees and plantings perished, and the people suffered extreme hardship. They attributed it to the wrath of God descending upon them because of the unbelief that had spread among them.

[214] After al-Darazī was killed, al-Ḥākim ordered that no one should ride with him except the grooms alone. Of the leaders of his government, only eleven men whom he named were to enter his palace. Secretaries, Qurʾān readers, physicians, muezzins, and palace servants could also enter, but no one else was to mingle with them.

[215] After al-Darazī, another Persian missionary appeared, named Ḥamza ibn Aḥmad and entitled al-Hādī. He settled outside Cairo at the place known as the Mosque of Tibr and summoned people to al-Darazī's teaching. He remained in his residence and recruited a group of missionaries whom he stationed in Egypt and its districts, in the Syrian provinces, and in the surrounding regions. They summoned people to license and libertinism, permitted marriage with mothers, sisters, and daughters, and called for the abolition of every religious obligation, including fasting, prayer, and pilgrimage. Many people responded to them.

[216] When the adherents of al-Hādī encountered the adherents of Jatkin, the Chief Missionary, each side cursed the other and declared the other unbelievers. Al-Hādī's adherents met al-Ḥākim every day in al-Qarāfa to salute him.

[217] Al-Ḥākim nevertheless paid close attention to al-Hādī. He asked him how many adherents of his summons had assembled in his house, and outwardly rejoiced at their great number. Al-Darazī's doctrine became public and well known among the people. Its register contained sixteen thousand persons who believed that al-Ḥākim was a god.

[218] One day, seven of al-Hādī's followers brought a note to the Chief Qāḍī Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh while he was in the Lower Congregational Mosque of Fusṭāṭ. When he had read it, he found that it contained something of their unbelief. He recoiled from it, sought refuge in God from its contents, and informed those present. They flared up in anger, attacked the seven missionaries, and killed every one of them. Al-Ḥākim expressed his disapproval to the Chief Qāḍī over what had happened. Later he tracked down a group of the inhabitants of Fusṭāṭ and killed seventy of them.

[219] The affair of al-Darazī's followers grew worse until they cursed Adam, Noah, all the prophets, Muḥammad, and ʿAlī; defecated in the mosques; smeared filth on the qibla; and urinated on copies of the Qurʾān. They composed a book purporting to convey the meaning of the Qurʾān and called it al-Dustūr. They oppressed those who opposed their belief and asserted their power over them. Whenever someone appealed to the agents of the ruler for redress against one of them, no redress was given and the person was left untouched.

[220] From the beginning of their movement, al-Ḥākim had discontinued his customary prayers and the sermon delivered in his name in the congregational mosques on Fridays during Ramaḍān and at the two festivals. He also suspended the pilgrimage to Mecca for several years because of the Arabs' ascendancy and the strength of their power, and for fear that they would seize the pilgrims. The customary dispatch of the covering for the Kaʿba also ceased. All these developments made the Muslims feel that this arose from al-Ḥākim's departure from the religion of Islam and his deliberate effort to strengthen this doctrine and bring it into the open.

[221] Verses and poems attributed to al-Ḥākim circulated among the Egyptians, threatening them with the burning of their houses, the plunder of their property, the enslavement of their womenfolk, and the shedding of their blood. Alarming rumors about them multiplied. A decree was therefore read to them that reassured them and dispelled their suspicions.

[222] They also made copies of a letter which they said came from al-Ḥākim, dated in the last ten days of Ramaḍān 410 [December 1019–January 1020]. It censured them for failing to deliver the right to those entitled to it, for neglecting to occupy themselves with the faults in their own souls, and for objecting to what he did. It advised them to hasten to faith while there was still time, before the opportunity passed. It rebuked them for opposing the course he intended for them, which would bring them closer to their Creator, and for openly confronting him with the sins they had committed and the innovations they publicly practiced.

