al-Muqtadi bi-Amr Allah Abdullah ibn Muhammad ibn al-Qa'im
Abbasid caliph [467–487], posthumous son of the Qa'im's son Muhammad, born six months after his father's death and hailed at nineteen before Abu Ishaq al-Shirazi. His reign saw the caliphate's footing splendid again: he expelled the singing-girls and prostitutes, required the izar in the baths and razed their towers. His vizier Abu Shuja' was titled Zahir al-Din — Suyuti thinks the first din-compound title. He died suddenly, his slave-girl Shams al-Nahar suspected of poison.
Reign · Abbasid Caliphate · no. 2 in the chain · 1075–1094 CE
Ruled the caliphate
Events of the reign
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al-Ghazali becomes chief professor at the Nizamiyya in Baghdad
In 1091 the vizier Nizam al-Mulk appointed al-Ghazali chief professor of the Nizamiyya college in Baghdad, where he lectured to more than 300 students and examined the philosophy of al-Farabi and Avicenna (Britannica).
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Sulayman ibn Qutlumush takes Antioch from the Romans
In 477 Sulayman ibn Qutlumush, the Seljuk lord of Qonya and Aqsaray, marched on Syria and took Antioch — in Roman hands since 358 — sending the glad tidings to sultan Malikshah. Al-Dhahabi: Al Saljuq are the kings of the lands of Rum, their line lasting to the days of al-Malik al-Zahir Baybars.
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Atsiz's defeat before Egypt
Atsiz's Egypt gambit collapsed in Rajab 1076 — beaten by an Arab force before Badr al-Jamali's great army even engaged — and the defeat spiralled into the feuds that killed him by 1078.
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The Great Fire of Baghdad in 485
In Jumada II 485 a great fire struck Baghdad in which a great number perished — among them the qari' Abu Abd Allah al-Banyasi Malik b. Ahmad b. Ali b. al-Farra', aged eighty-seven.
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Sunni-Rafida Strife in Baghdad in 483
In 483 an unprecedented fitna broke out in Baghdad between the Sunna and the Rafida with many killed and the governor helpless; the Sunna prevailed with the caliph's backers until the Shi'a humbled, kept taqiyya, and wrote on the Karkh mosques 'the best of men after the Messenger of God is Abu Bakr'.
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Battle of Ayn Saylam
Draft card for the Battle of Ayn Saylam in 1086, the Seljuk victory over the Fatimids near Antioch; its sources are not yet checked on the page.
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Battle of Kurzahil (1085)
Draft card for Battle of Kurzahil (1085); its sources are not yet checked on the page.
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Fall of Damascus to Atsiz
Damascus fell to Alp Arslan's commander Atsiz in 1075 and the Abbasid khutba was proclaimed — the Seljuk realm reaching its greatest extent from Afghanistan to Asia Minor.
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Malikshah Resolves to Expel the Caliph from Baghdad, and Dies
In 485 Malikshah returned to Baghdad bent on harm, sending the caliph word: 'you must leave me Baghdad and go where you will'. 'Grant me a month' — 'not an hour'. The caliph asked the sultan's vizier for ten days — whereupon the sultan fell ill and died, counted a karama for the caliph; it is said he had sat fasting on ashes cursing Malikshah till answered. The sultan's wife Turkan hid the death, had the amirs swear to her five-year-old Mahmud — titled Nasir al-Dunya wa'l-Din — then his brother Barkyaruq rose and was invested as Rukn al-Din.
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Muslim ibn Quraysh al-Uqayli takes Aleppo
In 472 AH Muslim ibn Quraysh al-Uqayli took Aleppo. He wrote to Sultan Malikshah a document in which he bore witness against himself to paying for it three hundred thousand dinars a year, delivered to the sultan's treasury; the sultan agreed to this.
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Muslim ibn Quraysh takes Harran and kills its qadi
In 476 Harran's people and their Hanbali qadi Ibn Julba resolved to hand the city to Janaq the Turkman amir — a Sunni — defying Muslim b. Quraysh, lord of Mosul, whom they counted a Rafidi and who was busy besieging Damascus with the Egyptians against Taj al-Dawla Tutush; Muslim raced to Harran, flung mangonels at it, took it, and slaughtered the qadi and his two sons.
