The Eastern Frontier, 961–996

The Eastern Frontier, 961–996

[001] Emperor Romanos transferred Nikephoros, domestikos of the West, after his conquest of Crete (Iqrīṭish), and made him domestikos

of the East and sent him there. He encamped against ʿAyn Zarba and besieged it. A levy (nafīr) from Tarsus came against him together with its governor, Rashīq al-Nasīmī. Nikephoros met them and routed the Tarsians, killing about five thousand men of them and taking about four thousand captive. He returned to ʿAyn Zarba and took it under a grant of safety (amān) in Dhū al-Qaʿda of the year 350. He demolished its wall, and its inhabitants moved to Tarsus. Sayf al-Dawla returned, rebuilt its wall, and restored its inhabitants to it.

[002] He took the fortresses of Dulūk, Raʿbān, and Marʿash in Rabīʿ I of the year 351. The Byzantines also raided Manbij. There they found Abū Firās al-Ḥārith ibn Saʿīd ibn Ḥamdān, who held charge of it; they captured him and carried him to Constantinople.

[003] Nikephoros the domestikos reached the territory of Aleppo, and his arrival was like a surprise raid (kabsa): Sayf al-Dawla did not learn of it until Nikephoros had drawn near. When he learned of his approach, he dispatched his ghulām Najā with the bulk of his army to fight him,

[004] while Sayf al-Dawla remained at Aleppo with the rest of his army. John (Yānis) Tzimiskes (ibn al-Shimshqīq) encountered Najā in the vicinity of ʿAzāz, charged him, and struck him with his sword. Najā fled and returned to Sayf al-Dawla’s army in order to intercept Nikephoros and attack him from behind, while Sayf al-Dawla, those of his army who remained with him, and the people of Aleppo stayed at the city; when Nikephoros’s army drew near, the two forces would close on him and strike him.

[005] Nikephoros marched toward Aleppo. Najā observed his army, feared it, and withdrew from it. Sayf al-Dawla stood outside one of Aleppo’s gates, the one known as the Gate of the Jews (Bāb al-Yahūd), and called the city’s inhabitants to arms; about one hundred thousand of them came out to him. The Byzantine formations arrived. John Tzimiskes charged Sayf al-Dawla and fought him for a time. Sayf al-Dawla fled and took the road to Bālis. Tzimiskes pursued him and did not cease following his trail as far as a village called Sabʿīn. He wrought havoc in Sayf al-Dawla’s army and killed his standard-bearer (ṣāḥib miṭrada)

[006] and a group of the leading men among his companions. The common soldiery fled, and the Byzantines killed thousands. They crowded at the Gate of the Jews to enter the city through it, and many people died in the crush.

[007] Nikephoros encamped against the city of Aleppo on Saturday, when twelve nights remained of Dhū al-Qaʿda in the year 351.

[008] Sayf al-Dawla had built a residence outside Aleppo, in the place known as al-Ḥalaba, and had lavished work on it. Nikephoros ordered it demolished and seized what it contained. On Monday the city’s elders went out to him at his summons. They negotiated that he would grant them safety (amān), that they would bring him money and leave the city clear for him, that his army would enter by one gate and leave by another, and that he would then depart from them. Nikephoros said to them: “I think you have stationed your fighters in the alleys and will attack me while asking me for amān. Then, when my companions enter the city, you will rise against them and strike them.” The elders swore to him that no one remained in the city

[009] who bore weapons. He said to them: “Go away today and come out to me tomorrow, so that what lies between us may be settled and I may grant you amān.” They returned to the city. In the evening of that same day, the Byzantines saw that the city wall was lightly guarded; they scaled it, opened it at dawn from the direction of al-Maydan, entered the city, and advanced against the citadel and fought it. A group of Daylamites was inside and drove the Byzantines back.

[010] After taking the city, Nikephoros stayed at Aleppo for eight days, while his raiding parties plundered its environs, took captives, and took booty. He departed on Wednesday, the last day of Dhū al-Qaʿda. He and his companions supplied themselves with an uncountable quantity of money, kinds of goods, weapons, and mounts, and he entered Constantinople.

[011] Emperor Romanos died on the night of Monday, 16 Ādhār of the year 1274, when six nights of Ṣafar in the year 352 had elapsed, having reigned

[012] for three years and four months. After him his two sons Basil and Constantine sat on the throne. They were children who had not attained majority: Basil was seven years old and Constantine five. Their mother Theophano (Tafānū) and Basil the parakoimōmenos undertook the administration of the empire. The empress, mother of the two boys, judged that Nikephoros should administer the affairs of the empire because of the sound judgment, good administration, and succession of conquests that he had displayed. She came to the church with her two sons and entrusted them to him in the presence of Polyeuktos, patriarch of Constantinople, and all those present. She instructed him to govern them and their realm and to fear God Most High in his treatment of them. Nikephoros the domestikos decided that the parakoimōmenos should remain in the palace, as was his custom, guarding it, the empress, and her two sons the emperors until they reached manhood; that his father Bardas Phokas and his brother Leon should guard the city; that each head of a bureau (dīwān) and each servant should be confirmed in the position he had held in Emperor Romanos’s days; and that Nikephoros himself should devote himself to the campaigns. What he decided found approval

[013] with the assembly. He went out to the plain of Caesarea (Marj Qaysāriyya) to assemble the armies and expend resources on them, and so that he might remain there permanently, bringing him closer to what he sought in the lands of the Muslims. He judged that his assumption of imperial rule would inspire greater awe and be more praiseworthy as policy. He put on the red boots and was acclaimed emperor at Caesarea when eight nights of Aylūl had elapsed; he entered Constantinople on the sixteenth of Āb.

[014] Nikephoros at once confided to Patriarch Polyeuktos that he would marry Empress Theophano, mother of the two boys, and share imperial rule with them, and that if she bore him a son, the empire would pass to that son after the two boys’ deaths. The assembly approved this. The patriarch placed the crown on him and blessed him in Hagia Sophia. He married Theophano, the wife of Emperor Romanos, took charge of her sons Basil and Constantine, and was acclaimed emperor together with them.

[015] He made his father Caesar and ordered him to reside in Constantinople to guard it and look after the Exalted Lady and her two sons; he made his brother Leon kouropalatēs. Theophano and the parakoimōmenos administered the empire for five months, from Emperor Romanos’s death until Nikephoros became emperor. Nikephoros’s accession occurred in the nineteenth year of al-Muṭīʿ’s caliphate, in Rajab of the year 352. He appointed John (Yānis) Tzimiskes domestikos.

[016] In the desert of al-Sharāh there arose a Kharijite of Banū Sulaym named Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Sulamī. A large number of Arabs and other unattached men—people greedy for gain—joined him, so his cause grew strong and his following increased. News of him reached Kāfūr al-Ikhshīdī, ruler of Egypt. Syria was then under his control, and this distressed him. He sent an army to reinforce Syria for fear that some event might occur there, and instructed his men not

[017] to initiate either combat or war with him unless he began against them. He and they remained in that condition for a long time. One night an Arab man known as Shimāl al-Khafājī of Banū ʿUqayl came against him, captured him, and carried him to Egypt. He was paraded there riding an elephant on Saturday, when five nights of Dhū al-Qaʿda in the year 351 had elapsed. He was imprisoned for a time, then pardoned and released.

[018] An earthquake and a great rumbling occurred in Egypt on the night of the fourteenth of Rabīʿ II in the year 352. On the following day the sun appeared red, tending toward blackness, and the people implored God Most High.

[019] The vizier al-Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad al-Muhallabī died on Saturday, when three nights remained of Shaʿbān in the year 352. Muʿizz al-Dawla appointed al-ʿAbbās ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Shīrāzī and Muḥammad ibn al-ʿAbbās Fasānḥas to manage affairs, without formally naming either of them vizier.

[020] Sayf al-Dawla fell gravely ill with a paralysis that afflicted him; people despaired of his recovery, and he came close to death. Najā took a detachment of his army, marched to Ḥarrān, and exacted a levy from its inhabitants; he then went to Mayyāfāriqīn, where Sayf al-Dawla’s wife, the mother of Abū al-Maʿālī, was staying. She refused to let him enter and ordered the gates closed in his face. Najā openly rebelled against his master and renounced obedience to him. He marched to Khilāṭ and took it, then fought Abū al-Ward, its governor—an Arab who controlled part of the lands of Armenia—killed him, and seized his fortresses and lands. He marched to Manzikert and took it, then returned to Mayyāfāriqīn, besieged his master’s wife, fought her, and reviled her with the vilest abuse. Sayf al-Dawla wrote to the commanders with Najā, ordering them to kill him, but the people of Manzikert rebelled against Najā. He went to Khilāṭ, but his ghulām stationed there also rebelled against him and kept from him the wealth he had taken there as booty. The troops demanded their pay from him, but he had nothing to give them; they mutinied and dispersed from him.

[021] In the nineteenth year of al-Muṭīʿ’s caliphate, John ibn Jamīʿ was made patriarch over

Jerusalem.

[022] He served for two and a half years, then was killed and burned. In the nineteenth year of al-Muṭīʿ’s caliphate, a monk called Elias, who had been superior of the monastery known as Sīq Kharīṭīn, was made patriarch of Alexandria in Jumādā II of the year 353. He served for thirty-seven years and died.

[023] In that year Emperor Nikephoros went out and encamped near Adana at the beginning of Dhū al-Ḥijja in the year 352. A very numerous levy from Tarsus met him; he routed them and killed about four thousand of them. The survivors fled to a hill near Adana and fortified themselves atop it. The Byzantines surrounded them, fought them from every side of the hill, and killed them all. The people of Adana fled to Mopsuestia.

[024] John Tzimiskes the domestikos encamped against Mopsuestia and besieged it for several days. He made several breaches in its wall but could not take it. His provisions grew scarce, so he withdrew after burning and destroying what

[025] lay around it. He destroyed al-Maʿūn and its environs, burned it, and took captive and killed a great number of people from it and those districts.

[026] At this time a man from Khurasan arrived in Aleppo with an army, intending to campaign against the Byzantines. He and Sayf al-Dawla agreed to march to meet the Byzantine army encamped against Mopsuestia. Sayf al-Dawla was ill, so he traveled carried in a domed litter; they found that the Byzantines had already withdrawn from Mopsuestia. The Khurasani’s forces dispersed because prices at the frontier and in Aleppo were so high. Most returned to Baghdad and went back to Khurasan. A great many people moved from the frontier to Damascus, al-Ramla, and other towns, fleeing the high prices and fear of the Byzantines.

[027] After their conquest of Crete, the Byzantines took possession of Cyprus. Its inhabitants had conveyed money to both the Byzantines and the Muslims under a peace agreement. During this period a large force from Egypt attacked it in

[028] thirty-two warships. The Byzantines defeated them, killed and captured many of them, and seized one of their ships with all its crew; the survivors returned in flight.

[029] An envoy from Nikephoros, emperor of the Byzantines, came to Sayf al-Dawla. Sayf al-Dawla prepared for his entry, sat upon a throne, and wore a crown set with jewels. Sayf al-Dawla traveled to Mayyāfāriqīn and sent to Najā, ordering him to come and granting safety for his person and property. Najā came to him, and Sayf al-Dawla pardoned him. Najā remained with him and drank in his presence. When he became drunk, he insulted the ghilmān and spoke harshly to them, so they became enraged with him. Sayf al-Dawla’s wife was even more enraged with Najā because he had besieged and insulted her. Sayf al-Dawla cried out against Najā and ordered him removed from his presence; the ghilmān then sprang upon him with swords and killed him.

[030] Emperor Nikephoros returned to the frontier in Dhū al-Qaʿda of the year 353 and encamped at Adana. Its inhabitants had fled to Mopsuestia. He besieged Mopsuestia for more than

[031] fifty days, while his raiding parties devastated the country as far as the vicinity of Antioch. The country could not sustain him because of the severity of the high prices, so he withdrew to Caesarea. The high prices and epidemic became severe in Mopsuestia and Tarsus until people were reduced to eating carrion. Nikephoros returned to Mopsuestia, besieged it, and took it by the sword on Thursday, when eleven nights of Rajab in the year 354 had elapsed. The people fled from Mopsuestia to Kafarbayyā, and the Byzantines took Mopsuestia. Fighting occurred on the bridge between Mopsuestia and Kafarbayyā; the Muslims were routed, and the Byzantines also took Kafarbayyā. They drove all the inhabitants of Mopsuestia into Byzantine territory, passing them through Tarsus so that its people saw them. The emperor marched from Mopsuestia to Tarsus and besieged it; Rashīq al-Nasīmī was there. Its inhabitants sought amān, and he granted it. They surrendered the city to him on Wednesday, at mid-Shaʿbān of that same year. He received them graciously and invited them to

[032] his table, bestowed robes of honor on them, and treated them well. They then left the city. He ordered each person to carry as much of his property and baggage as he could; they obeyed and departed. He sent a group of his men with them to protect them on the road and ward danger from them until they reached Antioch, and sent some of them by sea wherever they wished. The emperor appointed a governor of his own over Mopsuestia and another over Tarsus, instructing the latter to rebuild and fortify it. He brought provisions to it from every direction; it was rebuilt, prices fell, and its inhabitants returned.

[033] When Sayf al-Dawla traveled to Mayyāfāriqīn, he left his ghulām Qarghūyah the chamberlain in Aleppo and left in Antioch a ghulām called Fatḥ. The people of Antioch rose against Fatḥ, expelled him, and surrendered the city to Rashīq al-Nasīmī, who had arrived from Tarsus. A man from Antioch known as al-Ḥasan al-Ahwāzī attached himself to Rashīq, took charge of managing his affairs, and made him hope that Sayf al-Dawla would not return to Syria. Dizbar al-Daylamī and a group of the Daylamites who had been

[034] with Qarghūyah sought amān with Rashīq. Rashīq and Ibn al-Ahwāzī marched to Aleppo, and many engagements occurred between Rashīq and Qarghūyah. Rashīq entered the city of Aleppo and fought against the citadel for three months and ten days. Rashīq was then killed; his companions fled to Antioch and appointed Dizbar al-Daylamī as their emir, while Ibn al-Ahwāzī managed affairs for him. Qarghūyah advanced toward Antioch, and a battle occurred between them. Qarghūyah was routed and returned to Aleppo. Dizbar pursued him toward Aleppo, but Qarghūyah’s men met him, fought him, and drove him back; he returned to Antioch.

[035] During this dissension and rebellion, Christopher (Khrīsṭūfūrus), patriarch of Antioch, judged that he should withdraw from Antioch, lest suspicion from Sayf al-Dawla or one of his followers later attach to him. He went to the monastery of Simeon of Aleppo and stayed there. Ibn al-Ahwāzī sought to harm him, but he was not disturbed by that and remained in the monastery of Simeon until Sayf al-Dawla returned.

[036] ʿAlī ibn al-Ikhshīd died in Egypt on Sunday, when eleven nights of Muḥarram

[037] in the year 355 had elapsed. Kāfūr then became sole holder of authority. He declined to take the title of emir and chose to retain his customary form of address as al-Ustādh. He appointed al-Ḥasan ibn ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Ṭughj as his deputy over Syria.

[038] At Jerusalem there was a governor known as Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl al-Ṣanhājī, who repeatedly harmed John ibn Jamīʿ, patriarch of Jerusalem, and demanded from him in gifts more than custom prescribed. The patriarch had been yielding to him in what he sought from him, but al-Ṣanhājī’s harassment of him increased. John traveled to Egypt, went to Kāfūr, enlisted the support of the Christian secretaries, and complained of what he was suffering at the hands of al-Ṣanhājī and others. Kāfūr therefore wrote to al-Ḥasan ibn ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Ṭughj, his deputy over Syria, ordering him to prevent al-Ṣanhājī from harming the patriarch, to restrain him from demanding what was not rightfully due from him, and to inform him that he

[039] was an object of Kāfūr’s firm concern. Kāfūr’s letters to Ibn ʿUbayd Allāh on this matter continued, and Ibn ʿUbayd Allāh wrote to al-Ṣanhājī with their purport, but he did not desist from his conduct.

[040] As the feast of Pentecost approached, al-Ṣanhājī sent to demand from the patriarch things in excess of the customary amount he used to pay at that feast and pressed him severely for them. The patriarch therefore went down to al-Ramla and informed Ibn ʿUbayd Allāh of the situation and that letters had no effect on al-Ṣanhājī. Ibn ʿUbayd Allāh sent back with him one of his commanders, called Takīn, and instructed him to protect the Christians and their children and not to permit al-Ṣanhājī or anyone else to subject them to service or oppress them.

[041] The patriarch’s taking protection against him weighed heavily on al-Ṣanhājī. He sent again to demand what he had sought from him, but the patriarch took refuge in the commander’s authority and did not pay what he demanded. Al-Ṣanhājī grew angry at this, gathered his clan, his followers, and other men from among the populace, and sent a messenger to summon the patriarch before him. The messenger informed him of the state of the gathering, so the patriarch feared for himself and held back from going. He said to the messenger: “Has he not already been instructed repeatedly not to harm me or demand from me what is not due

[042] from me? Abū Muḥammad ibn ʿUbayd Allāh has sent with me someone to strengthen my hand, protect me, and keep him away from me. I cannot go to him at this time.” He treated the messenger gently until he departed and conveyed his answer to al-Ṣanhājī.

[043] The patriarch had ordered the doors of the Church of the Resurrection closed and fortified himself inside it. Al-Ṣanhājī immediately rode out with his crowds, seized Takīn—the commander whom Ibn ʿUbayd Allāh had sent to protect the patriarch—and took him to himself. He also sent to the patriarch, summoning him to come down and offering him amān. The patriarch did not entrust himself to him because fear had entered him, and he gave the messenger no answer.

[044] They gathered at the doors, burned the doors of Saint Constantine with fire, and entered through them toward the Church of the Resurrection. They found it locked and burned its doors as well. The dome of the Resurrection fell; they entered the church and plundered whatever they could. They went to the Church of Zion, burned it, and plundered it on that same day. That was on Monday, when five nights of Jumādā II in the year 355 had elapsed; it was the twenty-eighth

[045] of Ayyār in the year 1276, the Monday that followed Pentecost. The Jews demolished and destroyed more than the Muslims did. On Tuesday, the day after that day, the patriarch hid in one of the oil jars in the Church of the Resurrection. They searched for him, found and killed him, dragged him to the courtyard of Saint Constantine, and burned him upon one of the columns.

[046] After him another patriarch from Caesarea was appointed, named Ḥabīb, with the kunya Abū Sahl and the Greek name Christodoulos. He restored the doors of the Church of the Resurrection, repaired the altar, and began rebuilding the church, but death overtook him.

[047] During the patriarchate of Anbā Tūmā, a Jacobite Christian secretary named ʿAlī ibn Sawwār, known as Ibn al-Ḥammār, restored what had been demolished, renewed most of what had been destroyed, and built the dome of the Resurrection. This man had come from Iraq with Alf-Takīn the Turk when the latter gained mastery over Syria. He possessed wealth and ample means,

[048] and was killed in the rout of a battle when Alf-Takīn was routed. This occurred before the rebuilding of the Church of the Resurrection had been completed. A syncellus known as Ṣadaqa ibn Bishr was appointed over the Church of the Resurrection in the days of the patriarchates of Joseph and Orestes. He built the basilica there and completed what remained, except for the very large dome (?) of Saint Constantine, which remained unfinished and open to the sky.

[049] During the administration of the see of Jerusalem by Arsenios, patriarch of Alexandria, after his brother Orestes departed for Constantinople, the dome (?) of Saint Constantine was completed and restored to its former state. The entire church was then completed, only a short time before its final destruction, which overtook it in Ṣafar of the year 400.