[223] It threatened that he would inflict every kind of punishment upon them unless they abandoned evil, did good and applied themselves to it, submitted to the imam of their age, and entrusted their affairs to him. It reminded them of the warnings he had previously given and of how he had frightened them about separating themselves from him. It promised beneficence and clemency to those who accepted his commands and pursued what pleased him. Those who persisted in objectionable acts, however, were warned that their homes would be emptied, their traces effaced, their wives and children enslaved, and their property plundered. They would then seek a defender but receive no defense. The letter adjured everyone into whose hands it fell to read it to his household and neighbors and make them acquainted with its contents.

[224] The Muslims discussed among themselves that his aim was to drive them into the doctrine to which al-Darazī had summoned them, and that his anger against them arose only from their aversion to it. They spoke a great deal about this and composed poems in which they declared him an unbeliever and alluded to him. They sang songs containing insults against him and foul words that referred to him. All of these reached him at the time, and his anger against them increased.

[225] In Dhū al-Qaʿda 410 [January–February 1020], he ordered weapons distributed to the Sudanese military slaves. He directed them to descend upon Fusṭāṭ and deliberately burn it, enslave the inhabitants' women and children, and plunder their property.

[226] They began by setting fire to the edge of Fusṭāṭ at the place known as al-Tabbānīn. They gave themselves free rein to pillage, continuing until they had taken everything in the covered markets where cloth was sold, as well as the contents of many shops and dwellings. They captured a multitude of women and raped them. A number of the inhabitants fled to the congregational mosque to seek its protection, but it did not protect them. They pillaged many places in Fusṭāṭ, and the fire burned a large part of the city. The inhabitants did not dare extinguish it, fearing that something still greater and more terrible would be done to them.

[227] The magnitude of the burning, pillage, and captivity in Fusṭāṭ was reported to al-Ḥākim. He could not be certain that it would not grow worse and reach a point that would be difficult to remedy and set right. He ordered Ghādī, the Slav eunuch, to descend into Fusṭāṭ with a body of troops and calm the disturbance. Ghādī went down and witnessed a dreadful affair and an abominable state of things. To strike fear into them, he killed some of the slaves and evildoers and dispersed their gathering.

[228] He returned to al-Ḥākim indignant at what he had witnessed and described to him the vileness of the calamity and the magnitude of the disaster. Among other things, he said, “Had Basil, emperor of the Byzantines, entered Fusṭāṭ, he would not have deemed it permissible to do such a thing to it.” Al-Ḥākim took offense at this and killed him. The inhabitants of Fusṭāṭ appealed to al-Ḥākim to pardon them and to order that the fire be extinguished lest it destroy them. He allowed this after real estate and movable property of immense value had been lost.

[229] Some people said the reason he ordered Fusṭāṭ burned and pillaged was that the inhabitants had falsely ascribed to him most or all of the verses and poems attributed to him and had likewise forged in his name the letter copied and circulated as his. He intended, they said, to bring upon them what they had ominously foretold for themselves. He was also provoked by their references and allusions to him in their poems and songs and by the names they gave him. Others said it was because he was enraged at their failure to hasten into the summons of al-Darazī and al-Hādī. Perhaps both circumstances played a part.

[230] After the burning and pillage, a decree was read to them expressing grief at what had befallen them and saying that it had neither occurred by his command nor taken place by his choice.

[231] When the Heir Apparent of the Muslims took up his post in Damascus, he permitted its inhabitants to drink wine and listen to singing, and the people of Damascus came to love him. The soldiers, however, hated him because he was miserly and withheld expenditure on them and payment of their customary allowances.

[232] Some of al-Darazī's followers publicized his summons among a group of Muslims at a place known as Wādī al-Taym, between Damascus and Sidon. They overturned their religion and openly professed their unbelief. A Kurdish emir known as Ibn Tālshlīl campaigned against them, killing and enslaving some, burning their settlements, destroying many of them, and annihilating their inhabited places.

