Al-Muwaffaq's campaign against the Zanj and rescue of captives

In 267 AH the Zanj entered Wasit. Abu Ahmad al-Muwaffaq sent his son Abu al-Abbas against them with ten thousand men, and he rescued a great number of captive women and returned them to their families. Then his father joined him, fought them, and rescued about fifteen thousand Muslim women. ¹

Al-Muwaffaq drove the Zanj back into a city they had built and fortified, and dug trenches around it. He sent their leader a letter inviting him to repent and rejoin the community of the Muslims, but he did not reply. Abu Ahmad encamped in the city he named al-Muwaffaqiyya, sent merchants to it, built a mosque there, and set up a mint where dinars and dirhams were struck, and stipends were paid out to the people. In Dhu al-Hijja he crossed in person to the city of that people, and his men gained control of one corner of it; but they burned what stood on its wall of mangonels and catapults, and drove the Zanj back. ¹