[050] Sayf al-Dawla asked Emperor Nikephoros to exchange the Muslim captives in his hands for the Byzantine captives held by Sayf al-Dawla, and Nikephoros agreed. Sayf al-Dawla traveled from Mayyāfāriqīn to Samosata and conducted the exchange on the bank of the Euphrates on Thursday, at the beginning of Rajab in the year 355.

[051] In the exchange he redeemed Muḥammad ibn Nāṣir al-Dawla, Abū Firās, others of the Banū Ḥamdān, the qāḍī Abū al-Haytham ibn Abī al-Ḥuṣayn, Zuhayr, Qiṭām, and others of his ghilmān whom the Byzantines had captured from his lands. Abū al-ʿAshāʾir had died in prison in Constantinople. Sayf al-Dawla handed over to them Aʿwar Ḥaram (printed name uncertain), Ibn Balantus, and all the Byzantine captives in his possession. Because no Byzantine remained in Sayf al-Dawla’s hands whom he could exchange, he purchased the remaining Muslim captives from the Byzantines. They numbered three thousand persons, for two hundred and forty thousand Rūmī dinars; this imposed a severe burden on him. A group of the Muslims whom he had redeemed went to Dizbar and entered his protection.

[052] Sayf al-Dawla left the exchange, entered Aleppo, and stayed there one night. He departed for Diyār Bakr because of the paralysis that afflicted him, carried in a domed litter; Qarghūyah the chamberlain was with him. He encountered Dizbar and Ibn al-Ahwāzī

[053] in a tent on the road to Bālis, at the place called Sabʿīn. Dizbar’s companions were routed, and Dizbar and Ibn al-Ahwāzī were brought as captives before Sayf al-Dawla. He carried them to Aleppo and killed them, as well as a group with them. He appointed his ghulām Taqī al-Dīn over Antioch.

[054] The Byzantines went out against Āmid, killed and captured a large number, and withdrew to Dārā and the vicinity of Nisibis; its inhabitants fled for fear of them. Emperor Nikephoros advanced toward Syria, while Sayf al-Dawla marched to Shayzar. Nikephoros encamped at Manbij on Saturday, when twelve nights of Shawwāl in the year 355 remained. He requested the tile (al-qirmīda) from its inhabitants. They brought it out to him; he took it from them, honored them, and did them no harm. He left for Wādī Buṭnān and took a large number of captives there. A raiding detachment came to Bālis and seized about three hundred persons from the town. The emperor then marched

[055] to Qinnasrīn, encamped against Tīzīn, took it, and enslaved its inhabitants. He took the fortress of Artaḥ and passed by Antioch. He encamped against it on Tuesday evening, when five nights of Dhū al-Qaʿda had elapsed, and sent to its inhabitants asking them to surrender the city to him. He would grant security to their persons, families, and property and convey them safely wherever they wished, provided that they did not compel him to fight them. They did not accept what he offered, and he fought them for seven days. His provisions ran short, so he departed on the eighth day after encamping there and returned homeward to Byzantine territory.

[056] Christopher, patriarch of Antioch, went to Sayf al-Dawla at Aleppo. Sayf received him well, thanked him for having kept apart from those who opposed him, gave him precedence, and singled him out for favor.

[057] Sayf al-Dawla proceeded against the elders of Antioch because they had expelled his ghulām Fatḥ and surrendered the city to Rashīq al-Nasīmī. He seized and threatened them, but the patriarch interceded with him for some of them and mediated their case with him.

[058] Sayf al-Dawla granted his request concerning them. Because they had witnessed how firmly established the patriarch’s standing was with Sayf al-Dawla, envy and hatred of him arose in their souls.

[059] Sayf al-Dawla ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ḥamdān died on Friday, when five nights of Ṣafar in the year 356 remained, aged fifty-four solar years. His ghulām Taqī, who was stationed in Antioch, went to Aleppo and took Sayf al-Dawla’s coffin to Mayyāfāriqīn so that he might be buried there; his women and children were residing there. When Taqī left Antioch, its people agreed that they would permit no Hamdanid to enter it, and they entrusted their affairs to ʿAllūsh al-Kurdī.

[060] A man from Khurasan named Muḥammad ibn ʿĪsā came to Aleppo with about five thousand men intending to campaign against the Byzantines. They marched to Antioch, whose inhabitants gave them an excellent reception; their spirits were strengthened by them. Three of Antioch’s elders and leading men—among those whose case the patriarch had mediated and for whom he had interceded, namely Ibn Mānīk, Ibn Muḥammad, and Ibn Duʿāma—agreed to plot against Patriarch Christopher

[061] and rallied the common people against him so that they would fall upon him. A friend of the patriarch among the Muslim notables, known as Ibn Abī ʿUmar, learned what they had planned. He disclosed to the patriarch what they had set in motion against him, told him about it, and advised him to take precautions for himself and leave through the city gate at the end of the day: by morning he would already be in the districts of Aleppo and would have escaped what he feared from his enemies. The patriarch thanked him for advising him and told him that he would consider his situation and do what sound judgment required.

[062] The patriarch’s judgment settled on going to Ibn Mānīk because he trusted in the firm friendship between them. The patriarch sent to him asking permission to go to him and meet him. Ibn Mānīk replied with an answer in which he pleaded that he was occupied at that time and said that, when he was free, he would send to inform him. When the first third of the night had elapsed, Ibn Mānīk’s messenger came to the patriarch summoning him to his house. He went to him, trusting him, and Ibn Mānīk received him graciously and said: “What is the matter with you, patriarch? You are one of the people of this town and live among us; why do you scheme

[063] against us and act against us?” The patriarch said to him: “How is that, my lord?” He answered him: “Because you correspond with the Byzantines, incite them to march against us, and embolden them against us.” The patriarch swore to him that he had never corresponded with the Byzantines and that they had not corresponded with him, and he asked him for the evidence for what he accused him of. Ibn Mānīk rose as though to fetch a letter, summoned a group of Khurasanis whom he had prepared to attack the patriarch, and incited them against him. They sprang upon him with long daggers. One of them made him stand upright, and another stabbed him with a dagger; it sank into his belly, and he fell to the ground. As he fell, his head was cut off and thrown into the furnace of a bathhouse adjoining Ibn Mānīk’s house. His body was carried away, taken out through the city gate at once, and thrown into the river. This occurred on the night whose following morning was Wednesday, the twenty-second of Ayyār in the year 1278, when ten nights of Jumādā II in the year 356 had elapsed.

[064] Shortly before dawn Ibn Mānīk sent a group of men to the Church of Cassian (al-Qasyān), and they seized what they found in the residence

[065] of the patriarch and in the church treasury. They tormented the treasurer until he revealed vessels that had been hidden. They took them, the silver, the textiles, and other things, leaving only copper and a few codices. They also took the chair of Saint Peter, a walnut-wood chair plated with silver and kept in the house of one of their elders, known as Ibn ʿUmar. It remained in his house until the Byzantines took the city.

[066] Eight days after the patriarch was killed, his body appeared on an island in the river. The Christians were then able to take it secretly, and they buried it in the monastery known as Arsanā outside the city. After Christopher’s killing, the see of Antioch remained without a patriarch for two years and nine months.

[067] Abū al-Maʿālī ibn Sayf al-Dawla came from Mayyāfāriqīn to Aleppo and took control of it. He relied on Qarghūyah the chamberlain, his father’s ghulām, to administer affairs.

[068] Muʿizz al-Dawla Aḥmad ibn Buwayh al-Daylamī, emir of emirs, died in Madīnat al-Salām on Monday, when thirteen

[069] nights of Rabīʿ II in the year 356 remained. After him his son ʿIzz al-Dawla Abū Manṣūr Bakhtiyār was addressed as emir, and al-ʿAbbās ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Shīrāzī was invested as vizier on Wednesday, at the beginning of Rabīʿ II.

[070] Kāfūr al-Ikhshīdī, the eunuch ruler of Egypt, died on Tuesday, when ten nights of Jumādā I of that same year remained. After him Abū al-Fawāris Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī al-Ikhshīd was installed as emir in Egypt. He was a child of eleven, on the arrangement that his father’s cousin al-Ḥasan ibn ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Ṭughj, who was then in Syria, would act in his place. Administration of the troops was assigned to Shammūl, and administration of the finances to the vizier Abū al-Faḍl Jaʿfar ibn al-Faḍl ibn al-Furāt ibn Khanzāba, Kāfūr’s vizier. Vizier Abū al-Faḍl took sole charge of governing the country, arrested a group, and confiscated their property. The administration became disturbed under him, and the troops demanded their pay. He continued putting them off; his house was plundered, and a group from his entourage rose in revolt.

[071] The Ikhshidids did not consent to Shammūl’s administering them. Each one of them styled himself emir, and their envy of one another increased. A group of them and of the notables of the country wrote to al-Muʿizz li-Dīn Allāh, ruler of the Maghrib, asking him to send his army to Egypt so that they might surrender it to him. They guaranteed him aid and assistance, so that he might take possession of the country without war or fighting.

[072] Prices in Egypt became disordered, and the prices of grain and provisions rose. A great epidemic accompanied this. It began in the year 353, and the distress became severe in the years 357 and 358. The weak among the people perished; people ate carrion and carcasses and fell dead from hunger. The epidemic increased, and the dead multiplied. Because the dead were so numerous, it was not possible to bury them. Pits were dug for them; a large number were lowered into them, and earth was heaped over them without prayer, washing, or shroud. Their condition continued in this manner until the year 361. Then prices fell and continued to decline until they returned to their customary level.

[073] The cause of this was that the Nile remained deficient from the year 352 through the year 357.

[074] The Bulgars seized the opportunity presented by Emperor Nikephoros’s preoccupation with raiding the lands of the Muslims. They raided the outskirts of his provinces and the parts of his lands adjoining them. He went against them, inflicted harm upon them, and made peace with the Rūs. They were then his party, and he agreed with them that they would raid the Bulgars and fall upon them. Hostility broke out between them, and each side occupied the other. The Rūs gained the upper hand over the Bulgars and subdued them. They took under a pledge of security their city called Ṭ.l.sīrā, the seat of their kingdom, and seized the two sons of Samuel, king of the Bulgars, who were there.

[075] While Emperor Nikephoros was occupied with the war against the Bulgars, the Khurasanis who had come to Antioch launched a raid. They headed for the Byzantine districts, prevailed, took booty and captives, and arrived at Antioch with the captives. A group joined them

[076] consisting of many Muslim volunteers. The Khurasanis returned to Byzantine territory and achieved a complete victory.

[077] Emperor Nikephoros had returned from his raid and sent his servant Petros the stratopedarch, known as al-Aṭrābāzī. He met them in the vicinity of Iskandarūna, between al-Maṣṣīṣa and Antioch, when they had returned from their raid. He attacked them, killed their leaders, and captured the commander of the army and a group of them. The people of Antioch ransomed him for a great sum of money, many garments, and the captives who were in their possession. They received him, and when he reached Antioch its inhabitants welcomed him with honor and high regard. When those of his companions who had survived the killing escaped, they began forcibly seizing the property and baggage of the people of Antioch. The people of Antioch grew wary of them, fought them, and expelled them from the city.

[078] At the end of the year 357, Nikephoros, emperor of the Byzantines, set out for Diyār Miṣr.

[079] He returned to the territory of Arzan and Mayyāfāriqīn, reached Kafartūtā, and killed and took captive a very large group of the inhabitants of these lands. He headed for Syria. Fearing him, Abū al-Maʿālī left Aleppo for Bālis and appointed the chamberlain Qarghūyah as his deputy there. The emperor encamped against Antioch on Saturday, when seven nights of Dhū al-Qaʿda of that year remained. He stayed there for two days, departed on the third day, encamped against Maʿarrat Miṣrīn, and granted its inhabitants security from being killed. They numbered 1,200 persons, and he sent them to Byzantine territory. He took Maʿarrat al-Nuʿmān, Ḥamāh, and Ḥimṣ, and from the last he took the head of Saint Mār John the Prodromos. He traveled to Tripoli and encamped against it on the Feast of Sacrifice—that is, the tenth of Dhū al-Ḥijja—in the year 357. He remained against it that night, burned its suburb, and besieged the city of

[080] ʿArqa for nine days. It had a strong fortress, and he took it by the sword. From it he took many people who had sought refuge there from the neighboring lands, and he took much wealth from it. In the fortress was the amir of Tripoli, Abū al-Ḥasan Aḥmad ibn Naḥrīr al-Arghalī, whom the people of Tripoli had expelled because of his oppression. He was wealthy and had with him a large household and abundant wealth; Nikephoros captured him and seized all his property. He returned to the coastal districts and overran them all. There came into his possession captives whose number could not be counted. He took the fortress of Anṭarṭūs, Marqiyya, and the fortress of Jabala. He made terms with the people of al-Lādhikiyya concerning it, and destroyed villages too numerous to count. He passed through Antioch, sorted the captives who were with him, and released from among them about one thousand elderly men and women. Opposite Antioch, at the mouth of the pass, he built the fortress of Baghrās and installed in it a commander called Michael al-Burjī. He commanded the other lords of the frontier to obey him and assigned one thousand men to him. The emperor returned to Constantinople and sent back to Antioch his servant Petros the stratopedarch, the eunuch servant. When he arrived there,

[081] he grazed down all the crops of its rural districts and consumed them; he strengthened the fortress of Baghrās with men and stationed in the assigned districts [… lacuna …] al-Suryānī, with a group accompanying him, who were to raid Antioch and its vicinity.

[082] Qarghūyah the chamberlain rebelled against Abū al-Maʿālī in Aleppo, and Abū al-Maʿālī returned to Mayyāfāriqīn.

[083] The Qarmaṭians came to Damascus, attacked it and all its districts, and proceeded to al-Ramla. Al-Ḥasan ibn ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Ṭughj took his stand, and a great battle took place between them outside al-Ramla on Thursday, when two nights of Dhū al-Ḥijja in the year 357 had elapsed. Ibn ʿUbayd Allāh fled Syria in defeat and entered Egypt in Muḥarram of the year 358. The Qarmaṭians took possession of al-Ramla and subjected it to unrestricted plunder for two days. Its inhabitants came to terms with them for 125,000 Egyptian dinars, which they undertook to pay; the Qarmaṭians took many people from al-Ramla’s districts.

[084] In this year al-Ḥasan ibn ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Ṭughj, the commander of commanders in Egypt, arrested the vizier Abū al-Faḍl Jaʿfar ibn al-Faḍl ibn al-Furāt ibn Ḥinzāba and confiscated his property. Ibn ʿUbayd Allāh assumed the administration of the country, appointed Ibn al-Riyāḥī as his vizier, and remained for three months. Then he released the vizier Abū al-Faḍl ibn Ḥinzāba, entrusted him with the administration of the country, and returned to Syria.

[085] Christodoulos, patriarch of Jerusalem, died in Egypt on Wednesday, with one night of Ṣafar of the year 358 remaining, after holding office for two and a half years. He was buried in the church of Mār Tādhurus. After him Thomas was chosen as patriarch of Jerusalem; he remained for ten years and died.

[086] Al-Muʿizz li-Dīn Allāh dispatched his army from Ifrīqiya to Egypt with his ghulām Jawhar on Sunday, with six nights of Rabīʿ II of the year 358 remaining. Jawhar remained on the road for three months and reached Minyat al-Ṣayyādīn, among the districts of Egypt, in Shaʿbān of that year. The people of Egypt were alarmed at his arrival.

[087] The opinion of the Ikhshidids and Kafurids united upon submitting to him without combat or war, after safe-conduct had been obtained for them and for the people of the country. The qāḍī of Egypt, Abū Ṭāhir Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad, went out to him with a group of the city’s elders and notables. They met him; he received them well, and they informed him of what the group’s opinion had settled upon. He granted them what they requested, and they obtained a written undertaking from him to that effect and placed their attestations upon it. They returned to Fustat and reported to them what had occurred. Their opinion then reversed from what they had resolved upon—making peace and abandoning the fighting—and they agreed to wage war. They appointed Naḥrīr Shuwayzān over themselves. He marched with the armies to al-Jazīra and al-Jīza and dispatched ʿashāriyyāt to Minyat al-Ṣayyādīn to prevent anyone of Jawhar’s army from crossing to Fustat. Most of them sought safe-conduct from him and joined him, including Biʾr al-Ikhshīdī and Ibn Abī al-Aʿazz; the two brought him other ʿashāriyyāt. A group of Jawhar’s army rushed across from Minyat al-Ṣayyādīn, and word of that reached

[088] the Ikhshidids. They went with the entire army to Minyat Shalqān, opposite them, on Sunday, at the middle of Shaʿbān. Battle took place there; a group of the Ikhshidids were killed, and their army fled in its entirety toward Miṣr on the evening of that day—the ugliest of routs.

[089] Naḥrīr Shuwayzān returned to his house, carried away as much money and valuable property as he could carry, left the remainder behind, and permitted the common people and the subjects to plunder it. He went out by night, fleeing to Syria with a group of Ikhshidids and Kafurids.

[090] On Monday the people awoke in terror and fear; disturbances multiplied, the town was plundered, and many of those in it were killed. The vizier Abū al-Faḍl ibn Ḥinzāba sent a group of his ghilmān and of the police. They went around the town with standards before them bearing the name of al-Muʿizz li-Dīn Allāh, while a herald proclaimed the safe-conduct.

[091] Then, on Tuesday, when seventeen nights of Shaʿbān had elapsed, Jawhar and the armies

[092] with him entered Miṣr. He traversed the town, went outside, and pitched camp opposite Kāfūr’s gardens, where Cairo stands today; at that time it was empty open desert.

[093] At that point the Ikhshidid state came to an end. Their rule had lasted thirty-four years, ten months, and twenty-four lunar days. A group of Ikhshidids returned and sought safe-conduct from Jawhar; he arrested seven of their leading men and took possession of all the wealth of the Ikhshidids and Kafurids. He founded the caliphal palace in Cairo and began its construction in Ramadan of that year. He instructed his companions that each of them who wished should build himself a house and dwelling, and the people set to work building there.

[094] Abū al-Maʿālī set out from Mayyāfāriqīn and encamped before Aleppo in Ramadan of the year 358. He remained for three months, fighting Qarghawayh the chamberlain.

[095] A Black man had come from Egypt to Antioch. He was one of those who had escaped from among the ṣaʿālīk of the Tarsians and was known as al-Zughaylī. He had a small group with him, with whom he intended to raid the Byzantine frontiers. He stayed there for a time with ʿAllūsh al-Kurdī, who was administering the city. One day al-Zughaylī entered before ʿAllūsh, greeting him; he took him unawares and killed him. ʿAllūsh’s followers fled, although they were many, and al-Zughaylī took possession of Antioch.

[096] Petros the stratopedarch arrived immediately with a huge army and encamped against Antioch. Michael al-Burjī, who was stationed in the fortress of Baghrās, joined him. Antioch was weak because of the preceding raids upon its districts, and its inhabitants were negligent in guarding it, because they did not realize that it would be targeted at that time. They could not assemble men to climb the mountain and guard the wall. The Byzantines saw the wall empty and hastened to climb it; they found no one there and summoned other men from among their companions. Those who climbed it were Michael al-Burjī, Isaac ibn Bahrām, and a Black ghulām of al-Burjī. They took possession of the city on

[097] Thursday, when thirteen nights of Dhū al-Ḥijja in the year 358 had elapsed, which was the twenty-eighth of Tishrīn I in the year 1281. The Muslims set fire so that it would form a barrier between them and the Byzantines. They opened the Sea Gate, and a group of the city’s inhabitants went out through it. The Byzantines captured everyone who was in it, released the Christians who were there, and allowed them to remain in it.