[233] After what had happened to them, the Heir Apparent sensed that al-Ḥākim disapproved of what had been done. He became wary that al-Ḥākim would harbor a grudge against him on their account and feared his violence. He therefore sent one of his companions, known as Ibn al-Kharqānī, to Ḥassān ibn al-Mufarrij ibn al-Jarrāḥ to secure an agreement that Ḥassān would be on his side and would not fail him whenever he needed him in any matter, and he made Ḥassān swear to this.

[234] The soldiers found in this an opportunity to bring about the Heir Apparent's removal and take revenge upon him. They accused him of rebellion, killed al-Kharqānī in Damascus, and set out to plunder the Heir Apparent's residence. He called on the inhabitants of Damascus and al-Ghūṭa for help. They surrounded the palace outside Damascus where he was staying, and fighting broke out between them and the soldiers. The Damascenes were driven away from him, and the soldiers plundered the palace.

[235] Repeated reports alleging the Heir Apparent's rebellion reached al-Ḥākim, accompanied by much talk to that effect. He appointed Ṣāʿid ibn ʿĪsā ibn Nasṭūrus to go to Syria and placed its administration in his hands. Ṣāʿid was one of those who first embraced Islam at the beginning of the persecution. His standing with al-Ḥākim increased until the caliph made him an emir over the Turks and entitled him “the Emir al-Ẓahīr, Sharaf al-Mulk, Tāj al-Maʿālī.” He endowed him and gave him from his treasuries royal equipment and splendid furnishings such as he had given no one else. He ordered him to depart for Syria. Ṣāʿid went out to ʿAyn Shams, and al-Ḥākim accompanied him when he made his formal departure.

[236] Al-Ḥākim had already written to the Heir Apparent ordering him to come to Egypt. As soon as this command reached him, he departed without delay, and the army accompanied him as far as Ramla. When al-Ḥākim learned that he had obeyed his order, his suspicions of him disappeared. He wrote instructing him to return to Damascus, issued him a second diploma of investiture, recalled Ṣāʿid ibn ʿĪsā ibn Nasṭūrus to Egypt, and killed him at once.

[237] After the Heir Apparent left Damascus, a Damascene named Muḥammad ibn Abī Ṭālib al-Jazzār rose in revolt. A large body of the city's young men and rabble from the people of Ḥawrān gathered around him out of indignation on behalf of the Heir Apparent. They fought the soldiers, who set fire to the city and burned a large part of it.

[238] When Muḥammad ibn Abī Ṭālib al-Jazzār learned that the Heir Apparent was returning, he set out to meet him, and they met at Ludd. Muḥammad then traveled to Damascus with a multitude gathered around him. Many people joined him. He entered Damascus unexpectedly, resumed the fighting, overcame the soldiers, and expelled them from the city. The Heir Apparent sent instructions to him to calm the disturbance, but he did not obey. He killed the qāḍī of Damascus; he and the young men took control of the city; and he also killed and plundered a number of people. Peaceable inhabitants guarded themselves against him and feared him. Prices rose because of the disturbance, and the people of Damascus suffered hunger, fire, pillage, and killing all at once.

[239] Muḥammad ibn Abī Ṭālib had blocked the city gate known as the Eastern Gate. The Damascenes found an opportunity, opened the gate, seized Muḥammad ibn Abī Ṭālib, killed him, and crucified him at Bāb al-Jābiya. They killed a group of the young men who had agreed with him. Thereafter the affairs of Damascus became orderly and the position of the Heir Apparent improved. He was then given a free hand to confiscate the property of a number of Damascenes and others suspected of having instigated the disturbance. All the inhabitants consequently turned against him and hated him, and the townspeople and the soldiers were united in their loathing for him.

[240] Al-Ḥākim disappeared at this time. [The Heir Apparent's ultimate fate will be related below.]

