The Yemeni army's sack of Mecca (620 AH)

نهب عسكر اليمن مكة سنة 620هـ

1223 CE · 620 AH

620: al-Malik al-Mas'ud Atsiz ibn al-Kamil — the Ayyubid sultan of Yemen — reached Mecca, whose new sharif Hasan ibn Qatada had alienated his father's ashraf and mamluks; the army plundered the sanctuary 'until they took the clothes off people and beggared them'. Atsiz ordered Qatada's grave exhumed and burnt — and the coffin proved empty, exposing that Hasan had secretly buried the father he had strangled. Ibn al-Athir moralises: he lost this world and the next for the kingship he killed for ¹.