[098] Ibn Mānīk escaped, and his whereabouts remained hidden for several days. On the road, at a place known as al-Aqraʿ, a band of Syrian men who used to raid the district of Antioch encountered him and seized him.

[099] When Abū al-Maʿālī learned that Antioch had been taken, he departed Aleppo for Homs and stayed there. The stratopedarch Petros marched to Aleppo, and its inhabitants fortified themselves in the citadel. The Byzantines encamped against the city and besieged it for twenty-seven days. Messages passed back and forth between him and the inhabitants until the matter was settled by a peace

[100] and a perpetual truce. Money was to be conveyed every year to the Byzantine emperor on account of Aleppo, Homs, and all their districts, cities, and villages: three qinṭārs of gold for the land due; seven qinṭārs of gold for the kharāj of these districts; and one dinar a year from every adult male, except persons with disabilities. The Byzantine emperor was to have a resident agent in Aleppo who would collect the tithes on goods arriving there from Byzantine lands and remit them to the emperor. A written instrument to that effect was drawn up between them, and they delivered hostages to him in proportion to the money. He withdrew from them. This occurred in Ṣafar of the year 359.

[101] He returned to Antioch, and the raiders brought him their captive Ibn Mānīk. He imprisoned him for several days, then brought him to the bridge at the Sea Gate, where Patriarch Christopher’s corpse had been thrown. He cut him limb from limb with the sword and threw each part in a different direction.

[102] As for Ibn Maḥmūd and Ibn Duʿāma, who had participated with him in killing the patriarch, the two had been carried

[103] to the prison of Tarsus and remained there for a long time. Ibn Maḥmūd died in confinement, and Ibn Duʿāma remained until Michael al-Burjī the patrikios came to Antioch. Michael brought him to Antioch, weighted him with stones, and threw him into the river.

[104] When Antioch had been taken, Michael al-Burjī and Isaac ibn Bahrām went to the presence of Emperor Nikephoros, bringing him glad tidings of its capture. He thanked them for it, and they hoped for his favor toward them. Then he turned against them because he was distressed by the burning of the city and its capture in that manner, and they therefore bore a grudge against him.

[105] During this period the Byzantines also took Manzikert, in the districts of Armenia, by the sword; it had been in Muslim hands. No one doubted that Emperor Nikephoros had taken all the lands of Syria, Diyār Muḍar, Diyār Rabīʿa, and Diyār Bakr and that they had come into his hands. This was because he had based his policy on targeting the cultivated hinterland of the cities and the villages that provisioned them: he would raid and burn them and take their inhabitants and livestock captive. When harvest time came, he would go out and burn all the crops, leaving the inhabitants of the cities to die of hunger. He continued

[106] doing this to them year after year, until necessity compelled them to surrender the cities to him. In this way he took possession of all the Syrian and Jaziran frontier districts. He killed and took captive so many of their inhabitants that none but God Most High could encompass their number. His expeditions became like an outing for his companions, for no one sought them out or came out before them. He went wherever he wished and destroyed however he desired, without encountering anyone, Muslim or otherwise; no defender or obstacle turned him from what he intended.

[107] He attacked the Arabs repeatedly, prevailed over them, and annihilated a group of them. Thereafter they feared him and refrained from drawing near him, and the Muslims feared him more greatly. No one stood before him, and no one even imagined that he might write to him, much less resist him.

[108] He set the Rūs in authority over the lands of the Bulgars and made them masters of those lands on his behalf, until everyone came under his hand. His affairs proceeded with the best and soundest policy, and he administered them with the finest and most excellent management.

[109] We have already related portions of the accounts of his campaigns and conquests earlier in this book.

[110] When the administration had become ordered for him and much of what he desired had been accomplished, he was killed. The cause of his killing was that he resolved to go on campaign and to leave his brother Leon the kouropalatēs in Constantinople as his deputy—for his father had already died—and to leave with him the two boys Basil and Constantine, sons of Romanos. When their mother Theophano learned what he had resolved to do, she said to him: “I fear that misfortunes may befall you. I do not trust your brother with my two sons, nor do I feel safe with him. For if he finds himself alone in administering affairs in the palace, I fear that he will seize the kingdom to their exclusion, especially since he has children.” The emperor assured her that he was not one who would do that. Yet he was indeed someone who could be suspected and not trusted. The exchange between them continued until he rebuked her and said angrily: “You are now forcing me to castrate the two boys and give

[111] the kingdom to my brother.” She then stopped raising the matter with him. Next she asked who would accompany him on his campaign. He answered her: “John Tzimiskes.” She advised him to arrange John’s marriage so that he would have a household in Constantinople. He said that John had already been offered marriage to Emperor Nikephoros’s sister but had declined because of his continual involvement in wars. She asked Nikephoros’s permission to summon John to her and speak with him about this, and she assured him that she would treat John gently until he consented to and completed the marriage before Nikephoros’s departure. The emperor allowed her proposal, summoned John Tzimiskes, and ordered him to go to the empress. She met privately with him and disclosed her fear for her two sons from Leon, the emperor’s brother. John treated her gently until he became inclined toward her. She sought from him a stratagem by which he would help her kill Emperor Nikephoros, and promised that she would marry him and install him as emperor with her two sons in Nikephoros’s place. He agreed to what she asked; she made him swear to it, and she also swore to him. She went to the emperor and said: “I have settled the matter with him, and he has gone to prepare for the wedding.”

[112] The emperor was pleased by this. After a few days eight trusted men of the realm gathered with her, secretly from the emperor. Among them were Michael al-Burjī and Isaac ibn Bahrām, the two who had undertaken the capture of Antioch, for they bore a grudge against the emperor. By night she brought up John Tzimiskes and a ghulām of his through a window in the palace on the sea. At midnight she led them to the emperor while he was in his sleeping place, and they killed him. This was on the night of Saturday, the eleventh of Kānūn I in the year 1281 of Alexander, when two nights of Muḥarram in the year 359 remained. Nikephoros’s reign lasted six years, three months, and twenty days.

[113] John Tzimiskes was acclaimed emperor that same night. In the morning he put the people in order, and that same day he banished Empress Theophano, mother of Basil and Constantine. Patriarch Polyeuktos attended the act of allegiance and said to him: “Why have you betrayed the empress, when the people agree that the kingdom belongs to her two sons?” He replied: “I am their slave and a servant at

[114] their hands until they grow strong and become fit to manage their affairs, as I agreed with them. As for the empress, I am not one who would leave her with me in the palace, because I fear that she might do to me as she did to Nikephoros.” The patriarch informed him that the palace needed an empress to reside there and be trustworthy over the two emperors. He asked that a suitable woman be sought among the family, one who could be trusted with the two boys and whom John could marry. It was agreed that he should marry Theodora, the two boys’ paternal aunt. It was stipulated for her and for him that, if a child were born to them, that child would be emperor after the two boys. They swore this to one another. That day he had her acclaimed as empress with him; the marriage was completed, and he entrusted the palace to her. This occurred in the twenty-fifth year of the caliphate of al-Muṭīʿ, which was the year 359.

[115] On the night when Nikephoros was killed, John Tzimiskes arrested Leon the kouropalatēs, Nikephoros’s brother, and exiled him. After he had spent some time in exile, during one of John Tzimiskes’s campaigns and while John was absent from

[116] Constantinople, Leon contrived to enter the city secretly. He entered the palace in disguise with some other men, under an agreement reached between him and them, hoping to seize the palace and become emperor. His affair was exposed, and he was caught that very night. Empress Theodora arrested him and blinded him.

[117] Theophano, mother of Basil and Constantine, remained in exile until John Tzimiskes died. Basil then restored her to her former station at his court.

[118] When John Tzimiskes became emperor, Bardas, son of Leon the kouropalatēs and nephew of Emperor Nikephoros, rebelled against him. A great many people rallied to Bardas, and he encamped near Constantinople. Emperor John Tzimiskes dispatched Bardas Skleros against him with a large army. Skleros defeated him, and Bardas Phokas took refuge in one of the fortresses. Skleros took him from the fortress after obtaining safe conduct for him from

[119] the emperor. When Bardas came before him, the emperor exiled him and sent him with his brother to one of the islands. He remained exiled there throughout John Tzimiskes’s reign, until Emperor Basil released and employed him.

[120] In the first year of John Tzimiskes’s reign, which was the year 359, he made a monk named Theodore patriarch of Antioch. This was on Sunday, the twenty-third of Kānūn II in the year 1281 of Alexander, corresponding to the twelfth of Rabīʿ I in the year 359. When Theodore reached Antioch, he went out to the church Arsānā and carried the body of Saint Christopher the patriarch to the church al-Qasyān. He remained in the patriarchate for six years, four months, and five days, and died.

[121] In the second year of his reign, John made Basil patriarch of Constantinople. Basil remained for three years

[122] and one month, and was exiled. In the fifth year of John’s reign, he made Anthony patriarch of Constantinople in Basil’s place. Anthony remained for four years and one month.

[123] John Tzimiskes learned that the Rūs—with whom Nikephoros had made peace and agreed upon an invasion of the Bulgars—were advancing against him, intending to fight him and demand vengeance for Nikephoros. John forestalled them, marched against them, and besieged them in the city of Ṭāysīrā, which the Rūs had taken from the Bulgars. He remained encamped against them for three years. The king of the Rūs asked John Tzimiskes to grant him safe conduct and permit him and the companions with him to leave the city and return to their lands. John granted them this and received from them the city and the neighboring fortresses that the Rūs had seized. He also received from their king the two sons of Samuel, king of the Bulgars, who had been in their hands. He appointed someone over the fortresses on his behalf, and returned to Constantinople.

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[124] As for Jawhar, he sent Jaʿfar ibn Fallāḥ from Egypt to Syria with a large army in Ṣafar of the year 359. Jaʿfar captured Ramla in Rabīʿ II and took prisoner there al-Ḥasan ibn ʿUbayd Allāh and a group of the Ikhshīdids. He sent them to Egypt, where they were detained for a time; then they were brought to the court of al-Muʿizz li-Dīn Allāh in the Maghrib, and he pardoned them. Ibn Fallāḥ went to Damascus and captured it.

[125] Al-ʿAbbās ibn al-Ḥasan al-Shīrāzī was dismissed from the vizierate in Baghdad, and Muḥammad ibn Fasānḥas assumed it on Wednesday, when four nights of Jumādā II in the year 359 had elapsed. He was then arrested and his property was confiscated. Al-ʿAbbās ibn al-Ḥasan al-Shīrāzī was invested with the vizierate a second time when one night of Rajab in the year 360 remained.

[126] In Shaʿbān of the year 359, Tibr al-Ikhshīdī, one of the officials of Egypt, rebelled in the district of the Lower Land. He mustered forces, raided al-Faramā, seized its governor, plundered his property, and took control of the Lower Land.

[127] Jawhar sent the armies from Egypt against him. Tibr marched until he reached Ṣahrajat, where the armies overtook him, and he was put to flight. Ṣahrajat was plundered, and a group of its people became impoverished. Tibr fled, took ship, and set out for Byzantine territory. A man from Tyre known as Ibn Abān came out against him with a group, seized him, and brought him to Ibn Fallāḥ in Syria. Ibn Fallāḥ sent him to Jawhar in Egypt. He was publicly paraded there in Shawwāl of that year, was imprisoned for eight months, and died in prison. His body was taken out, flayed, and crucified at al-Manẓar between Miṣr and Cairo.

[128] Jaʿfar ibn Fallāḥ sent a large army from Damascus to Antioch with his ghulām Futūḥ in the year 360. Futūḥ besieged it for five months but accomplished nothing there and found no stratagem.

[129] At that time John Tzimiskes was campaigning in Bulgaria. Al-Aʿṣam al-Qarmaṭī headed for Syria, so Ibn Fallāḥ sent to summon Futūḥ and the army with him in order to strengthen himself against the Qarmaṭian.

[130] They withdrew from Antioch after its inhabitants had suffered greatly from the siege. After their departure an earthquake occurred in Antioch, and a large section of its wall fell. Emperor John Tzimiskes sent Michael al-Burjī with twelve thousand builders. He rebuilt what had fallen from the wall and restored it to its former state.

[131] Al-Aʿṣam al-Qarmaṭī arrived at Damascus, and Jaʿfar ibn Fallāḥ met him. Fighting took place between them, and Ibn Fallāḥ was put to flight. The Qarmaṭian took possession of his army, went to Egypt, and encamped at ʿAyn Shams. The armies went out against him, and war broke out between them outside Cairo on Friday, at the beginning of Rabīʿ I in the year 361. An abundant number of the Maghāriba were killed. A second engagement took place between them on Sunday, when three nights of that same month had elapsed. The Qarmaṭian was put to flight at sunset; the Maghāriba plundered his baggage train, and he went on to Ramla.

[132] Jawhar proclaimed in Egypt that the remaining Ikhshīdids and Kāfūrids should assemble. About one thousand of their ghilmān assembled. He arrested them, put them in chains, and confined them in a prison he had prepared for them on Tuesday, when three nights of Rabīʿ II in the year 361 had elapsed.

[133] After the Qarmaṭian had been put to flight, Jawhar had sent his nephew Ibrāhīm to Syria with a large army. He met the Qarmaṭian, and the two armies fought. The Maghāriba were put to flight to the last man and entered Egypt in Ramaḍān of that year. Cattle carried most of their baggage and equipment because they lacked mounts. The Qarmaṭian remained at Ramla.

[134] Al-Muʿizz li-Dīn Allāh set out from Qayrawān for Egypt on Thursday, when five nights of Ṣafar in the year 362 had elapsed. He reached Egypt on Tuesday, when seven nights of Ramaḍān of that year had elapsed. He settled there and made it the seat of his kingdom. He released all the Ikhshīdids and Kāfūrids whom Jawhar had imprisoned and let them go free.

[135] When John Tzimiskes returned from Bulgaria, he raided the Muslim lands. He crossed the Euphrates near Melitene in Dhū al-Ḥijja of the year 361 and marched to Diyār Rabīʿa with a large army. He entered Nisibis on Saturday, at the beginning of Muḥarram in the year 362. He killed, took captives, and burned. He remained at Nisibis until an agreement was reached between him and Abū Taghlib, son of Nāṣir al-Dawla al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ḥamdān, providing for a truce and money to be paid to him every year. He took one year’s payment from him in advance. He then went near Mayyāfāriqīn and sought its surrender, but what he wanted was not accomplished.

[136] He withdrew, leaving a ghulām of his as domestikos of the East in Baṭn Hanzīṭ. After the emperor withdrew from those regions, the domestikos marched from Baṭn Hanzīṭ to Amid and encamped against it. A great battle took place there between him and the Muslims in Ramaḍān of the year 362. Many from both parties were killed at that time, and the domestikos and a group

[137] with him were taken prisoner. The Muslims took splendid spoils of weapons and equipment. The domestikos remained a prisoner in Abū Taghlib’s hands until he died in Jumādā II of the year 363.

[138] When what the Romans had done to Nisibis occurred, the people of Mosul rose and resolved to go down to Baghdad. Abū Taghlib ibn Ḥamdān prevented them, and news of this reached Baghdad. Its people became greatly agitated. The common people rose and marched to the ruler’s palace with open Qurʾān codices. They clamored and then stormed it. They drew steel in the ruler’s palace, sought to reach him, and shouted in that manner. He ordered them expelled; they were driven back and shot with arrows. They withdrew after a group of them had been killed. The city remained in a state of disturbance and civil strife.

[139] ʿIzz al-Dawla Bakhtiyār had gone from Baghdad to Kufa, and a group of

elders of those lands went out to him. They complained to him of the fear of the Romans felt by them and the people of Baghdad, and that they had no power against them if they returned to make war upon them. They asked him to defend them.

[140] He informed them that he was resolved upon a campaign, that he would set out at once for Baghdad, and that he would proceed from there against the Romans.

[141] Muḥammad ibn Baqiyya sent a message to Baghdad, to Sabuktakīn the chamberlain, ordering him to advance to meet him, make ready, and prepare to campaign with him in Roman territory, and to command the people of the city to prepare arms and march out with him. Ibn Baqiyya then arrived in Baghdad and proclaimed among the common people that they should prepare all the force and arms they could muster. The common people were instructed to display their arms and march before them, so that the Romans might learn the strength of their resolve to attack them and the size of the host assembled to meet them. Sabuktakīn the chamberlain displayed a great array of arms and powerful instruments of war. Abū Ṭāhir and Abū Isḥāq, Bakhtiyār’s two brothers, rode with him, together with a group of commanders and officers, and they passed through the streets and markets. Young men and strong men from among the common people came forth,

[142] amounting to about seventy thousand armed men. It was a great day, except that it ended in disorder: the common people became emboldened to display arms, and the ruler’s awe diminished because he had shown his need of them and his reliance upon them. They formed factions: the Sunnis fought as one faction and the Shiʿa as another. They cursed one another, left off mentioning the Romans, and turned aside from that matter. They began fighting one another, and great conflicts arose between them. Fighting broke out between the two factions, and they rendered the ruler unable to control or restrain them. They began blocking the roads, taking people’s clothing in broad daylight, and openly raiding the merchants’ shops and homes. The matter grew worse and became very grave. The people suffered severe hardship from it, and the markets ceased functioning.

[143] ʿIzz al-Dawla Bakhtiyār arrived in Baghdad, hoping that the strife would subside on his arrival and that his presence would put awe into their hearts. The result was the opposite: the ʿayyārūn and the mischief-makers made the strife their livelihood. No one could safeguard himself or any of his property from them, and the condition only grew worse in civil strife in Baghdad.

[144] The lawlessness of the fityān grew worse, until the ruler set fire to the western side of the city on Saturday, when two nights remained in Ramaḍān of the year 362. He burned Bāb al-Baṣra and its adjoining area, from the boundary of Birkat Zalzal to al-Sammākīn, and prevented the people from extinguishing the fire. It spread right and left, and a great multitude of men, women, children, and animals burned. It was a dreadful event, the like of which had neither been seen nor heard of. The people moved from the western side of Baghdad to its eastern side, because the eastern side was quiet whereas the western side was riven by strife. The ruler then seized eighteen men from among the ʿayyārūn and the fomenters of strife. He killed fourteen of them and granted safe-conduct to those who remained, promising them stipends. The affliction abated somewhat, and the strife subsided.

[145] ʿIzz al-Dawla fell into financial straits, and his retainers and troops demanded their stipends from him. Al-Muṭīʿ li-llāh was disposed to assist him, although he too was in straitened circumstances. An arrangement was settled between them that he would deliver to him four hundred and twenty thousand dirhams. Al-Muṭīʿ sold some of his garments and objects from his caliphal palace until he had furnished him with that sum.

[146] This

matter with ʿIzz al-Dawla escalated until he imposed confiscations upon the people of the dhimma and the people of the religious community, including upright men, merchants, and men of wealth. He dismissed al-ʿAbbās ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Shīrāzī from the vizierate, arrested him, and confiscated his property. He invested Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Baqiyya with the vizierate that same day—Sunday, when five nights had elapsed in Dhū al-Ḥijja of the year 362. Al-Muṭīʿ bestowed a robe of honor upon him and entitled him al-Nāṣiḥ.