[241] In Shawwāl 411 [January–February 1021], Muḥammad ibn Khulayd al-Nahrānī surrendered to the Byzantines the fortress known as al-Khawābī in Jabal Bahrāʾ and the town of Marqiyya on the seacoast, which lay in ruins. The emperor Basil treated him well and bestowed favors upon him.

[242] A group of Muslims reported to al-Ḥākim several times that Christians were gathering in their houses, praying and celebrating the Eucharist; that a number of Christians who had embraced Islam were attending with them; and that they were joining them in receiving the holy oblation. Al-Ḥākim did not object and declined to listen to the informers' words.

[243] Anbā Salmūn, superior of the monastery of Mount Sinai, met him and complained of the wretched condition of the monks of Mount Sinai and the injury and poverty they were suffering. He entreated al-Ḥākim to release the endowments seized from this monastery, so that they might draw upon them in their present circumstances and he might gain the benefit of their prayers for him as long as they lived. Al-Ḥākim granted his request and restored all their endowments to him.

[244] In the year 410 [1019–20], Eustathios, a eunuch, was made patriarch of Constantinople. He held office for five years and six months, and died.

[245] In the same year, Theophilos, patriarch of Jerusalem, died in Ramaḍān. A carpenter-priest named Nikephoros, one of the sons of Byzantine slaves who served as a carpenter in al-Ḥākim's palace, entreated al-Ḥākim for permission to become patriarch of Jerusalem. Al-Ḥākim granted his request. Nikephoros had a son and a daughter. He went to Jerusalem and was consecrated there on Sunday, 10 July, in the year 411 [1020].

[246] Anbā Salmūn, superior of the monastery of Mount Sinai, also met al-Ḥākim and reminded him that the churches had long remained in ruins, that the endowments assigned to them had been seized, and that they had fallen into devastation and disorder. He broached a request for permission to rebuild Dayr al-Quṣayr: that al-Ḥākim might see fit to allow it, permit the monks to reside there again and Christians to assemble there for prayer, and release its designated endowments. Al-Ḥākim granted his request and ordered the remission of the land tax and other dues owed to the treasury on the designated endowments.

[247] He issued a diploma to Salmūn. Its text follows:

In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. This is a document from ʿAbd Allāh and His friend, al-Manṣūr Abū ʿAlī, the imam al-Ḥākim bi-Amr Allāh, Commander of the Faithful, to the monk Sulaymān ibn Ibrāhīm, concerning the favor he has seen fit to bestow upon him and his granting of the request made to him: permission to restore the monastery known as al-Quṣayr, at Ṭurā on the mountain of Fusṭāṭ in Egypt, to the condition it had been in before its demolition; to enable the monks to inhabit it and reside in it as was their custom; to continue their former worship and prayers and the observance of the rites of their religion; to permit those of their religious community who come there to assemble; to remove interference with them; to prevent injury and domination over them; to restrain arbitrary encroachment and injustice against them; and to restore the endowments and properties that had been endowed upon it and attributed to it, including any village or cultivated estate, harbor, land, share, house, covered market, bathhouse, building plot, shop, pottery, date palms, orchard, fruit-bearing tree, or garden, in Fusṭāṭ and its districts or in any territory of the realm, in its regions or its outlying parts; and to deliver all this to this monk so that he may collect its revenues, take possession of its profit and produce, spend it on the interests of this monastery and those residing in it or coming to it, and have a free hand in its administration and in appointing anyone he wishes over any part of it; to preserve it from claims by the Treasury relinquished from it, cleanse it of their taint, and lift their burden from it; and to remit every land tax, tithe, fine, or registered due imposed on it in any of the government bureaus of the capital, whether the property is held in unrestricted ownership or as an endowment.