[147] Al-Aʿṣam the Qarmatian returned with his armies to Egypt. Amir ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Muʿizz li-Dīn Allāh went out against him; al-Muʿizz had designated him as his heir. He engaged al-Aʿṣam in battle, and many from both parties were killed. The battle took place at a site known as al-Kawm al-Aḥmar, by the mountain in the province of Egypt, on Thursday, when five nights had elapsed in Shaʿbān of the year 363. The Qarmatian was defeated and fled to Syria. Of his companions and the mixed body that had assembled around him, one thousand four hundred and fifty men were captured. Amir ʿAbd Allāh entered Egypt with the armies, publicly paraded the prisoners, and detained them. He then killed every last one of them on Friday night, when five nights remained in Ramaḍān of that year.

[148] ʿIzz al-Dawla Bakhtiyār’s financial straits increased, and the troops pressed him ever more strongly for their stipends and customary allowances. The land grants and funds passing to Sabuktakīn the chamberlain weighed heavily upon him. The Turks were gathered around Sabuktakīn, who relied upon them and held sway over them. ʿIzz al-Dawla became wary of this and planned to seize the Turks and break up their association. His viziers, more fearful still, urged him to arrest Sabuktakīn, arguing that, if his power were removed, the seizure of his land grants, money, treasuries, mounts, and the wealth of his companions and followers would provide immense relief. Estrangement had already arisen between the two men on another occasion: their relations would appear to mend outwardly, then revert, turn back, and revert again, leaving latent estrangement in their hearts. His resolve to seize Sabuktakīn’s land grants and money became fixed.

[149] ʿIzz al-Dawla Bakhtiyār went down to Wāsiṭ in Shaʿbān of the year 363 and departed from there for Ahwāz. He left in Baghdad Caliph al-Muṭīʿ li-llāh, Sabuktakīn the chamberlain, and his two brothers, Ibrāhīm

and Abū Ṭāhir—the two sons of Muʿizz al-Dawla—together with his harem, his mother, his treasuries, his arms, and his equipment.

[150] He seized Sabuktakīn’s land grant, removed mention of the title “chamberlain” from him, and wrote ordering him to leave Baghdad. He arrested a group of Turks and proclaimed to the rest that they were not to remain. He sent a messenger to his son al-Marzubān ibn Bakhtiyār, who was residing in Basra, ordering him to arrest a group of his Turkish soldiers and proclaim to the rest that they must leave it. He did so.

[151] News of all that had occurred reached Sabuktakīn while he was in Baghdad. He mustered the ghilmān who were present with him, summoned those who were absent, and seized the City of Peace. Groups of the common people affiliated with the Sunna flocked to him. When this class of the common people gained free scope, they oppressed their Shiʿi adversaries. The former hated Bakhtiyār and set themselves at war with the latter, and each of the two sides formed its faction. The Shiʿa were fewer, so they fortified themselves in the outskirts of al-Karkh, on the western side of the City of Peace. War began, and much blood was shed. Forbidden sanctities were violated, and al-Karkh was burned a second time, after

[152] its first fire, which we mentioned above. The merchants were impoverished, and the ʿayyārūn overran their property, their harems, and their dwellings. The Shiʿa proclaimed Bakhtiyār’s slogan, and the Sunnis proclaimed Sabuktakīn’s slogan.

[153] Sabuktakīn and the Turks took possession of the treasuries, arms, and equipment. Sabuktakīn expelled Ibrāhīm and Abū Ṭāhir, Bakhtiyār’s two brothers, together with his mother and his entire household. He burned their residences, their houses were plundered, and he gave the common people license to do so.

[154] Al-Muṭīʿ li-llāh resolved to leave Baghdad in flight from the strife, but the Turks seized and imprisoned him. They called upon him to surrender authority to his son, Abū Bakr ʿAbd al-Karīm. Out of fear of them, he assented and designated him his successor. He renounced the caliphate, laid it aside, and had witnesses attest his declaration that he was incapable of it, that he had withdrawn from it voluntarily, and that he had bestowed it upon his son Abū Bakr. They witnessed this declaration by him on Wednesday, when thirteen nights had elapsed in Dhū al-Qaʿda of the year 363. His caliphate had lasted twenty-nine years, four months, and twenty-one days. He died after his deposition, on Monday, when eight nights had elapsed in Muḥarram of the year 364.

Caliphate of al-Ṭāʾiʿ li-llāh

[155] Sabuktakīn seated Abū Bakr ʿAbd al-Karīm ibn al-Muṭīʿ li-llāh in the caliphate and entitled him al-Ṭāʾiʿ. On the third day of his caliphate, al-Ṭāʾiʿ bestowed a robe of honor upon Sabuktakīn, entitled him Nāṣir al-Dawla, and made him commander of commanders.

[156] Bakhtiyār prepared to meet him and marched from Ahwāz back to Wāsiṭ. He wrote to his paternal uncle, Rukn al-Dawla al-Ḥasan ibn Būya, at Rayy, and to his cousin, ʿAḍud al-Dawla Fanā-Khusraw ibn Rukn al-Dawla, in Fārs, appealing to both for help, complaining to them of what had befallen him, and asking them for rescue and assistance. He wrote concerning the same matter to Abū Taghlib ibn Nāṣir al-Dawla ibn Ḥamdān at Mosul and to all the other governors of the frontier districts and towns. His uncle Rukn al-Dawla was unable to march because of his advanced age and weakness of movement. He sent to Bakhtiyār his companion ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn al-ʿAmīd with his armies and relied upon his son ʿAḍud al-Dawla Fanā-Khusraw to rescue and assist him.

[157] Sabuktakīn applied himself vigorously to preparing for war. He set about marching to Wāsiṭ and carried al-Muṭīʿ with him. The two reached Dayr al-ʿĀqūl, and al-Muṭīʿ li-llāh died there. An illness struck Sabuktakīn, and he remained ill at Dayr al-ʿĀqūl for four days. He too died. The Turks appointed in his place over themselves another Turkish ghulām named Aftakīn al-Sharābī and conferred leadership over them upon him. He led his armies and encamped less than one parasang from Wāsiṭ. The vanguards of the two armies met, and war continued between them on the western side of Wāsiṭ for forty-eight days. The Turks were defeated and fled from Wāsiṭ to the City of Peace.

[158] ʿAḍud al-Dawla Fanā-Khusraw reached the districts of Iraq to provide aid. Bakhtiyār and his brothers met him, dismounted and kissing the ground. They agreed that Fanā-Khusraw should march to the City of Peace along the eastern side, while Bakhtiyār marched from Wāsiṭ to the City of Peace along the western side to meet the Turks.

[159] The Turks built a bridge over the river known as the Diyālā, placed their baggage train behind them, and marched

[160] as one unencumbered force to meet ʿAḍud al-Dawla Fanā-Khusraw. He advanced toward them on the morning of Saturday, fourteen nights having elapsed of Jumādā I in the year 364. Battle broke out between them and lasted from the forenoon until the afternoon. The Turks were defeated and crossed that bridge, and many of them and their followers perished through killing and drowning. They fled, with al-Ṭāʾiʿ in their company, and all their baggage was plundered. Fanā-Khusraw and Bakhtiyār entered Baghdad on Wednesday, with twelve nights remaining of Jumādā I of that year.

[161] When this victory had been accomplished through Fanā-Khusraw, his ambition turned toward gaining mastery of the realm of Iraq. He employed a ruse against Bakhtiyār and his brothers until they came into his residence, and he arrested them on Friday, with five nights remaining of Jumādā II of that same year.

[162] Fanā-Khusraw wrote in Bakhtiyār’s name to al-Marzbān ibn Bakhtiyār in Basra, ordering him to surrender Basra to ʿAḍud al-Dawla’s chamberlain and to come up to the City of Peace. Al-Marzbān seized the messenger and did not comply. Fanā-Khusraw retained the vizier Muḥammad ibn Baqiyya in his position and relied on his supervision in administrative affairs and the collection of funds.

[163] Aftakīn and most of the Turks who had been defeated resolved to depart for Syria, while al-Ṭāʾiʿ and the rest decided to turn back to the City of Peace. ʿAḍud al-Dawla ordered the caliphal palace repaired and refurbished and its furnishings renewed. Al-Ṭāʾiʿ returned, and the army went out to meet him. ʿAḍud al-Dawla received him on Thursday, eight nights having elapsed of Rajab of that year.

[164] Fanā-Khusraw dismissed Abū Manṣūr and appointed Muḥammad ibn Baqiyya over Wāsiṭ, Tikrit, and ʿUkbarā, assigning all of them to him. He diminished none of his customary entitlements except the title of vizier alone. Ibn Baqiyya requested that a body of the army be attached to him, and it was attached. Fanā-Khusraw instructed it to obey and serve him. Ibn Baqiyya went down to the districts entrusted to him and, upon reaching them, renounced obedience. He arrested those with him who were partisan to his former master Bakhtiyār. He wrote to ʿImrān ibn Shāhīn, lord of al-Baṭīḥa, requesting his support, and ʿImrān agreed. He also wrote to al-Marzbān ibn Bakhtiyār, asking him to reinforce him with men and weapons. Al-Marzbān did not answer him, thinking that it might be a stratagem against him.

[165] Fanā-Khusraw sent an army to Wāsiṭ to seek Ibn Baqiyya. Ibn Baqiyya went out to meet it; they clashed, and Ibn Baqiyya was defeated. He withdrew from his rout to his position and fortified himself there. Conditions consequently became unsettled for Fanā-Khusraw. Word reached his father Rukn al-Dawla that he had arrested Bakhtiyār and his brothers and taken sole control of affairs to their exclusion. Rukn al-Dawla reproached him for this and threatened him unless he released them and withdrew from them to his own country.

[166] Fanā-Khusraw sent ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn al-ʿAmīd to him with a message informing him that the troops and allies hated Bakhtiyār and had demanded their stipends from him; that Bakhtiyār had reacted harshly to their faces and alienated them, so Fanā-Khusraw had feared for him from them and protected him in his residence; and that Bakhtiyār himself had requested retirement from office and release from it.

[167] ʿAlī ibn al-ʿAmīd returned with the answer to the message: Fanā-Khusraw was ordered to entrust administration to Bakhtiyār, withdraw from him, and release him. A settlement was therefore reached between Fanā-Khusraw and Bakhtiyār through Ibn al-ʿAmīd’s mediation, on the condition that Bakhtiyār and his brother Ibrāhīm should [be installed] as Fanā-Khusraw’s deputies over all the districts and cities that Bakhtiyār had

[168] governed, while Fanā-Khusraw withdrew from them; that the two should establish the public invocation for him after Rukn al-Dawla and then for themselves; that they should hear and obey him; and that they should neither dissolve nor bind anything except after consulting him and receiving his permission. The two swore this to him. An instrument was drawn up among them in several copies, and they had witnesses attest it against themselves. Fanā-Khusraw bestowed robes of honor upon the two and upon their brother Abū Ṭāhir. They donned them and kissed his feet and his carpet. They returned to their residences on Friday, with two nights remaining of Ramaḍān in the year 364.

[169] Bakhtiyār’s army and the common people of the city gathered around him as his partisans, and their shouting rose in joy at his release. They stirred up sedition against Fanā-Khusraw, ʿAḍud al-Dawla. He therefore left the city, heading for his territories at Shiraz in Fārs, on Friday, five nights having elapsed of Shawwāl of that year. Ibn Baqiyya then came up from Wāsiṭ to the City of Peace. Bakhtiyār increased his honors and entitled him Naṣīr al-Dawla in addition to his former title, al-Nāṣiḥ.

[170] He entitled ʿAlī ibn Rukn al-Dawla Fakhr al-Dawla, and entitled his son al-Marzbān

ibn Bakhtiyār Aʿzāz al-Dawla. He entitled ʿImrān ibn Shāhīn Muʿīn al-Dawla and ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn al-ʿAmīd Dhū al-Kifāyatayn.

[171] As for Aftakīn al-Sharābī the Turk, he and those of his companions who followed him traveled until they drew near Damascus. They wrote to al-Muʿizz li-Dīn Allāh asking his permission to come into his presence. Before he had formed his decision, they took control of Damascus. This was at the end of Shaʿbān in the year 364.

[172] In that year Yānis ibn al-Shimshiq, king of the Romans, invaded Syria and encamped against Baalbek in Ramaḍān of that year. He captured it on Saturday at the middle of the month, burned it, and seized a group of its inhabitants. He also captured Ḥusayn ibn al-Ṣamṣām. He compounded with the people of Damascus for sixty thousand dinars, which they were to bring him every year. He drew up an instrument binding them to this and took in it the subscriptions of the notables and of the people according to their ranks. He took a group of them as hostages in his custody. He summoned Aftakīn to come out to him, and Aftakīn went out with four ghilmān.

[173] The king honored him and set up a private pavilion for him, and they broke fast together that night. The king bestowed a robe of honor upon him and granted him the money represented by the subscribed obligations he had taken from the people of Damascus. He released the hostages and mounted Aftakīn on a horse with saddle and bridle.

[174] The king marched by the coastal road and captured Beirut. He captured its emir, Naṣr the eunuch, and carried him to the land of the Romans. He encamped against Tripoli and fought it, but achieved nothing there. He took the fortress of Bāniyās and the fortress of Jabala. He also received the surrender of the fortress of Burzūya and the fortress of Ṣihyūn, because Kulayb the Christian, secretary of Ruqṭās, surrendered them to him. The king appointed governors of his own over these forts, which passed to the Romans from that time onward and have remained so to the present point. The king made Kulayb a patrikios. Kulayb had two sons, and the king gave both of them ranks. He also made him bāsilīq over Antioch and granted him a large benefice.

[175] In Egypt, the Ikhshīdids, the Kāfūrids, and those of like standing were assessed on their estates and properties, each one being required to pay according to the amount he owned. This policy became established until it spread—

[176] the demands encompassed all the people. They were pressed with insistent demands; agents were set over a group of them, and they were detained. Money was extracted from the people over a period of four months, beginning in Dhū al-Qaʿda of the year 364 and ending on the last day of Rabīʿ I in the year 365, amounting to about one hundred thousand dinars.

[177] Al-Muʿizz li-Dīn Allāh fell ill in Rabīʿ I of the year 365, and the demands ceased because of his illness. A group of people had borne the burden of the imposition during that period, but when he passed away, the demands upon them ceased.

[178] Al-Muʿizz li-Dīn Allāh died on Friday night, after eleven nights had elapsed of Rabīʿ I in the year 365. He was forty-six years old and had held the caliphate for twenty-three years, five months, and four days.

Caliphate of the ʿAlids

Beginning of the caliphate of al-ʿAzīz bi-llāh

[179] Al-Muʿizz had designated his son Abū al-Manṣūr Nizār as his heir and appointed him his successor. On Thursday, after ten nights had elapsed of Rabīʿ II, one day before al-Muʿizz’s death, he summoned to Nizār his brothers, his paternal uncles, all the rest of his family, and a group of the leading men of his government. They saluted him as heir apparent.

[180] Al-Muʿizz’s death remained concealed for eight months. When the Feast of Sacrifice came—that is, the tenth of Dhū al-Ḥijja in the year 365—his death was made public. That day Nizār led the Muslims in prayer, was saluted as imam and caliph, and was entitled al-ʿAzīz bi-llāh.

[181] Yānis ibn al-Shimshiq, king of the Romans, died on Tuesday, the eleventh day of Kānūn II in the year 1287 of Alexander, corresponding to seven nights having elapsed of Jumādā

I in the year 365. His reign had lasted six years and one month.

[182] Basil and Constantine, the two sons of Romanos, then became sole holders of the kingdom and the administration of affairs. Of the two, Basil alone undertook the governance of the realm. He was older than his brother Constantine and was eighteen years old at that time.

[183] Basil relied upon the parakoimōmenos in governing, recalled his mother Theophano from exile to the palace, and dispatched the armies with Michael al-Burjī to raid the lands of Islam. Michael raided Tripoli and took much booty, returned to Antioch, and gathered the armies for a second expedition.

[184] Emperor Basil had appointed Bardas Skleros over Baṭn Hanzīṭ and al-Khālidiyyāt. When Skleros arrived there, he took Malatya by surprise. He arrested the basiliq stationed there and took from him the money he found with him, amounting to six qinṭārs. He rebelled against the emperor and claimed the empire for himself. Many Romans, Armenians, and Muslims gathered around him, and he took control of that entire region.

[185] The emperor wrote to Michael al-Burjī at Antioch, ordering him to go down for the campaign and join the patrikios Ibn al-Malāʾinī,

who was then governor of Tarsus, in order to meet Skleros.

[186] They met him at the Jayḥān, and Skleros defeated both of them. Ibn al-Malāʾinī went to his home in Cappadocia, while al-Burjī fortified himself in a fortress of his in the Anatolikōn territory.

[187] Skleros encamped against al-Burjī and brought him out under safe conduct. Al-Burjī joined him, and Skleros appointed him magistros. Al-Burjī had left his eldest son as his deputy at Antioch. Before Skleros took him, he had written secretly to his son, summoning him to join him and ordering him to surrender the city to the basiliq Kulayb the patrikios. Al-Burjī’s son obeyed what his father had instructed.

[188] Skleros marched with his armies into Cappadocia and headed against Ibn al-Malāʾinī. With Skleros was an elder who had become a Christian, a patrikios named ʿUbayd Allāh from Malatya. Skleros made him magistros and sent him to Antioch. With him he sent a eunuch ghulām of his named K.n.tīsh, as basiliq over the city.

[189] When the two reached Antioch, Kulayb surrendered the city to them. Antioch, its frontiers, and all the lands

of the East passed to Skleros.

[190] The magistros ʿUbayd Allāh sent Kulayb the patrikios and the leaders of the city to Skleros’s court in Cappadocia.

[191] Emperor Basil dispatched the patrikios and stratopedarch known as al-Aṭrābāzī, the eunuch who had taken Antioch, with a huge army. He ordered him to join Ibn al-Malāʾinī and meet Skleros. They met in Cappadocia. Al-Aṭrābāzī was killed, and Ibn al-Malāʾinī was defeated. Skleros grew stronger, and [his standing] became great. He sent Kulayb to Malatya as basiliq over it and returned to Antioch the leaders of its people who had gone out to him.

[192] When Skleros’s affair became grave, Emperor Basil raised Bardas Phokas, son of Leon, the brother of Emperor Nikephoros, to favor. He brought him from the island where he had been exiled after remaining in exile for seven years. He made him domestikos of the scholai—that is, commander of the armies—attached his armies to him, and sent him to meet Skleros. This was in the second year of the rebellion. Bardas Phokas set out against Skleros,

[193] and the two met at Banqaliya. Bardas Phokas was defeated on Wednesday, after ten nights had elapsed of Dhū al-Qaʿda in the year 367, and many from both sides were killed.

[194] At the beginning of Skleros’s rebellion, Emperor Basil had sent to Theodore, patriarch of Antioch, summoning him to Constantinople. He sent him a ship in which to travel by sea. Theodore set out while ill, and when he reached Tarsus he died on the twenty-eighth day of Ayyār in the year 1287.

[195] There was in Aleppo a bishop named Agapios. After the death of Patriarch Theodore, the people of Antioch sent a request for a patriarch who would be over them and administer their affairs. They agreed to write a letter to Emperor Basil, asking him to send them a patriarch. In the letter they named a group upon whom their choice had fallen, and entrusted Agapios, bishop of Aleppo, with conveying it. He asked them to add his name to the names mentioned. They agreed, and he departed with the letter.

[196] Agapios went to the king’s court and reported to him the condition of the city, the state of its inhabitants, and their holding fast to obedience and loyalty toward him. He informed him that sound judgment required the city to have a patriarch who would administer it and keep its people firm in obedience to him. The king thanked Agapios for his endeavor and approved what he had done. Agapios undertook to the king that he would return to Antioch, win the magistros ʿUbayd Allāh over to his obedience, remove Skleros’s name, and restore the public invocation for the king. The king agreed with him that, if he carried out what he had undertaken, Agapios himself would be patriarch over Antioch.

[197] Emperor Basil wrote through Agapios to ʿUbayd Allāh an unrestricted letter in his own hand, seeking to win him over and promising to treat him well. He guaranteed that he would confirm him in his office in Antioch for the duration of his life and would fulfill for him everything that Agapios, bishop of Aleppo, told him on the emperor’s behalf. He directed ʿUbayd Allāh that, if what had been agreed between Basil and Agapios was accomplished, he was to make Agapios patriarch over Antioch.

[198] Agapios traveled disguised in a monk’s garb until he reached the outskirts of Antioch. He had hollowed out the cover of a codex he carried, buried the king’s letter in it, and pasted a leaf of the codex over it, so that the letter’s presence was concealed. When he reached the city, he was searched,

but nothing was found on him that aroused suspicion.

[199] Agapios met ʿUbayd Allāh and spoke with him in private, and they settled the matter according to what the letter contained. Agapios produced the king’s letter, and ʿUbayd Allāh kissed it, made the public invocation for the king, removed Skleros’s name, and made Agapios patriarch over Antioch. This occurred on Sunday, the twenty-second of Kānūn II in the year 1287 of Alexander, in the second year of the reign of Basil and Constantine, which was the year 367.

[200] When Bardas Skleros learned that the public invocation had been made for Emperor Basil at Antioch, he sent Ibn Bahrām there to win its inhabitants over to his obedience and to have the public invocation restored for him. The Antiochenes did not allow him to enter the city, so he besieged and fought them. He drove off their property and the many livestock they had outside the city, and then withdrew from it.

[201] Maḥfūẓ ibn Ḥabīb ibn al-Bughayl joined Skleros, took control of the fortress of Artāḥ, and headed

toward Antioch with an army he had assembled from Armenians and a mixed following.

[202] The magistros ʿUbayd Allāh went out against him and fought him. Ibn al-Bughayl was defeated and fled to Aleppo, then returned to the obedience of Emperor Basil.

[203] The Armenians in Antioch raised a revolt inside the city and in its outskirts. All of them followed a man among them named Samūl. They went suddenly to the magistros ʿUbayd Allāh at his house in order to fall upon him. ʿUbayd Allāh asked his ghilmān and companions whether the people of the city were with him or against him. They told him that they were with him, and his resolve grew strong. He went out to meet the Armenians; the people of the city gathered around him, fought the Armenians, and put them to the sword. The Armenians were defeated, and Samūl escaped from before them.

[204] When Agapios’s position as patriarch had become established, he wrote to Anbā Elijah, patriarch of Alexandria, asking him to instruct the people under his jurisdiction to include Agapios’s name in the diptychs, according to established custom. He sent the letter to him by a monk of his named John and attached to it his confession of faith—the confession which

custom required the patriarch assuming the presidency to write upon his installation, so that it might be known from it that he professed the faith agreed upon by those of the six councils.

[205] Anbā Elijah examined his letter and wrote him a reply censuring him for his action and declaring his judgment mistaken, because what he had done was impermissible and, by transferring from the episcopate to the patriarchate, he had transgressed contrary to what was lawful and permitted in the canon. Elijah said that he could find no way to approve Agapios’s presidency and patriarchate or to raise his name, since he regarded Agapios’s condition as like that of a man who married a daughter, then left her and took her mother, or like one who divorced a wife and married another.

[206] He wrote that our Lord Christ said, “Whoever divorces his wife has caused her to commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.” He continued that the rank of the priesthood was ordered on the model of the orders of the angels and resembled them: every order among them preserves its own rank and does not pass into another. It was likewise on the model of the stars and planets, which remain bound to their order

and positions; none moves from its position to another.

[207] Elijah requested from Agapios a formal attestation by the people of the city stating the circumstances and how their acceptance of him had come about, with the signatures of the city’s scribes and elders testifying to it.

[208] The reply reached Agapios, and he answered it with a letter, of which this is a copy:

[209] “In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.

[210] This letter of mine, O pure spiritual father, fellow participant in service, equal in rank, and united in spirituality, comes from the Christian see in the City of God, which glories in his name and is surrounded by his disciples and the first of his apostles. On Saturday, the seventh of Kānūn I, it reports the welfare of God’s holy churches and their children under my care, and, after theirs, my own welfare. Praise be to God for what he has graciously bestowed and conferred. He is asked to complete the spreading of his sheltering veil over this people and to complete his grace upon the community in my care, in yours, and in that of every shepherd whom he has appointed to shepherd in a place he has approved, by his grace and favor.

[211] Your letter reached me, O pure spiritual father, by the hand of Anbā John, the monk who had been sent from our lowly dwelling to your holiness. I became fully acquainted with what it contained and rejoiced at the news of your welfare and at what I inferred concerning the condition of those under your care. Then my thought grew prolonged, my mind was confounded, my reason was bewildered, and my thoughts were scattered as I contemplated what you had written and wondered at what you had answered. I do not know what cause moved you to reject what was not to be rejected, to deny what was not to be denied, to argue from what is inadmissible, and to do what is unfitting. Since you knew the purpose of my initiative, my choice to seek blessing through communion with you, and my dispatch of my messenger to you at a time when passage from our region to yours was almost impossible even for birds—let alone letters and messengers—it was fitting that you not write what you wrote without first establishing that you stood upon a truth that cannot be dissolved, a proof that cannot be invalidated, a correctness that cannot be denied, and a rule whose adherents could not be ascribed to passion, stupidity, deliberate purpose, or any other condition from which your holiness is innocent and exalted.

[212] As for your saying, O spiritual father, that you grieve over what my condition has come to, are anxious over what has happened to my affair, and would prefer death to hearing of anything like this, that was not fitting. Here—praise be to God—there occurred no hairesis, no corruption of doctrine, no breach of an established rule, and no unfamiliar condition. What occurred was an office in comparison with which my condition was small and from which my station was far removed, because of its elevation above me, its greatness upon me, my slight ability to discharge it, and my coming close to lacking any claim to deserve it. Yet it did not come from me or through any striving of mine. Rather, it came about through a providential success whose secret I cannot fathom and whose cause none but the Creator knows. It is what my companions chose, what my lot accepted, what the heads of state ratified, and what the learned men of the religious community recognized in the great city, upon which reliance is placed and from which knowledge is drawn. How can it be permissible for one person to deny what this class agrees upon and this community accepts? It is a matter well known among us and practiced among us from ancient times down to our own day. As for what you mentioned in this matter, O spiritual father, I know that you mentioned it only because

acquaintance with this state of affairs is remote in your city, because [writings] reporting cases like it are lacking in your region, and because few people in your locality use or quote them, owing to the conditions into which the inhabitants of those lands have been forced—concerning which we ask God for aid.

[213] If you return to investigating the matter, you will find it an affair that did not begin with us and does not end with us. You will find Eustathius, patriarch of Jerusalem, whom the holy synod at Nicaea transferred from Aleppo to Antioch. You will find Meletius transferred from Lārṣā to Aleppo and from Aleppo to Antioch. He attended the second synod at Constantinople, and “the Theologian” was transferred from his see to its see. You will find Eudoxius transferred from Marash to Antioch and from there to Constantinople. You will find Eusebius transferred from Beirut to Nicomedia and from there to Constantinople, and you will find another group transferred to several places. This was after Saint Peter the Apostle, who is the foundation of the Church and the head

of the law, whose residence at Antioch lasted twelve years, and who afterward moved to Rome. He suffices you as a witness. Let the matter end with those whom we have mentioned—a few among many—as a precedent from which one may begin and a basis to which one may return.

[214] Since that is so, O spiritual father, you have learned from us what you requested and found what you sought. For your request in your letter was that, if there were found in this matter a basis to which one could return and a path opened for you, you would accept the established customs and raise the name. This is especially so since you know that this is not something demanded by a compelling necessity; what is desired is the union of the holy churches in spirituality. Whoever seeks to unite with your holiness and share in your ministry may not be held apart by you through the arguments you advanced, once their condition is made clear and proof establishes the soundness of what differs from them. Among those arguments is likening this affair to a man who married a daughter, then left her and took her mother. Divine priesthood is exalted above comparison with human marriage. Were the matter not so, then, when a bishop died leaving a brother worthy of his office, it would not be permissible for

that brother to be installed in his place, just as a brother may not take his brother’s wife after his death.

[215] The comparison with a man who divorced one woman and took another is likewise far from our case and is not fitting as a comparison with it. Otherwise it would not be permissible for a city to have more than two bishops over it, just as a woman may not marry more than two [husbands].

[216] As for the saying of the Lord Christ, “Whoever divorces his wife has caused her to commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery,” it was not spoken concerning priesthood. Rather, his words were addressed to the Jews when they came to him to test him. He showed them how far their dispositions were from what the gentle law of nature and discerning reason require: preserving the human wife and holding fast to love for her, because the two have become one body, as Scripture says. Thus he exposed their faults and compelled them to say, “It would indeed be better for a man not to marry at all.” How far is this meaning from divine priesthood, which consists of ranks ascending from the lower to those above it!

[217] As for comparing these ranks with the orders of the angels, each order among them preserves its position and they do not pass into another. This too is something that does not fit the case of transfer. Otherwise it would not be permissible for the reader to become a subdeacon, for the subdeacon to become a full deacon, for the full deacon to become a priest, or for the priest to be transferred to what is above.

[218] As for comparing them with the stars, saying that the celestial bodies remain bound to their order and positions and that none of them moves to the position of another, this too is far-fetched and unfitting. The celestial bodies are inarticulate bodies: the Creator placed each of them in its position and made its nature unchanging from its state. As for man, he made him a moving, articulate living being, from one state to another and from one matter to another. What is most fitting for him is that his transfer be toward what is nobler and his motion toward what is higher. From this it follows that transfer is permissible for him; and in the cases of those whose transfer we mentioned, the witnesses for this state of affairs have been established.

[219] As for your request, O spiritual father, that I produce a formal attestation from the noble city stating

how this state of affairs came about and how consent to it occurred, no formal instrument concerning it was drawn up, nor did any predecessor of mine do this, that I should do it after him. Were the road there not difficult at this time, that would indeed be easy.

[220] As for sending the signatures of the scribes of this see and its elders concerning their consent, we would wish this to be done if the affair had not been completed and settled—for suspicion would then attach to such a case. But after its completion and the passage of one year over it, you know that, had signatures not initially been obtained and an assembly and consent not occurred before the journey to the city, it would not have been completed; and had there been disturbance after its completion and no calm yet occurred, the matter would be otherwise. We in our church are—praise be to God—one; communion in it is in effect on every side, and love among its children is complete and entire. There is here no discord, no isolation, no schism, and no condition containing suspicion that would make it necessary to send what you sought and requested. A thing like this, when out of its proper place, takes the course of mutual challenge, and complying with such a thing entails deficiency and introduces suspicion. What is more consonant with divine love and more fitting to spiritual

circumstances is that we abandon requesting what custom has not been accustomed to request, abandon insistence on what has dragged on and argument by anything like it, and return to what is obligatory in strengthening love and completing the union of ministry and communion, so that doubt may disappear, the cause of corruption be removed, and no schism occur in the Church. You, O spiritual father, are to perform that obligation.

[221] I have intended to send the blessing in accordance with prescribed practice and custom. It has been delayed only because of the distance of the road and the difficulty of the time. I am watching for an opportunity to send it and for the departure of someone fit to carry it, so that I may dispatch it. I shall seek blessing through its dispatch and act in this according to the prescribed practice, whose delay makes me anxious. When it reaches you, O spiritual father, you are to receive it according to the custom followed in spiritual matters. Its delay does not diminish it, nor would its precedence add to it. I would rejoice in a prompt letter from you containing news of you, the soundness of your condition, and whatever from those with you would gladden me, and telling me what needs and important affairs of yours I may attend to under the obligation of love, spiritual brotherhood, and communion, God willing.

[222] May the peace of our Lord and God Jesus Christ be with you and remain by you, guarding, protecting, sufficing, and strengthening, from now to the age of ages.”

[223] This letter reached Anbā Elijah, patriarch of Alexandria; he received it and raised Agapios’s name.

[224] As for Aftakīn the Turk, Jawhar went from Egypt to Syria to fight him in the month of Ramaḍān in the year 365. He reached Damascus at the beginning of Dhū al-Ḥijja of that year, and there were many engagements between the two. Jawhar returned defeated from Damascus to Ramla in Jumādā I of the year 366. Al-Aʿṣam the Qarmaṭian came to him from al-Aḥsāʾ and entered Ramla on Sunday, when twelve nights remained of Rajab of that year. He lodged in the emir’s residence and died there when seven nights remained of Rajab. Jawhar had taken refuge at Ashkelon and fortified himself there. Aftakīn the Turk reached Ramla and headed for Ashkelon against Jawhar; between the two there occurred

fighting, and many people from both parties were killed. The Turk remained at Ashkelon besieging Jawhar for one year and three months, until most of Jawhar’s army perished from hunger. When Aftakīn’s siege of him and those with him—the allies and the Kutāma—at Ashkelon grew long, and hunger and lack of provisions became severe among them, they asked the Turk for peace and release. Messages passed back and forth between them until he granted them that. It was settled between them that the territory from Gaza to Egypt would belong to the Maghribis; that Ashkelon and the adjoining districts of Syria would belong to the Turk; that the public invocation there would be maintained for al-ʿAzīz; and that its revenue would be carried to the Turk. The two accepted this settlement. The Turk hung a bare sword at the gate of the fortress of Ashkelon, and Jawhar and his companions went out from beneath the sword and entered Egypt in Shaʿbān of the year 366.

[225] Al-ʿAzīz was not satisfied with the peace and marched in person to Syria with all his army and equipment to meet him,

on the advice of Yaʿqūb ibn Yūsuf ibn Killis, in Dhū al-Qaʿda of that year. He appointed Jabr ibn al-Qāsim as his deputy in Egypt. Al-ʿAzīz arrived at Ramla and encamped there; the Turk had gone back to Damascus. Al-ʿAzīz bi-llāh sent to him, dispatching a safe conduct so that he would enter into obedience, and offered him a great sum of money. The Turk did not accept, but called for war. Al-ʿAzīz bi-llāh went against him, and they met at Nahr al-Ṭawāḥīn on Thursday, when seven nights of Muḥarram in the year 368 had elapsed. A severe battle occurred between them that day, and a great slaughter befell both parties. The Turk was defeated, and the Arabs hastened in pursuit of him. They took him captive between Qalansuwa and Kafr Sābā and brought him to al-ʿAzīz. He had suffered grievously from slapping and beating, so that he had come near to death.

[226] Al-ʿAzīz bi-llāh rejoiced, received him from their hands, guaranteed his life, and gave him his ring. The Turk asked for water, and al-ʿAzīz ordered that a cup of julāb drink and snow-water be brought. The cup was brought

to him, whereupon the Turk refrained from drinking it, fearing that it might contain deadly poison. Al-ʿAzīz perceived this, took the cup, drank from it, and then gave Aftakīn the remainder to drink. He assigned him a tent of his own and ordered that everything he needed be brought to him. He mounted him on his own animals and ordered him to ride in his procession. He asked whether there was anyone whose company would put him at ease, so that he might bring that person. Aftakīn requested that a group of his companions be brought, and they were brought to him from among the captives. Abū Ṭāhir, Bakhtiyār’s brother, had been killed in the battle; his brother Ibrāhīm had been captured; and al-Marzubān ibn Bakhtiyār had sought safe conduct from al-ʿAzīz bi-llāh. The Turk asked that both men remain with him in his tent, and his request was granted.

[227] Al-ʿAzīz returned to Egypt. He arrived there on Monday, when eight nights remained of Rabīʿ I in the year 368. He ordered all the leading men of his state, his commanders, and his emirs to honor and exalt the Turk. Not one of their notables failed to invite him to his residence, bring him gifts, and confer robes of honor upon him. Al-ʿAzīz bi-llāh appointed Yaʿqūb ibn Yūsuf ibn Killis as vizier on Monday, when eighteen nights remained of

Ramaḍān in the year 368. He ordered that Yaʿqūb’s name be written in all administrative acts and that correspondence with every addressee begin with his name.

[228] As for ʿAḍud al-Dawla Fanā Khusraw, ʿIzz al-Dawla Bakhtiyār fulfilled none of what he had stipulated for him except maintaining the public invocation on the pulpits of Iraq; he did cause that to continue in accordance with the agreement. Rukn al-Dawla al-Ḥasan ibn Buwayh died at the beginning of the year 366. After his death, Bakhtiyār assumed leadership over his household and his paternal cousins. A letter was issued on al-Ṭāʾiʿ’s behalf, founded upon honoring Bakhtiyār and advancing him over the rest of the realm, and it singled him out for leadership rather than any other member of their group.

[229] This was reported to ʿAḍud al-Dawla, so he prepared to march to Iraq to fight Bakhtiyār. He dispatched an army as a vanguard from Fārs to Iraq with his vizier al-Muṭahhar ibn ʿAbd Allāh in Shaʿbān of the year 366. Bakhtiyār went to meet the force and marched to Ahwāz. He induced al-Ṭāʾiʿ to go out with him to mediate between the two sides, sought aid from all the allies and regional powers, and prepared to meet him. When al-Ṭāʾiʿ saw that affairs had led

to war, he refused to remain and departed, heading for Baghdad. Bakhtiyār and Ibn Baqiyya pressed him to remain, but he refused. The two armies met at Ahwāz on Sunday, when eleven nights of Dhū al-Qaʿda in the year 366 had elapsed. A group of Bakhtiyār’s companions were killed, and many of them sought safe conduct. Fanā Khusraw took possession of the capital of Ahwāz and all its districts. Bakhtiyār went to al-Baṭāʾiḥ and from there proceeded to Wāsiṭ.

[230] Ibn Baqiyya began to belittle Bakhtiyār and act haughtily toward him. He gained dominance over Bakhtiyār’s armies, and the troops rioted against Bakhtiyār because of him. Bakhtiyār feared that Ibn Baqiyya would rise against him or act in affairs without him. Some of Bakhtiyār’s companions and intimates advised him to arrest Ibn Baqiyya. They informed him that by doing so he would reconcile Fanā Khusraw and break the force of his anger, should make it a means of winning his favor, and should appoint no vizier after him. Bakhtiyār inclined to this advice and arrested Ibn Baqiyya, both men then being at Wāsiṭ. He carried him to the City of Peace and had him blinded on Friday night, when eight nights of Rabīʿ I in the year 367 had elapsed. He sent him to ʿAḍud

al-Dawla Fanā Khusraw. Fanā Khusraw paraded him publicly through his army on a camel, cast him to the elephants, and they trampled and killed him. He was crucified at once on the bank of the Tigris.

[231] ʿIzz al-Dawla Bakhtiyār asked ʿAḍud al-Dawla Fanā Khusraw to permit him to go to the districts of Syria. He consented after stipulating that Bakhtiyār write his name—that is, ʿAḍud al-Dawla’s name—on his banners and standards, that the khuṭba be delivered for him in every country Bakhtiyār possessed or conquered, and he sent him robes of honor. It was proclaimed in the City of Peace that Bakhtiyār had returned to obedience. ʿAḍud al-Dawla Fanā Khusraw marched from Ahwāz to Basra, entered it, and took possession of it at the beginning of the year 367. Then he proceeded to the City of Peace. Al-Ṭāʾiʿ met him, and he entered before al-Ṭāʾiʿ on Monday, when four nights of Rabīʿ II of that year had elapsed. Al-Ṭāʾiʿ gave him the title Tāj al-Milla in addition to ʿAḍud al-Dawla in Jumādā I of the year 367. Afterward he added to his titulature Walī al-Niʿam.