No pretext is to be raised against it, no injury caused on its account, and no claim pursued against it, either now or at any future time from the date of this diploma onward. This is in fulfillment of the covenant and in recompense for their sincere counsel and their solidarity as a religious community. No recurrence of time shall alter it, nor shall the passage of ages and years change it. Whoever among the commanders, governors, heads of bureaus, tax-farmers, and administrators of districts and affairs reads it or has it read to him is to recognize this as the command and prescription of the Commander of the Faithful and act in accordance with it. Written in the month of Rabīʿ II 411 [July–August 1020]. This rescript is to be read while held by its recipient as his proof of its contents and is to be registered where documents of its kind are registered, God willing.

Al-Ḥākim wrote above it in his own hand: “Praise be to God, Lord of the worlds.”

[248] After the death of Theophilos, patriarch of Jerusalem, al-Ḥākim had made a carpenter-priest named Nikephoros patriarch of Jerusalem at the man's request. Nikephoros, one of the sons of Byzantine slaves, had served as a carpenter in al-Ḥākim's palace. He had a son and a daughter. He went to Jerusalem and was consecrated there on Sunday, 10 July, in the year 1331, which was the year 411 [1020].

[249] He now returned to Egypt and informed al-Ḥākim that a group of Muslims had risen against him and against the Christians who assembled for prayer in the precinct of the Resurrection, and had assaulted them. He asked al-Ḥākim for a diploma providing protection and safekeeping, preserving the remaining churches in Jerusalem, the monasteries outside it, and the church at Ludd, and graciously restoring their endowments. Al-Ḥākim issued him the following diploma:

In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. The Commander of the Faithful has ordered this rescript written for Nikephoros, patriarch of Jerusalem, in accordance with his decision to answer his request and grant what he sought: to preserve and protect him and defend him and the protected people of his confession; to enable them to perform their prayers according to their customary practices, separately or in assembly; to leave without interference those among them who pray in the precinct and ruins of the church known as the Resurrection, despite the differences in their views and doctrines and their separation in religion and belief; to observe what is incumbent upon each within the bounds of his religion; and to preserve the places remaining in his possession inside and outside the city, the monasteries, Bethlehem, Ludd, and the houses assigned and attached to these places.

No one is to demolish the crosses in them, interfere with their endowments released to them, or pull down their walls or any of their other structures. This is a benefaction from the Commander of the Faithful to them, a removal of injury from them one and all, and a preservation of Islam's covenant of protection toward them. Whoever among the commanders, governors, officials in charge of these districts, all protectors, all administrators of government business, and all officials—whatever their stations, however their ranks differ, whether their service continues or they succeed one another in office—reads this or has it read to him now or hereafter is to recognize it as the command and prescription of the Commander of the Faithful and to act in accordance with it. Anyone who transgresses its limit or contravenes its ruling must beware; he is to avoid departing from its text and setting aside its provisions. This rescript is to remain in the patriarch's hands as a proof entrusted to him, by which he may obtain his request and attain what he sought, God Most High willing.

It was written in Jumādā II 411 [September–October 1020]. Above it was an endorsement in al-Ḥākim's own hand: “Praise be to God, Lord of the worlds.”

[250] The way was now opened for the restoration of churches and the return of their endowments. A man of Byzantine descent named Theodoros, who had formerly been a priest and had subsequently become metropolitan of Baysān in the jurisdiction of Jerusalem, obtained permission, took possession of the metropolitan see of Cairo, and rebuilt the Church of al-Qanṭara in Fusṭāṭ.

[251] Anbā Salmūn and other Christians continued to petition al-Ḥākim for the return and rebuilding of one church after another and for the restoration of its endowments. Anbā Salmūn wrote petitions on behalf of the inhabitants of distant towns for the same purpose. Al-Ḥākim granted every petitioner what he sought. He permitted the rebuilding of every church or monastery for which his leave and permission to rebuild was requested, both in Egypt and throughout all the lands of his realm. He issued each petitioner a diploma like that of Dayr al-Quṣayr and restored the endowments to the churches.