[232] Many ghilmān gathered to Bakhtiyār, and a group of Daylamites returned to him. He procured arms and mounts and marched out with a strong army from which he sought support. He joined his son-in-law Abū Taghlib ibn Ḥamdān, and the two agreed to support one another in the war. ʿAḍud al-Dawla roused al-Ṭāʾiʿ, and both marched. The two forces met at Qaṣr al-Jiṣṣ, opposite Surr man raʾā, on Wednesday morning, when twelve nights remained of Shawwāl. Bakhtiyār’s army was put to flight. A Kurdish man from the army got hold of Bakhtiyār and stripped him, without knowing who he was. A Turkish ghulām belonging to Fanā Khusraw recognized him. The weather was intensely hot, and a great thirst overtook him. He could no longer walk; he halted and was killed. The reports differ concerning his killing. One group said that he fell from exhaustion. Another group said that some Daylamites recognized him and sought to take him from the Turk so as to gain favor through him. A quarrel over him arose between them, and between them they killed him. Many of his companions and kinsmen were killed with him. Abū Taghlib ibn Ḥamdān fled to Mosul. Ibrāhīm and Abū Ṭāhir, Bakhtiyār’s two brothers, al-Marzubān ibn Bakhtiyār, and their followers went

to Damascus and joined Aftakīn. He rose to receive them and treated them well. They arrived at Damascus when three nights remained of Dhū al-Qaʿda of that year. Al-Ṭāʾiʿ returned to the City of Peace. Fanā Khusraw went to Mosul and took possession of it and all the districts and territories connected with it.

[233] As for Abū al-Maʿālī ibn Sayf al-Dawla, Bakjūr went to him from Aleppo while he was then at Homs. Abū al-Maʿālī conferred a robe of honor upon him and appointed him over Aleppo. Bakjūr returned to Aleppo, and the public invocation was maintained for him there and in all its districts. Bakjūr agreed with all the ghilmān of the state to arrest Qarghawayh the chamberlain. Abū al-Maʿālī set out after him from Homs toward Aleppo and its citadel, and Bakjūr arrested Qarghawayh. Abū al-Maʿālī arrived at Aleppo and took al-Maʿarra and the territory adjoining it in Shawwāl of the year 366. He advanced toward Aleppo with the Banū Kilāb. Fighting broke out between him and Bakjūr, and

Abū al-Maʿālī gained the upper hand over him and entered Aleppo in Rabīʿ II of the year 367. The arrangement between him and Bakjūr was settled upon Bakjūr’s governorship of Homs, and he sent him there.

[234] Abū al-Maʿālī sent word to ʿAḍud al-Dawla in Baghdad, congratulating him on his arrival there and informing him that he was obedient to him. ʿAḍud al-Dawla sent the messenger back to him with robes of honor. He gave Abū al-Maʿālī the title Saʿd al-Dawla and gave Abū al-Maʿālī’s vizier Abū Ṣāliḥ ibn Nabā the title al-Sadīd. This occurred in Shaʿbān of the year 368. In Aleppo the public invocation was maintained for al-Ṭāʾiʿ and ʿAḍud al-Dawla, then for Saʿd al-Dawla.

[235] Abū al-Wafā, ʿAḍud al-Dawla’s secretary, pursued Abū Taghlib ibn Ḥamdān after his rout from Mosul. Abū Taghlib feared for himself and took the road toward al-Jazīra. He wrote to Bardas Skleros seeking his aid. Skleros had made a compact with him to contend with Basil. It happened that his letters reached

him. The armies of King Basil had already set out with Bardas Phokas. Skleros was preoccupied with his own situation and diverted from Abū Taghlib. He sent him abundant provisions and advised him to join him so that the two might unite in fighting his enemies. If they were routed and he gained the upper hand over them, he would return and aid him. Abū Taghlib found no peace until he met him. Abū Taghlib sent him a detachment of his army as reinforcement and remained at the fortress of Zabād, awaiting what the situation would disclose. Bardas Phokas and Bardas Skleros met again, and Skleros was defeated on Sunday, when eight nights remained of Shaʿbān in the year 368. News of his defeat reached Abū Taghlib while he was at the fortress of Zabād. He returned to the lands of Syria and stopped at Āmid. The armies of ʿAḍud al-Dawla surrounded him, and he withdrew to al-Raḥba.

[236] Abū al-Wafāʾ besieged Mayyāfāriqīn, took it, and gained possession of Āmid, the rest of Diyār Bakr, and all the fortresses of the Banū Ḥamdān.

[237] As for Skleros, after his defeat he took with him his brother Constantine and his son Romanos and went

to Diyār Bakr. He entered Khilāṭ. He sent his brother Constantine to ʿAḍud al-Dawla in Baghdad, seeking aid from him, requesting assistance, and offering him obedience and allegiance. His stay grew long. His situation came to King Basil’s attention, so Basil sent to ʿAḍud al-Dawla a distinguished secretary of his named Nikephoros and known as Ouranos. He was the man who later became magistros and governor of Antioch. He went as Basil’s envoy concerning what would frustrate for Skleros what Skleros had begun with ʿAḍud al-Dawla, and with money by which he might further his purpose. Basil instructed him to induce ʿAḍud al-Dawla by what he would offer him in the matter and to promise him the release of every captive in the lands of the Romans. He was to use subtle means to bring Skleros to him, even by purchasing him and purchasing the Romans who were with him, and to guarantee him that Basil would grant them security and would harm none of them.

[238] ʿAḍud al-Dawla secretly instructed his resident at Mayyāfāriqīn to seize Bardas Skleros. He then displayed denial of the affair and anger at his official for what he had done, and wrote to him to convey Skleros to Baghdad. Skleros was conveyed together with his son Romanos and all his remaining companions. Their number was estimated at three hundred.

[239] He proceeded. When Skleros arrived, ʿAḍud al-Dawla lodged him in a house that had been vacated for him and for a time granted him a generous stipend. He detained him and kept close watch over him. He promised to release him and to dispatch an army with him.

[240] ʿAḍud al-Dawla sent a companion of his known as Ibn Sahrā to King Basil concerning Skleros, his purpose, and what he would offer from his wealth. Skleros had bound himself that, if he prevailed, he would hand over to ʿAḍud al-Dawla fortresses among those that the Romans had conquered and wrested from Muslim hands. ʿAḍud al-Dawla demanded that Basil surrender those fortresses to him; otherwise, he would support Skleros with armies and strengthen him in the war he sought. King Basil informed him how little concern he had for him and that this was not something that would alarm him.

[241] It was reported to ʿAḍud al-Dawla that Nikephoros, King Basil’s envoy who had come seeking Skleros, intended, after despairing of obtaining him, to give him poison and kill him, so as to spare his master the affair concerning him. ʿAḍud al-Dawla therefore assigned a guard over Nikephoros as well, detained him, and seized all the money and goods that had come with him. ʿAḍud al-Dawla fell ill and became preoccupied away from him and from others.

[242] He died. Their company remained detained in Baghdad for eight years, until there issued from Ṣamṣām al-Dawla an order, and their affair came to the outcome that we shall explain later.

[243] In the fourth year of Basil’s reign, Nicholas Chrysoberges was appointed patriarch over Constantinople. He remained for twelve years and died.

[244] During this period Simeon the secretary and logothete became known; he composed accounts of the saints and their feast days.

[245] After Skleros’s defeat, Abū Taghlib went to Damascus. He found there a man from among its inhabitants called Qassām, who had fortified himself there, gained control of it, and rebelled against al-ʿAzīz bi-llāh. Abū Taghlib was unable to enter it, so he camped outside it. Wars broke out between him and Qassām’s followers. Abū Taghlib ibn Ḥamdān sent his secretary to al-ʿAzīz bi-llāh to seek aid from him. Al-ʿAzīz promised him everything he desired and dispatched al-Faḍl ibn Ṣāliḥ to Syria. Al-Faḍl was one of his leading commanders. He was to use a stratagem against Qassām and capture

the city. Al-Faḍl went to Tiberias.

[246] He drew near Abū Taghlib, and the two exchanged correspondence about meeting. Al-Faḍl went to him, and Abū Taghlib met him at al-Ṣinnabra. On al-ʿAzīz’s behalf, al-Faḍl promised him everything that would set his mind at rest. Then they parted, and each returned to his own place.

[247] Al-Faḍl then set out for Damascus, but his stratagem against Qassām did not succeed, so he returned to Ramla by the coastal road. At Ramla was Mufarrij ibn Daghfal ibn al-Jarrāḥ al-Ṭāʾī, a Bedouin who had taken possession of that district and openly professed obedience to al-ʿAzīz bi-llāh, although he did not conduct himself there according to al-ʿAzīz’s command. His position grew strong, and the Bedouin joined him. He marched against the clans of ʿUqayl residing in Syria to attack them and drive them from those lands.

[248] The ʿUqayl sought refuge with Abū Taghlib and asked him to arrange their affair. He wrote to Ibn al-Jarrāḥ asking him not to do that. Abū Taghlib set out and halted near ʿUqayl to prevent them from departing. His association with them alarmed Ibn al-Jarrāḥ and al-Faḍl, and they feared him. Abū Taghlib grew weary of his long stay awaiting reinforcements from Egypt and set out with

ʿUqayl toward Ramla.

[249] This was in Muḥarram of the year 369. When he drew near it, Ibn al-Jarrāḥ and al-Faḍl fled before him. Al-Faḍl gathered the armies of the coastal districts, while Ibn al-Jarrāḥ gathered the Arabs, and they mustered. Battle took place between Ibn al-Jarrāḥ and Abū Taghlib outside Ramla in Ṣafar of that year. Abū Taghlib was defeated, and Ibn al-Jarrāḥ took him captive. Al-Faḍl rode toward him to rescue Abū Taghlib. Ibn al-Jarrāḥ feared that al-Faḍl would take Abū Taghlib to Egypt and that his case would follow the precedent of Aftakīn the Turk in receiving kindness and preferment; he therefore killed him before al-Faḍl arrived. Then al-Faḍl came, took his head together with the rest of his companions who had been captured, and carried them to Egypt.

[250] In Egypt, in the month of Ramaḍān of the year 370, al-ʿAzīz bi-llāh ordered the qunūt prayer to be discontinued. It is a prayer that Muslims perform in congregational prayer places during Ramaḍān after the night prayer. This weighed heavily upon all Sunni Muslims.

[251] During this period the king of the Romans took the fortress of Ibn Ibrāhīm in the town of Raʿbān; it was a very strong fortress. They gained possession of it by a stratagem. In it was an Armenian woman, a captive enslaved to the lord of the fortress. She had brothers in Raʿbān. One day her sister visited her and remained with her for a long time. The sister saw that the fortress was not carefully guarded and that, if a stratagem were used against it, it could be taken. With the thread of her spindle she measured its height from the place at the top of the wall by which entry could be made down to the ground. She returned home and told her brothers about the condition of the fortress and the idea that had occurred to her concerning it: it had few guards, and if they devised a plan against it, they could take it. She made the undertaking seem easy to them and urged them to prepare a ladder as long as the thread with which she had measured it. They went to it by night with the aforesaid ladder, leaned it against the fortress, and climbed it together with men of theirs whom they had taken along.

[252] That night the lord of the fortress had resolved to seclude himself with the women of his household and drink wine. He ordered the guards not to disturb him that night with their cries or alarm him with their watch. Most of them therefore dispersed, and whoever remained among them slept at his post.

[253] When the woman’s brothers and their companions reached the fortress, they found one of the guards asleep. They killed him and rushed upon the lord of the fortress in his sitting place while he was on his bed. They killed him and his son. At once they called out in the name of King Basil. When those in the fortress became aware of them, they fled from it. The Armenians gained control of it, took possession of it, and delivered it to King Basil. He treated them well, bestowed favors upon them, and ordered that its construction be enlarged and its defenses strengthened, until it became such that it could not be assailed by fighting or taken by war.

[254] King Basil conferred the governorship of al-Lādhiqiyya upon K.r.m.rūk the Armenian because of a service he had previously rendered: a raid he had launched against the town of Ṭarābulus and its environs. He took captives and killed there many of its inhabitants and of the Maghribis, and he seized considerable spoils. An army of the Maghribis arrived in the district of Antioch with an emir of theirs known as al-Ṣanhājī.

[255] Al-Ṣanhājī left his baggage and mounts at a place along the road. K.r.m.rūk travelled by night, seized the baggage train, and headed toward the army. He came upon it at daybreak, charged it, prevailed over it, took captives, and killed a group of its men.

[256] Nazzāl and Ibn Shākir went from Ṭarābulus to al-Lādhiqiyya in the year 370 and besieged its fortress. K.r.m.rūk advanced in the vanguard of the army. Yūnus, a ghulām of Ibn Shākir, charged him and wounded his horse. K.r.m.rūk fell from it, was seized, and was carried to Egypt. Later, a proclamation was made concerning him.

[257] Bardas the domestikos set out for Aleppo in Jumādā I of the year 371. Battle took place at Bāb al-Yahūd on the second day after his arrival. He demanded the truce payment from Saʿd al-Dawla. Messages went back and forth between them, and it was settled that Saʿd al-Dawla would deliver to the Romans each year four hundred thousand dirhams of pure silver, at twenty dirhams to the dinar. Bardas departed on the fifth day after his arrival.

[258] In the fifth year of al-ʿAzīz’s caliphate, Joseph was made patriarch over Jerusalem. He was a physician. He remained in the patriarchal office for three years and eight months, died in Egypt, and was buried in the church of Mār Thāwudhurus with Anbā Christodoulos.

[259] As for ʿAḍud al-Dawla, he travelled from Baghdad to Hamadhān to fight his brother Fakhr al-Dawla ʿAlī ibn Rukn al-Dawla. He defeated him and returned to Baghdad, and his affairs became settled. He dispatched his armies to Sahrūn, which from ancient times had resisted the rulers who preceded him. It was conquered, and he took possession of it. He instituted that, when addressed and in correspondence issued on his behalf, he be styled “al-Malik Shāhanshāh ʿAḍud al-Dawla, Tāj al-Milla, and Walī al-Niʿam.” He married al-Ṭāʾiʿ’s daughter and had her conveyed to him. He took possession of all the lands of Fārs, Iraq, Mosul, and Diyār Bakr. Great awe of him was instilled in the hearts of the people and all the inhabitants of his kingdom. Such were the awe he inspired and the severity of his coercive power that, when he sent his vizier al-Muṭahhar ibn ʿAbd Allāh to al-Baṭīḥa to set its affairs right and the affair went

awry unintentionally, al-Muṭahhar feared for himself. He summoned his physician and ordered him to bleed him until he perished. The physician told him that he had no need of bloodletting and turned him away from what he intended. Afterward, alone by himself, al-Muṭahhar took the knife from his inkstand, cut the artery in each of his forearms, and inflicted a mortal wound upon himself. His appointed term ended.

[260] ʿAḍud al-Dawla placed Abū Manṣūr Naṣr ibn Hārūn the Christian next after al-Muṭahhar in the administration of the state, associated Abū al-Rayyān Ḥamd ibn Muḥammad with him, and entrusted him with the affairs because of necessities that had arisen between al-Muṭahhar and him. When al-Muṭahhar passed away, Abū Manṣūr alone administered the state. ʿAḍud al-Dawla fell ill and, because of the severity of his illness, summoned his eldest son, Abū al-Fawāris Shīrzīl, Sharaf al-Dawla and Zayn al-Milla, from Shīrāz to Baghdad. ʿAḍud al-Dawla had a black eunuch ghulām named Shukr who oversaw all his affairs. Because the illness lasted a long time, Shukr did not permit any of ʿAḍud al-Dawla’s sons to enter his presence. Sharaf al-Dawla perceived that his father had died and that Shukr was concealing his death. He forced his way in and entered the place in which ʿAḍud al-Dawla lay stretched out.

[261] He moved him with his hand and saw that he was still alive. He went out and did not enter his presence again. His father consequently became estranged from him and exiled him to Kirmān. ʿAḍud al-Dawla died of epilepsy on Tuesday, when ten nights of Shawwāl had elapsed, in the year 372. Shukr concealed his death from his sons, all his retinue, and the common people until the beginning of Muḥarram in the year 373. His emirate in Iraq lasted twenty-five years and seven months, and his age was forty-eight years. The emirate passed to al-Marzubān, Ṣamṣām al-Dawla and Shams al-Milla. His brother Abū Ṭāhir was entrusted with Shīrāz and al-Ahwāz, and Abū al-Ḥusayn Aḥmad, their brother, with Wāsiṭ. When news of his father’s death reached Sharaf al-Dawla and he learned that his brother Ṣamṣām al-Dawla had obtained the emirate, he gathered his ghilmān, his companions, and others. He proceeded from Kirmān to Shīrāz, took possession of it, and arrested Abū Manṣūr Naṣr ibn Hārūn, his father’s vizier. He strengthened himself with equipment, weapons, and funds that he took from its fortresses. He marched with his armies toward Baghdad, seeking the emirate there and possession of Madīnat al-Salām.

[262] Wars broke out for a time between him and his brother Ṣamṣām al-Dawla. Then matters between them were settled:

Madīnat al-Salām and its districts would be in Ṣamṣām al-Dawla’s hands, while Sharaf al-Dawla’s name would precede his in the invocations and on the coinage because he was older.

[263] The two made peace on those terms and drew up between them a document by mutual consent. They swore to one another and covenanted to fulfill its contents. That was in Ṣafar of the year 376.

[264] Mufarrij ibn Daghfal ibn al-Jarrāḥ al-Ṭāʾī rebelled against al-ʿAzīz bi-llāh and openly professed disobedience. Rashīq al-ʿAzīzī, the maternal uncle of the vizier Yaʿqūb ibn Yūsuf, was sent to Syria in the year 371. He met Ibn al-Jarrāḥ, drove him out of Syria, and defeated him. After his defeat, Ibn al-Jarrāḥ set out aiming for the pilgrimage caravan, in order to cut off its return. Al-ʿAzīz therefore dispatched Mufliḥ al-Wahbānī with an army to meet the pilgrims and repel Ibn al-Jarrāḥ from them. Ibn al-Jarrāḥ encountered him at Ayla and killed him and everyone who was with him. When news of this reached the pilgrims, they feared for themselves and turned aside to Wādī al-Qurā. They remained there for forty-five days, then entered Egypt. Ibn al-Jarrāḥ returned to Syria. Rashīq met him a second time

and defeated him.

[265] Ibn al-Jarrāḥ therefore fled into the desert and sought refuge with Bakjūr at Ḥimṣ. Bakjūr granted him protection and received him as a guest. Ibn al-Jarrāḥ made for Antioch seeking aid from King Basil. Basil granted his request, bestowed a gift upon him, and sent him back. He returned to Syria and sought safe-conduct from al-ʿAzīz, who granted it.

[266] The armies of al-ʿAzīz set out from Egypt for Damascus with Yaltakīn to confront Qassām, who had gained control of it. Yaltakīn encamped outside Damascus at the place known as al-Dakka. The people of the city fought him, and he besieged them for a time. Qassām came out to Yaltakīn, who took him, his son, and his male relative by marriage to Egypt. They were paraded on mules in Rabīʿ II of the year 373 and imprisoned until the middle of Dhū al-Ḥijja. Al-ʿAzīz then released them, pardoned them, and treated them well.

[267] Bakjūr at Ḥimṣ withdrew from obedience to Saʿd al-Dawla and summoned the armies of al-ʿAzīz. They went out with him, and he encamped at Bāb al-Yahūd at the beginning of Rabīʿ II of the year 373. They fought for two days. The domestikos Bardas Phokas set out

for Aleppo.

[268] News of his movement reached Bakjūr. Bakjūr therefore set out toward him on Wednesday, when eight nights of Rabīʿ II had elapsed. Bardas Phokas encamped on Thursday, when fourteen nights of that month had elapsed, at Bāb al-Yahūd; Mufarrij was with him. Battle took place. Correspondence passed between Bardas and Saʿd al-Dawla, and terms were settled between them: Saʿd al-Dawla was to convey to him the payment for two years—forty thousand dinars. Bardas Phokas set out on Monday, when three nights remained of that month. He made for Ḥimṣ, took its inhabitants captive, and burned there a group of those who had sought refuge in caves. He proceeded to Tall Khulayfa and passed beyond it. Bakjūr went to Damascus and assumed its governorship. After that he seized the city’s aḥdāth, killed approximately three thousand of them, crucified some, and buried some alive.

[269] The Nile failed in Egypt in the year 372. Prices in Egypt became disordered during that year. The prices of grains and provisions increased, and the dearth became severe in the year 373. Bread became unavailable, and a great epidemic accompanied this; a vast number of people perished in it.

[270] Al-ʿAzīz seized his vizier Yaʿqūb ibn Yūsuf on Sunday, when twelve nights of Shawwāl of the year 373 remained. He also seized al-Faḍl ibn Ṣāliḥ and al-Faḍl's two brothers, and isolated each one of them in a separate place. Civil disorder arose in the city of Miṣr that day. The clothes of a group on the Cairo road were taken, and the city's markets were closed. The police officials rode out and calmed the people. Everything the vizier owned was seized. Utensils and goods were carried away from the house of al-Faḍl ibn Ṣāliḥ, and 200,000 dinars in cash from the vizier's house. They were deposited in the palace treasury. The bureaux (dīwāns) that had been in the vizier's house were transferred to al-ʿAzīz's house. The vizier loved people of learning and adab, drew them near, and bestowed favor upon them. It reached me that, when al-ʿAzīz seized him, there was presented to al-ʿAzīz a register of the vizier's stipends for a group of people of learning, copyists, and bookbinders. Their total was 1,000 dinars every month. Al-ʿAzīz ordered that they be maintained on those stipends and that nothing be deducted from them. They remained in detention for two complete months. Then he released them and ordered the 200,000 dinars conveyed

to the vizier.

[271] He restored to the vizier everything he had taken from him. He also restored to al-Faḍl ibn Ṣāliḥ and his brothers what had been seized from them. Each of them returned to the position he had held.

[272] In Ramaḍān of the year 375, Orestes, maternal uncle of al-Sayyida, daughter of al-ʿAzīz, was made patriarch over Jerusalem. He remained in office for twenty years and died in Constantinople. His brother Arsenius was made metropolitan over Cairo and Miṣr. The two held a favored position with al-ʿAzīz bi-llāh, precedence in his realm, and exalted rank.

[273] Abū al-Maʿālī Saʿd al-Dawla kept delaying conveyance of the money assessed upon him for the Romans. Bardas Phokas the domestikos therefore marched to K.l.z. He fought it and took it under an amān from the sword in Ṣafar of the year 375. He fell upon a group of the Hamdanids and took its inhabitants captive. He proceeded to Apamea, deployed mangonels against it, demolished some of the towers of its fortress, and fought it most fiercely.

[274] Qarghūyah proceeded to the monastery of Simeon of Aleppo, which lies at the far end of the district of Antioch and the beginning of the district of Aleppo. He besieged it for three days, fought it most fiercely, and took it by the sword on Wednesday, the eighth of Aylūl, in the year 1297. That was when twelve nights of Rabīʿ II of the year 375 had elapsed. He killed in it a group of its monks. It was a flourishing monastery. He took captive people among those who had sought refuge in it from its district. They were carried to Aleppo and exposed publicly there.

[275] Bardas the domestikos dispatched a detachment from his army to Kafar Ṭāb. It fell upon a group of Arabs and Hamdanids.

[276] When news of what had happened to the monastery of Simeon of Aleppo reached King Basil, he wrote to Bardas ordering him to withdraw from Apamea.

[277] During this period the Maghribis took control of the fortress of Balanyās. King Basil appointed Leon the magistros Melissenos as doux of Antioch. He marched with the army and besieged Balanyās.

[278] At that time King Basil became suspicious of the parakoimōmenos, removed him from his presence, and ordered him to remain at his house. It was then reported in the army that his rebellion had been renewed, so the army withdrew from Balanyās. That angered King Basil against Melissenos, and he gave him a choice between two alternatives: either he was to return to the fortress and recover it, or reimburse Basil the money Basil had spent on the army for the men's pay, after which Basil would send someone else to take the fortress. Melissenos guaranteed that he would return and take it. The armies returned with him. He made a ram and battered the wall with it. A tower and a section of wall fell from it. Some Maghribis were in the fortress; they sought amān and withdrew from it. Melissenos rebuilt what he had demolished and secured it.

[279] King Basil removed Bardas Phokas from the domesticate, made him doux over the East, and appointed him over Antioch and all the other lands of the East. Bardas Phokas concluded a renewed truce with Abū

al-Maʿālī ibn Ḥamdān in the year 376.

[280] The arrangement between them was settled on the following terms: the people of Aleppo were to convey to Basil 400,000 dirhams every year, the sum previously agreed with them. A written instrument to that effect was drawn up between them.

[281] The two sons of Samuel, whom John son of Tzimiskes had seized and confined in the palace, escaped by a stratagem. They fled from their confinement on two horses that they had arranged beforehand to have prepared for them on the road to Bulgaria. When they reached the pass leading to it, the mounts beneath them stopped. They dismounted, hid in the mountains for fear that they would be overtaken, and proceeded along the road on foot. The elder went ahead of the younger and was in disguise. A group of Bulgarians who were guarding that mountain against brigands saw him. One of them shot him with an arrow without recognizing him and killed him. His younger brother came along his track and made himself known to them. They took him and made him king over them.

[282] He had a ghulām known as the Komitopoulos, who stood firm with him. The Bulgarians gathered to him and raided

the lands of the Romans.

[283] The king advanced against them with numerous forces, encamped before their city called Abāriyah, and fought it. At night a cry arose in his army that the pass had already been seized against them. The king and everyone in his army fled on the night of Tuesday, the seventeenth of Āb, in the year 1297, when seven nights of Rabīʿ II of the year 376 had elapsed. They made for the pass. The Bulgarians pursued them and plundered the king's baggage and treasuries. Many men from his army perished. This was in the tenth year of his reign.

[284] News of this reached Skleros. He sent word to Ṣamṣām al-Dawla, asking him to set him free so that he might seize this opportunity. He also asked him to aid him with men and equipment, and pledged to carry out what he had stipulated for [Ṣamṣām's] father, ʿAḍud al-Dawla. [Ṣamṣām al-Dawla] inclined to this and exacted from Skleros, his brother Constantine, and Romanos son of Skleros covenants and oaths that they would fulfil it. He released the rest of Skleros's companions and all three of them; they were about three hundred men. This was in Shaʿbān of the year 376. He returned to them mounts and weapons from what

he had taken from them.

[285] [Ṣamṣām al-Dawla] summoned men of the Banū al-Musayyab, the chiefs of the Banū ʿUqayl, so that they would travel with [Skleros], and went out with him to the outskirts of the City of Peace. His release weighed heavily on many Muslims, and they spoke much about its implications. News of that reached Skleros. He feared that his case would be reconsidered, so he asked the Arabs to hurry him away. They took him and the rest of his companions to their encampments. They also summoned a group of the Banū Numayr and took him through the desert until they reached the Jazīra. They crossed the Euphrates, and Skleros arrived in Malaṭiya in Shbāṭ of the year 1298, which was Shawwāl of the year 376. Kulayb the patrikios, who had surrendered the fortress of Barzūyah, was then basilikos over Malaṭiya and overseer in it. Skleros seized him and took the money, mounts, clothing, and equipment he found with him. He thereby grew strong and claimed kingship for himself.

[286] Nikephoros Ouranos, whom King Basil had sent to ʿAḍud al-Dawla concerning

Skleros, also devised a stratagem. He summoned a man from the desert, who took him and conveyed him to the lands of the Romans. [Ouranos] returned to King Basil's presence.

[287] Skleros's affair grew serious. A great number gathered to him from among the ʿUqaylid and Numayrid Arabs who had come with him and from among the Armenians. He also sought aid from Bādh the Kurd, lord of Diyār Bakr. Bādh sent him his brother Abū ʿAlī with a strong army.

[288] King Basil was compelled to restore Bardas Phokas to the domesticate in Dhū al-Ḥijja of the year 376. He sent the armies to him and ordered him to meet Skleros, after first sending someone to him who made him swear upon all the holy relics and exacted from him covenants and oaths that he would deal sincerely with him, remain loyal to him, and preserve obedience to him.

[289] Phokas wrote to Skleros asking him to send his brother Constantine to him. Constantine was the husband of Bardas Phokas's sister. Skleros sent him to Phokas; Bardas Phokas sent him back to his brother Skleros in order to settle with him

that the two should agree together to contend with King Basil, make war upon him, seize his kingdom, and divide it between them: Phokas was to be in Constantinople and Skleros outside it. Skleros assented to what Phokas wanted. They swore mutual oaths and covenanted upon it.

[290] When what they had contracted between them became settled—that the two armies should unite—Romanos son of Skleros disapproved of it and did not agree with his father's opinion. He informed him that it was a plot by Phokas against him, but his father did not accept it from him. His son Romanos therefore withdrew from him, made for King Basil, and disclosed to him what the group had undertaken and what had been settled between his father Skleros and Bardas Phokas.

[291] Meanwhile Bardas Phokas went to Jayḥān and met Skleros. They conferred about what they needed and parted on a promise to meet again. Skleros returned to him again, and at their meeting Phokas seized him and conveyed him to a fortress in which his wife was residing. He was confined there. Phokas told him: “Remain as you are in this fortress, for my wife resides in it. When I attain what I intend and take possession of the kingdom, I shall fulfill for you what I agreed with you, and I shall not betray you.” Then, openly,

Bardas Phokas rebelled and was proclaimed king on Wednesday, the Feast of the Cross, the fourteenth of Aylūl in the year 1298, corresponding to when thirteen nights remained of Jumādā I in the year 377.

[292] He took possession of the country of the Romans as far as Dhorylāyah and as far as the seashore, and his armies reached Chrysopolis.

[293] His power became formidable, and King Basil was alarmed at him because of the strength of his armies and the ascendancy he had gained over Basil. Basil's funds were exhausted, so necessity drove him to send to the king of the Rūs—who were his enemies—seeking from him support for what he was undertaking. The king of the Rūs assented to that. The two contracted a marriage alliance, and the king of the Rūs married King Basil's sister after Basil had stipulated that he and all the inhabitants of his country should be baptized. The Rūs were a great nation. At that time they did not adhere to a law and held no religious faith. Afterward King Basil sent him metropolitans and bishops, and they baptized the king and everyone whom his domains contained. Basil also sent his sister to him, and she built

many churches in the land of the Rūs.

[294] When the matter of the marriage had been settled between them, the armies of the Rūs also arrived and joined King Basil's Roman armies. They all set out together to meet Bardas Phokas, by land and sea, toward Chrysopolis. They gained the upper hand over Phokas. Basil took possession of the seacoast region and seized all the vessels that were in Phokas's hands.

[295] After Phokas's armies had encamped outside Constantinople and he had taken possession of the region of the East, King Basil had sent the magistros Taronites by sea to Trebizond. There he gathered a host and set out toward the bank of the Euphrates. Bardas Phokas sent his son Nikephoros the Twisted to David, king of the Georgians and lord of the city of al-Ṭāy, seeking aid from him against Taronites. David sent with him a ghulām of his with one thousand horsemen. The two sons of Baqrāṭ, the two patrikioi and lords of the Khālidiyāt, also went with him; they had one thousand horsemen. Taronites encountered them, and they routed him. At once news reached them that King Basil's armies had gained the upper hand at sea over

Phokas at Chrysopolis.

[296] David the Georgian's ghulām therefore returned with his men, and likewise the two sons of Baqrāṭ returned to their places. They pleaded their case to [Nikephoros], saying that they had done what he wanted of them—namely, the defeat of Taronites. The army that was with Nikephoros son of Phokas dispersed, so Nikephoros went to his mother. She was residing in the fortress in which Skleros was confined.

[297] Meanwhile Bardas Phokas had written to his son Leon, whom he had left as his deputy in Antioch. He instructed him to use gentle means to get the patriarch Agapios out of the city, lest a stratagem against [Phokas] be effected through [Agapios]. Leon induced Agapios to ride out to the outskirts of the city, leading him to believe that he needed to confer with him about a matter that concerned him. He also summoned a group of the people of Antioch. Leon then returned to Antioch and prevented the patriarch Agapios, as well as those who had gone out with him, from entering. That was on Saturday, the eighth of Ādhār in the year 1300, when seven nights remained of Dhū al-Qaʿda in the year 378.

[298] King Basil and his brother Constantine set out with their armies and with the armies of the Rūs, and met Bardas

Phokas at Abydos. It lies near the crossing of Constantinople. They prevailed over Phokas, and he was killed on Saturday, the thirteenth of Nīsān of the same year, when three nights of Muḥarram had elapsed in the year 379. His head was brought to Constantinople and displayed there. The duration of his rebellion was one year and seven months.

[299] When news of Bardas Phokas's killing reached his wife, she released Skleros from confinement. All who had been with Phokas among those who had opposed King Basil gathered to him, and he resumed wearing the red shoe. Nikephoros the Twisted, son of Bardas Phokas, joined him. Constantine sent word to Bardas Skleros, offering to mediate his case with his brother Basil if Skleros returned to his obedience: [Basil] would pardon him for all that had gone before from him and pardon the rebels who had followed him. Constantine guaranteed him complete favor on [Basil's] behalf. Skleros assented to that and removed the red shoe from his foot on Friday, the eleventh of Tishrīn I in the year 1301, at the beginning of Rajab in the year 379.

[300] King Constantine brought him to his brother Basil. Skleros stepped upon Basil's carpet and kissed the ground before him. It was settled that King Basil would make Bardas Skleros curopalates, appoint his brother and all his companions and ghilmān, and grant him as iqṭāʿ the two territories al-Amīnāfūn and Raʿbān, together with capitation tax and land tax, in addition to his former benefice. He also pardoned Nikephoros son of Bardas Phokas and granted him a fine estate.

[301] As for his brother Leon son of Phokas, he remained in Antioch in rebellion. He fortified himself in a watchtower at the top of its wall, on the side of the mountain, and strengthened it. With him was a group of Armenians and Muslims. He called up the Muslims and asked them to aid him. A group of the people of Antioch took action in his case and mustered the people to fight him. The exiles also entered. They fought him for four days and brought him down on the fifth day under amān. That was on Sunday, the third of Tishrīn II in the year 1301, when six nights remained of Rajab in the year seventy-nine

and three hundred.

[302] King Basil sent Michael Bourtzes the magistros to Antioch. Bourtzes conveyed Leon son of Bardas Phokas, and the king banished him to the country of Adhraliyah.

[303] King Basil became angry with the patriarch Agapios, banished him from Antioch, and required him to reside in one of the monasteries of Constantinople. At that time he had held the patriarchal office for twelve years. The cause of Basil's hostility toward him was that, after Bardas Phokas's overthrow, a letter addressed to Phokas from the patriarch Agapios was found in one of Phokas's chests. In it Agapios approved Phokas's opinion and strengthened his resolve concerning a matter about which Phokas had consulted him, without clearly stating anything about it. It occurred to King Basil that the consultation had concerned the rebellion Phokas had committed. Earlier signs that had been conveyed to Basil about [Agapios?] in this matter confirmed the suspicion in his mind. Agapios remained in exile for less than seven years. During that period he performed the ordinations for his see, and his order was obeyed there.

[304] In the fourteenth year of Basil's reign, which was the year 379, there occurred

in Constantinople great earthquakes, in which a third of the church of Hagia Sophia fell; and many houses in Nikomedeia collapsed upon their inhabitants. The king rebuilt what had fallen in Hagia Sophia and restored it to what it had been. This was in the eighteenth year of his reign.

[305] King Basil bore a grudge against David, king of the Georgians and lord of the city of al-Ṭāy, and against the two sons of Baqrāṭ, the two lords of the Khālidiyāt, because they had aided Phokas. He sent an army to raid them under a patrikios known as al-Jākrūs. Al-Jākrūs made for the two sons of Baqrāṭ, killed the elder of them, and banished the younger. David, king of the Georgians, sought pardon and forgiveness for himself from King Basil. He offered him obedience and submission, and that after David's death his lands should be added to Basil's kingdom. For he was an old man, with no child, no child's child, and no other heir. He asked Basil's permission to send his chiefs to Basil's presence so that Basil might exact commitments from them and obtain guarantees from them that they would take possession of the lands after their lord's death [main text; R reads “hand over”]. David's standing then became favorable in King Basil's mind, and Basil approved his conduct. He made him curopalates and sent him fine robes.

[306] David put them on and had the public invocation made in his lands for King Basil. He sent the katholikos of the Georgians to Basil's presence with a group of the chiefs of his land. The king brought them near and treated them well, and their company returned to David.

[307] During Bardas Phokas's rebellion, while King Basil was occupied fighting him, the Bulgarians seized the opportunity and repeatedly raided the lands of the Romans. They devastated as far as Thessalonike and penetrated the Roman districts in the west. King Basil prepared to raid them and went out to Diyūṭmah in the year 380. Skleros had settled there and had gathered the armies there. The king summoned him to go with him on his campaign. He and his brother were both ill and debilitated. Skleros was carried to Basil's presence on a litter and cast himself at the king's foot. When Basil saw him and recognized his bad condition, he ordered him to remain at his house and bestowed on him a qinṭār of dinars to give as alms. The king then headed toward Bulgaria. After a few days, Skleros died. His death was on Wednesday,

when thirteen nights remained of Dhū al-Ḥijja in the year 380.

[308] His brother Constantine also died five days after him.

[309] Less than two years passed between the killing of Bardas Phokas and the death of Bardas Skleros.

[310] King Basil encountered the Bulgarians and routed them. He captured their king and returned him to the confinement from which he had escaped. The Komitopoulos, commander of his army, escaped. Basil secured control of the Bulgarian kingdom and remained at war with them, raiding their lands for four years. In winter he would go out to the outlying parts of the Bulgarian lands, raid them, and carry off captives there. During this period he conquered several of their fortresses. He held on to some of them and destroyed those he thought he could not keep under his control. Among what he destroyed was the city of Bāriyā.

[311] As for Sharaf al-Dawla, he resumed the war against his brother Ṣamṣām al-Dawla. When he drew near Baghdad, most of his brother's troops sought amān from him. Ṣamṣām al-Dawla became afraid, went out to him, and made for him. When

he reached him, [Sharaf al-Dawla] seized him and gouged out both his eyes. He marched to Baghdad and took possession of it in the year 377. He carried him to Shiraz and imprisoned him in a fortress there. He gained control of Shiraz and Baghdad.