[252] The only exceptions were church endowments and properties that had been sold at the time they were seized in Damascus and throughout the coastal territories, their price having been spent on government expenditure because funds were scarce, or those that had come into the possession of Muslims whose hostility was feared.

[253] When al-Ḥākim permitted the rebuilding and renovation of the churches and restored their endowments, a group of Christians who had embraced Islam during the persecution met him. They threw themselves before him, surrendering themselves to death, and said, “Our outward adoption of the religion of Islam was neither our choice nor our desire. We ask you either to order us to return to our religion, if you see fit, or to order that we be killed.”

He immediately ordered them to put on belts and black clothing and carry crosses. Each had already prepared the distinguishing apparel for his change of clothing. Al-Ḥākim ordered the police officials to protect them and prevent anyone from interfering with them. So many people sought this concession from him that they began meeting him in group after group, and he granted it to them. A great number returned to Christianity.

[254] The leaders and prominent men among them held back from returning to their religion out of fear for their lives. They suspected that al-Ḥākim's favorable answer to those whom he had permitted to do so was a trick and deception intended to disclose what they concealed in their hearts. They thought he would later track them down and destroy them. Death overtook him first, however. Those who had returned to Christianity were spared what the others feared, and the people in each of the two groups remained in their respective condition.

[255] Al-Ḥākim's actions in this matter—his permission to rebuild and renovate the churches and his restoration of their endowments after his earlier excess in demolishing them, his insistence on tearing out their foundations and effacing their traces, and his permission for the Christians who had outwardly professed Islam to return to their religion nine years after that profession, although this was forbidden in the Muslim religion and its law prescribed death for anyone who did it—were among God's miraculous signs and dazzling wonders. They demonstrated His care for His people and fulfilled His ancient promise when He said, “I shall not leave you in any age without an archon.” The one whom God—exalted be His praise—made their archon, delivering them from what had engulfed and afflicted them, was the very man at whose hand their persecution had occurred and through whom they had been oppressed.

[256] They feared that al-Ḥākim might follow this favor with mistreatment, or that one of his subjects might harm them, and they became alarmed. Anbā Salmūn, superior of the monastery of Mount Sinai, reported to him the fear and anxiety that had entered their hearts. Al-Ḥākim issued them a diploma granting them security. Its text follows:

In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. This is a document from ʿAbd Allāh and His friend, al-Manṣūr Abū ʿAlī, the imam al-Ḥākim bi-Amr Allāh, Commander of the Faithful, son of the imam al-ʿAzīz bi-llāh, Commander of the Faithful, to the community of Christians in Fusṭāṭ, after they reported to him the fear that had overtaken them and the alarm that had terrified and disturbed them, their seeking shelter in the state's shade, and their seeking sanctuary by presenting themselves at the court. In completion of his favor toward them, he has seen fit and commanded that the protection and law of Islam be observed on their behalf and that they be placed beneath his shelter, so that the springs of reassurance may run clear for them and the garments of tranquility and repose envelop them. He has granted their request for a written safe-conduct whose ruling will endure through the ages and be inherited by their descendants and posterity.

All of you are safe under the safe-conduct of God, Mighty and Exalted; of His prophet Muḥammad, Seal of the Prophets and Lord of the Messengers—may God bless him and grant him peace, and his pure family; of the Commander of the Faithful ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib—God's peace be upon him; of the imams who are the forefathers of the Commander of the Faithful—God's peace be upon them; and of the Commander of the Faithful. This safe-conduct extends to your persons, blood, children, property, circumstances, real estate, and everything in your hands. It is an explicit and established safe-conduct and a valid and enduring compact. Trust it, be at rest in it, and be certain that you enjoy the gracious regard and affection of the Commander of the Faithful. His might protects you and his safeguard preserves you. No one shall approach you with evil, and no hand shall reach toward you with harm, without the restraints of the Commander of the Faithful shortening his reach and the severity of his disapproval constricting his arm.