[312] In the year 378, the Maghribis captured the fortress of Wādī al-Qurā, in the district of the Ḥijāz. The account of its capture was as follows. Yaltakīn al-ʿAzīzī made the pilgrimage from Egypt to Mecca in the year 377. On his return he descended upon Wādī al-Qurā and captured its fortress, which was in the hands of a man known as Ibn Abī Ḥāzim. He killed him, seized a group of its people, and remained there holding it for al-ʿAzīz bi-llāh.

[313] In Egypt there occurred, on the night of Saturday when three nights remained of Dhū al-Ḥijja in the year 378, thunder, lightning, and a violent wind. The wind did not cease until midnight. Then the city grew black from it. It was a blackness whose like had not been seen on the face of the earth, nor was there its like in the sky. It lasted until daybreak. Fire came forth from the sky like a column, and from it the sky and the earth became intensely red. In the air was dust like charcoal, which choked the breath. This did not cease

until the fourth hour of the day. The sun appeared, changed in color, and it continued to rise changed until Tuesday, the second of Muḥarram, in the year 379.

[314] Bakjūr traveled from Damascus to al-Raqqa and took possession of it from a ghulām of Saʿd al-Dawla who was residing there. Bakjūr remained there. Munīr arrived in Damascus, the Ṣaqlabī khādim attached to al-ʿAzīz, the ghulām of Yaʿqūb ibn Yūsuf ibn Killis, [al-ʿAzīz's] vizier.

[315] In the west there appeared, on the night of Sunday when ten nights remained of Rabīʿ I in the year 379, a star with a tail. It remained for twenty days and disappeared.

[316] Sharaf al-Dawla—Abū al-Fawāris, son of ʿAḍud al-Dawla—died in the year 380. His brother Abū Naṣr Fīrūz, Bahāʾ al-Dawla, succeeded him in the emirate. To this laqab of his were added Ḍiyāʾ al-Milla and Ghiyāth al-Umma.

[317] The vizier Yaʿqūb ibn Yūsuf ibn Killis died in Egypt on Monday, when six nights of Dhū al-Qaʿda had elapsed in the year 380. He was a man praiseworthy in action, excellent in governance, of great prestige, and eminent.

[318] He converted to Islam in the days of Kāfūr al-Ikhshīdī and served in some of his service. After Kāfūr's death he departed for the Maghrib and made for al-Muʿizz li-Dīn Allāh. When [al-Muʿizz] entered Egypt, he entrusted Yaʿqūb with its kharāj, and Yaʿqūb continued to administer it until al-ʿAzīz bi-llāh invested him with the vizierate. After Yaʿqūb's death, al-ʿAzīz rode to his house, prayed over him, uncovered his face, wept intensely over him, and grieved greatly over his death. Yaʿqūb was worthy of that. He had composed for al-ʿAzīz a book of jurisprudence, attributed it to him, and transmitted what it contained from al-ʿAzīz bi-llāh and from his forefathers, the imams. He carried it to the Old Mosque in Miṣr and obliged the people to issue legal opinions from it. The people therefore spoke much about that, and most of them did not deem it right to act by it. That became apparent from them, so he exempted them from it.

[319] A great earthquake occurred in Damascus on the night of Saturday, the seventeenth of Muḥarram, in the year 381. Because of it about one thousand houses fell, and a great multitude of people died beneath the rubble. That night one of the villages of Baalbek was swallowed up. The earthquakes were in Damascus and its districts, and most of them were in

Damascus and Baalbek.

[320] Afterward they were shaken by earthquakes less severe than those. The people went out from their houses to the open country and tents. The earthquakes continued in succession until Friday, the seventeenth of Ṣafar, of the same year.

[321] Bakjūr set out from al-Raqqa, making for Aleppo, in Muḥarram of the year 381. He encamped against Bālis and fought it. He made many breaches in it and came near to taking it. The defenders blocked the breaches and intensified their fighting against him, so he departed from it. Saʿd al-Dawla marched to meet him with all his army, Banū Kilāb, and a body of archers he had summoned from Antioch. They assembled in the land of al-Nāʿūra on the final day of Muḥarram. Bakjūr was defeated, and the Arabs captured him. Saʿd al-Dawla bought him from them. When he came into Saʿd's hands, Saʿd ordered his neck struck, and his head was paraded. [His body] was hung upside down and then crucified. Saʿd al-Dawla went to al-Raqqa and took possession of it. He departed from it for al-Raḥba, took possession of it, and returned to Aleppo.

[322] Munīr the Ṣaqlabī rebelled in Damascus after the death of his mawlā the vizier Yaʿqūb b. Yūsuf. Al-ʿAzīz bi-llāh sent against him Banjūtakin the Turk and gave him the laqab Amīr al-Juyūsh al-Manṣūra in Shaʿbān of the year 381, and assigned him to fight him. He ordered Nazzāl, the governor of Ṭarābulus, to join him and to meet with him in order to seize Munīr. Nazzāl went to Damascus and met Munīr before Banjūtakin’s arrival; Munīr was defeated and Nazzāl took him prisoner. A great slaughter was made among the people of Damascus. On the second day of the battle Banjūtakin arrived at Damascus, received Munīr, and carried him to Miṣr; he was paraded in it in Dhū l-Ḥijja of that year, then pardoned.

[323] As for Bahāʾ al-Dawla Abū Naṣr b. ʿAḍud al-Dawla, he set his eye on the wealth which the caliph al-Ṭāʾiʿ b. ʿAbd al-Karīm b. ʿAbd al-Muṭīʿ had gathered, went to the Dār al-Sulṭān, seized al-Ṭāʾiʿ without any offence (on al-Ṭāʾiʿ’s part), and deposed him from the caliphate on Saturday when twelve nights had elapsed of Shaʿbān of the year 381.

[324] His caliphate had been seventeen years, eight months, and twenty-seven days. Bahāʾ al-Dawla took possession of all his wealth, cut off his ear, and imprisoned him in the Dār al-Sulṭān for a period until he died.

[325] Caliphate of al-Qādir bi-llāh

[326] Bayʿa was given to the caliphate on the same day on which al-Ṭāʾiʿ was deposed, to Abū l-ʿAbbās Aḥmad b. Isḥāq b. al-Muqtadir, and he was given the laqab al-Qādir bi-llāh. That was proclaimed in Madīnat al-Salām. Al-Qādir was residing at al-Baṭīḥa; he was carried to Baghdād and sat in the caliphate on Tuesday when seven (nights) had elapsed of the month of Ramaḍān of that year.

[327] Bahāʾ al-Dawla went down to al-Baṣra to fight his brother Ṣamṣām al-Dawla al-Makḥūl, and war took place between them.

[328] Saʿd al-Dawla Abū l-Maʿālī b. Sayf al-Dawla died at Aleppo on the night of Sunday when five (nights) remained of the month of Ramaḍān, and his son Abū l-Faḍāʾil sat in the imāra.

[329] Banjūtakin set out from Damascus for Aleppo, took Ḥimṣ, and Abū l-Faḍāʾil sought aid from the governor of Antioch, who was at that time the magistrōs Michael Bourtzēs (al-Burjī). He gathered the nearby troops and halted at Qasṭūn. Banjūtakin sent him a messenger letting him know that his intention toward Aleppo was particular, and that he would not set foot on anything of the lands of the Rūm, and would not permit any of his companions to commit corruption in their country. But Bourtzēs seized his messenger and imprisoned him. Battle took place between Banjūtakin and the Ḥamdānids near Apamea; the Ḥamdānids were defeated in the month of Rabīʿ II of the year 382, and a company of them were killed and captured. Banjūtakin halted before Aleppo toward Bāb al-Yahūd, and fighting took place on all sides of the city. He remained before Aleppo thirty-three days, then set out from it and went into the lands of the Rūm because of Bourtzēs’s imprisonment of his messenger. He halted at the fortress of ʿImm, which belonged to Bourtzēs in the district of Artāḥ; he fought it, captured it, took captives, killed, and plundered, and went to Antioch and halted before it. He pitched a red tent at Bāb Fāris

[330] and invested the walls from Bāb Fāris to Bāb al-Baḥr, and fought them. The people of Antioch rained arrows upon them. He remained half a day, and Bourtzēs came forth against the army of Banjūtakin; he found it formidable and saw that it was more numerous and stronger than his own army, so he held back from it. Banjūtakin returned to the siege of Aleppo and resumed the fighting for a period of a year and thirty days; then he left it and returned to Damascus in Rajab of that year.

[331] The emperor Basil was residing in the lands of the west raiding the Bulgars. When news reached him of what Bourtzēs had done to Banjūtakin’s messenger, he rebuked him for it, summoned the messenger to him, spoke with him, and released him.

[332] The Muslims in the town of al-Lādhiqiyya rebelled. Bourtzēs went against them, took them captive, and carried them to the lands of the Rūm.

[333] Banjūtakin returned from Damascus and halted before Apamea; Wafāʾ, the eunuch of Sayf al-Dawla, surrendered it to him on Thursday when ten (nights) had elapsed of Rajab of the year 383. He set out for Shayzar

and captured it; Sawsan, a servant of Saʿd al-Dawla, surrendered it on Wednesday when fourteen nights remained of it. Then he returned to the siege of Aleppo. The people of Aleppo wrote to the emperor Basil asking him for aid and help against Banjūtakin. He ordered the magistrōs Michael Bourtzēs, the governor of Antioch, to go to their aid and to drive Banjūtakin from them. Bourtzēs advanced and gathered the troops. The emperor also sent to him the magistrōs Leo Melissenos with another army. Bourtzēs arranged a detachment to raid the works of Aleppo; they took captives and plundered. Those who had been carrying provisions and fodder to Banjūtakin’s army fled in fear of them, and (the Greeks) pressed hard upon them. Bourtzēs and Melissenos went down with the troops at al-Arwāj, and the Ḥamdānid army joined them. Banjūtakin left Aleppo and turned to fight them. He halted on the bank of the river opposite the army of the Rūm and the Ḥamdānids, the river between them. When Bourtzēs saw Banjūtakin’s army and its numbers, he did not think that he should give battle with those who were with him. But the people of Aleppo urged him to meet him and made him desire it. The Rūm went down

[334] upon a ford, and the people of Aleppo made ready upon another, and prepared to cross. Banjūtakin sent against them the Arabs who were with him, with a detachment of his army, to meet the people of Aleppo, and he himself with the rest of his army set himself to fight the Rūm. When the Arabs approached the people of Aleppo, the people of Aleppo fled from the ford; the Arabs pursued them and plundered their baggage. When the Rūm saw that, they too fled and abandoned Bourtzēs and Melissenos, who were forced to flight. Of the army of the Rūm there were killed some five thousand. That was on Friday when six nights had elapsed of Shaʿbān of the year 384. Bourtzēs and Melissenos returned to Antioch. This battle was named the Battle of the Ford.

[335] Banjūtakin returned to the siege of Aleppo and its investment; he took the fortress of ʿAzāz and took possession of all the works of Aleppo, appointed a governor over them, built a fortress opposite Aleppo, and collected the kharāj.

[336] Al-ʿAzīz entrusted the oversight of affairs to Abū l-Faḍl Jaʿfar b. al-Faḍl b. al-Furāt; he looked into affairs in the month of Rabīʿ I of the year 383. (But) it stopped short with him and he was unable to carry out

what had been entrusted to him in it, so he was dismissed in Shaʿbān of that year. Al-ʿAzīz entrusted the oversight of affairs to ʿĪsā b. Nestouros the Christian, and he was addressed as “our most illustrious lord.”

[337] When the distress of the people of Aleppo under Banjūtakin’s siege became great, they sought aid from the emperor Basil, who was occupied with his whole army in raiding the Bulgars. He set out from the land of the Bulgars, unencumbered, to aid them, and arrived in the month of Rabīʿ I of the year 385 without anyone knowing of him; he reached Marj Dābiq. News of the emperor’s arrival reached Banjūtakin, and he fled to Damascus at the beginning of Rabīʿ II of that year, after he had burned the fortress he had built and all that was with him of tents, equipment, arms, and implements. His stay before Aleppo had been seven months and a half. When the emperor halted before Aleppo, Abū l-Faḍāʾil b. Saʿd al-Dawla and Luʾluʾ went out to him and prostrated themselves at his feet. He restored them both to Aleppo and granted them the wealth of the truce that had been taken in past years. He went to Rafaniyya and Ḥimṣ, took many captives, burned, and raided.

[338] A company of the Arabs raided his army, hoping that the horses of the Rūm would not overtake them. He laid an ambush for them; the Bulgars captured forty men of them. The emperor ordered their hands cut off and released them. The Bedouin were terrified by it, and thereafter none of them dared to attack his army.

[339] He halted before Ṭarābulus and besieged it. Al-Muẓaffar ibn Nazzāl and a company of the notables of its people went out to him; they prostrated themselves before him, submitted to his obedience, and he treated them well. They returned to the town on the understanding that they would surrender it to him. But in the town was a qāḍī known as ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd al-Wāḥid ibn Ḥaydara, one of its people. He and the common people shut the gate in their faces and expelled the household of al-Muẓaffar ibn Nazzāl from the town. Al-Muẓaffar took them and went with the emperor.

[340] He halted at the fortress of Anṭarṭūs, restored it in three days — it had been ruined before that — and manned it with Armenians. He set out from Antioch and appointed over it as duke a patrikios named Damianos, known as Delassenos.

[341] He entrusted to him the governorship of the East and was angry at the magistrōs Michael Bourtzēs and confined him to his house.

[342] In the first year of his governorship, the duke Damianos raided Ṭarābulus and fell upon it by night; he took its outskirts and many captives. Three months later he returned to ʿIrqa and took captives from it. In the second year of his governorship he raided Ṭarābulus and took many captives from its territory; he turned to Rafaniyya, ʿArj, and al-Lukama, captured the fortress of al-Lukama, took captives, and plundered.

[343] In the twenty-first year of the reign of Basil, the magistrōs Sisinnios was made patriarch of Constantinople on the day of al-Fiṣḥ, the twelfth of Nīsān of the year 1307. The patriarchal throne had stood vacant four years before his appointment, because of the emperor’s occupation with the Bulgarian raid. He remained two years and four months and died.

[344] The emperor asked the patriarch Agapios to renounce his presidency of Antioch by a document in his own hand. He refused that with a strong refusal, until (the emperor) treated him kindly and the matter was settled with him on the understanding that there should be made for him a monastery in Constantinople known as al-Afrīdū, from which a qinṭār of dinars should be drawn every year, and that there should be carried to him each year from the revenues of the church of Antioch twenty-four riṭls of dinars for the expense of his table. He consented to that and wrote his document in the month of Aylūl of the year 1307, which is the year 386. He stipulated that his name should not be cut from (the diptychs). The emperor appointed as patriarch in his place a man named John, of the people of Constantinople, who had been chartophylax in the church of Hagia Sophia. That was on Sunday, the fourth of Tishrīn I of the year 1308, which is the nineteenth of the month of Ramaḍān of the year 386. He remained four years and nine months and died. The emperor ordered that the church of al-Qasyān in Antioch be arranged upon the model of Hagia Sophia

in Constantinople.

[345] One year after his appointment the patriarch Agapios died, on Sunday the eighth of Aylūl of the year 1308, which is the twenty-second year of the reign of Basil. The duration of his presidency, together with the period of his stay in exile, was eighteen years, seven months, and seventeen days.

[346] The emperor Basil made the magistrōs Nikephoros Ouranos domestikos — he is the one who had been sent to Baghdād after the defeat of Sklēros — and sent him to fight the Bulgars. He met the Kōmētopoulos their chief, prevailed over them, defeated the Bulgars, killed of them a great slaughter, and brought into Constantinople one thousand heads and twelve thousand captives. The Kōmētopoulos wrote to the emperor Basil, humbling himself before him, promising him obedience, and asking him to look favourably upon him. The emperor was about to consent to his request when there arrived (news) that the king of the Bulgars who was imprisoned with the emperor in Constantinople had died. Word of his death reached his servant the Kōmētopoulos, chief of the Bulgars, and he had himself proclaimed king. The emperor Basil then sent the magistrōs Nikephoros again to raid the Bulgars. He went into the midst of their country and did not meet

any of them. He remained among them three months, striking and burning; then he returned to Constantinople.

[347] As for al-ʿAzīz, after the emperor Basil’s going out to Syria he went forth to Munyat Jaʿfar, of the works of Miṣr, with the whole of his army, and showed firm resolve for the raid into the lands of the Rūm. He ordered ʿĪsā b. Nestouros to construct a fleet that should go by sea to Ṭarābulus. Ibn Nestouros gathered timber from all the districts and built a fleet in the Dār al-Ṣināʿa in Miṣr; he carried to it all the implements, equipment, and arms, and resolved to launch it after the noon prayer on Friday when seventeen nights remained of the month of Rabīʿ II of the year 386. On that same day on which he had resolved to launch it, fire broke out in it; sixteen ships were burned. The Rūm al-Malāfiṭa who came to Miṣr with goods were accused of it. The raʿiyya and the Maghāriba rose against them; a hundred and sixty men of them were killed, and they plundered the house of Manāk which was in al-Raffāʾīn in Miṣr, in which there was great wealth belonging to those Rūm.

[348] In it there were Rūm dwelling. The church of Mīkhāʾīl belonging to the Melkites at Qaṣr al-Shamʿ was plundered, and vessels of gold and silver worth a great sum were taken from it. The Nestorian church was plundered, and one of their bishops, named Yūsuf and known as al-Shīzīrī, was wounded and died of it.

[349] Ibn Nestouros rode at the time of the plunder, went down to Miṣr, and set about removing the injury from the Rūm and restraining attacks upon them. It was proclaimed in the city that every one of the plunderers should return all that he had taken; some of it was returned. There were brought those of the merchants of the Rūm who had escaped being killed, and there was restored to each one of them what he recognized. Sixty-three men of the plunderers were seized and bound. Al-ʿAzīz bi-llāh ordered that a third of them be released, a third beaten, and a third killed. Papers were written, on some of which was “he is to be beaten,” on some “he is to be killed,” and on some “he is to be released,” and they were left under a cloth. Each one of them came forward and took his paper, and he was treated according to what came out in it. That was on Thursday when eight (nights) had elapsed of Jumādā I of that year.

[350] Banjūtakin returned, raiding toward Antioch; he reached its gate, then went to Aleppo and halted before it some days, then set out from it for Anṭarṭūs and fought the fortress some days. The duke Delassenos set out from Antioch making for Anṭarṭūs to drive him from it.

[351] ʿĪsā b. Nestouros in Miṣr had begun to construct another fleet in place of what had been burned. Timber was again gathered from all sides, and large beams that had been roofing the Dār al-Ḍarb in Miṣr beside the Dār al-Shurṭa, and the lower hospital which is at Sūq al-Ḥamām, were taken and all of them were sawn. A fleet of twenty-four ships was prepared, manned with men, and Rashīq was made to command it. It reached Anṭarṭūs while Banjūtakin was besieging it. There arose in the sea a great wind; the fleet was wrecked, and the men of the ships got out to the shore.

[352] The duke had already drawn near Anṭarṭūs. A rumour spread in the army of the Turk that the troops of

the Rūm had drawn near them. Banjūtakin was defeated with all his army. Those who were established in Anṭarṭūs came out and took what had survived of the ships and captured a great number of their men.

[353] Al-ʿAzīz, in the course of his going forth, had reached Bilbays and fell ill there. He entered the bath while he was sick and died in the bath on Tuesday when two nights remained of the month of Ramaḍān of the year 386. He was carried from Bilbays to his palace in Cairo and arrived in the daytime of Wednesday. His age was forty-three years, and his caliphate was twenty-one years, five months, and twenty-seven days, of which seven months and twenty-seven days he was addressed as heir to the covenant. His illness was the stone and colic.