God is the Commander of the Faithful's aid in the welfare and reform he intends for the inhabitants of the regions of his realm and for those who have recourse to dwelling beneath the shelter of his state. He calls God to witness the safe-conduct he has executed for you and the covenant that your eyes behold. God suffices as witness. Let it remain established in their hands as proof of the abundant favors he has bestowed upon them, God Most High willing.

It was written in Shaʿbān 411 [November–December 1020]. Its endorsement, also in al-Ḥākim's own hand at the top, read: “Praise be to God, Lord of the worlds.”

[257] From his first sight and meeting of Anbā Salmūn, al-Ḥākim was favorably inclined toward him and granted every request he made. He ordered Salmūn not to hold back from asking him for anything that would improve the affairs of the Christians and to meet him every day on his route into the desert to ask for whatever he needed. Salmūn obeyed his command, and al-Ḥākim's familiarity with him increased. Many ordinary Muslims, when they learned of al-Ḥākim's inclination toward him, his granting of Salmūn's petitions, and his sharing with Christian monks the practice of wearing wool, went so far as to spread the scandalous charge that al-Ḥākim had become Anbā Salmūn's disciple.

[258] On many days when al-Ḥākim went out into the wilderness, he visited Dayr al-Quṣayr, inspected its construction, and urged the craftsmen to finish it. He released dinars to Salmūn to be spent on it, and also gave dinars to the monks residing there. He ordered them to assist the builders so that construction would proceed successfully. He likewise turned aside to monasteries that the Jacobites had rebuilt in the district of al-Qarāfa.

[259] When he intended to enter the hills and ascend to Dayr al-Quṣayr or one of the other monasteries, the grooms remained behind at the place known as al-Qarāfa or at al-Sāqiya, and he went on alone.

[260] One day he followed his former custom in this regard, but a young groom whom he had taken into his service, known as al-Qarāfī, followed him. The two went far into the hills. Seven Bedouin met al-Ḥākim and demanded a gift from him with coarse speech, harsh words, slander, and abuse. He told them, “I have nothing here that I can give you, but I shall send you to the official in charge of the Treasury, al-ʿAmīd al-Muḥassin ibn Badwās, and he will give you five thousand dirhams.”

[261] They said, “We will not go to him, because he will give us nothing.” Words went back and forth between them and al-Ḥākim. They asked him to send the groom al-Qarāfī with them so that the authorized payment would be completed for them. Four of them went with al-Qarāfī, while the remaining three stayed behind on the road. Those four received the entire sum that he had ordered be paid to them, and al-Qarāfī returned to look for al-Ḥākim.

[262] Al-Ḥākim was late returning to the place where he customarily met the groom. When al-Qarāfī had waited a long time, he became suspicious and went around the hills looking for him. He encountered a wanderer and asked him about al-Ḥākim, describing both him and the donkey he had been riding. The man told him that he had seen a hamstrung donkey on his way and led him to the place. There he saw that the donkey had indeed been hamstrung, as the wanderer had told him.

[263] Al-Sayyida, al-Ḥākim's sister, ordered all the emirs, commanders, and other people to ride out into the desert and investigate what had happened to him. They went up to Dayr al-Quṣayr and searched it lest he be hiding there. They also searched all the other places he used to visit but found no information about him.

[264] Afterward they found the woolen garments he had been wearing in a part of the hills. They were slashed by dagger blows, bore the marks of wounds, and were stained with blood. His body was not found. Most people inferred that the three Bedouin who had remained behind instead of joining their companions and the groom al-Qarāfī to collect the payment authorized for their group had returned to al-Ḥākim, killed him, buried him, and concealed every trace of his grave.

[265] Al-Ḥākim disappeared on Monday, the first day of the holy fast, with two nights of Shawwāl 411 remaining [13 February 1021]. He was then thirty-seven years old. His caliphate had lasted twenty-five years and twenty-six days.