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The Strife over Declaring the Hanbalis Unbelievers and the Looting of the Nizamiyya Market
In 470 Nizam al-Mulk's letter reached Abu Ishaq al-Shirazi rebuking the anti-Hanbali agitation in his own Nizamiyya: 'Sultan's policy and the rule of justice oblige us to lean to no madhhab over another; we did not build this school but to shelter the people of learning — not to split the community — and the madhhab that dominates Baghdad and its quarters is that of the imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal.' The Hanbalis circulated it and were strengthened. Then on Tuesday 2 Shawwal a madrasa student called al-Iskandarani went to Suq al-Thulatha pronouncing the Hanbalis unbelievers; pelted with a brick he fled back to the madrasa market, whose men sallied out and looted the other market — until the mob reversed it, burst into the madrasa market, plundered their quarter and killed a sick man in his room. The Daylamite guards shot dead some fifteen, and the bodies were carried to the diwan for the qadis and witnesses to attest.
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The death of al-Qa'im bi-Amr Allah and the accession of al-Muqtadi
In Safar 467 the caliph al-Qa'im fell gravely ill, his throat swelling; dying, he wrote the heirship for his grandson Abdallah ibn Dhakhirat al-Din. Al-Muqtadi was acclaimed Friday 13 Sha'ban 467 in the Dar al-Shajara in a white shirt and fine white turban — the first to swear was Sharif Abu Ja'far, who had given him bay'a at the caliph's washing before the people, quoting 'when a lord among us passes, a lord arises'; the bier was borne on the tayyar with weeping but no wailing, prayed over with four takbirs and buried in the caliph's own chamber of retreat. Al-Qa'im's caliphate had run forty-five years and some months; and when Malikshah later turned on al-Muqtadi demanding he quit Baghdad, the caliph asked ten days' respite — and the sultan died on the tenth day.
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The al-Qushayri fitna between the Hanbalis and the Ash'aris in Baghdad
In Shawwal 469 fighting broke out in Baghdad between the Hanbalis and the Ash'aris. The cause was that Abu Nasr ibn al-Qushayri returned to Baghdad and sat in the Nizamiyya denouncing the Hanbalis and attributing anthropomorphism (tajsim) to them. Abu Ishaq al-Shirazi inclined to support him and wrote to al-Nizam complaining of the Hanbalis and asking for his help. The mob agreed to attack the Sharif Abu Ja'far in his mosque; he had arranged a group to repel them, who pelted the attackers with bricks, and the fitna broke out. A tailor from the Tuesday market was killed, and a cry went up at the Nawbi gate: 'Al-Mustansir bi-llah, O Mansur!' Abu Ishaq was angry and went off to Bab al-Taq, beginning to prepare for departure, but the caliph sent to bring him back. Then the vizier Fakhr al-Dawla ibn Jahir summoned Sharif Abu Ja'far for reconciliation; he attended with Abu Ishaq, Abu Sa'd al-Sufi and Abu Nasr ibn al-Qushayri. Abu Ishaq kissed the Sharif's head and said: 'It is as you say, but when you were poor your inner feelings were not visible to us; when the agents and the sultan and Khwaja Buzurg came to you, you revealed what had been hidden.' To Abu Sa'd al-Sufi he said: 'Sheikh, as for the jurists, when they speak on matters of principle they have standing; but you are a man of amusement, music and sudden fancies.' When al-Qushayri rose he said: 'If anyone could be thanked for his innovation it would be this young man, for he confronted us with what was in him and did not flatter us as those two did.' Then he said: 'What reconciliation is there between us? Reconciliation is between litigants over an office, worldly matters, the division of an inheritance or a dispute over property. But these people claim we are unbelievers, and we claim that whoever does not hold our belief is an unbeliever; so what reconciliation is there between us?' The Sharif declared that his two grandfathers, the caliphs al-Qa'im and al-Qadir, had made their belief public and had it read in their registers, and that the Khurasanis and the pilgrims carried it to the ends of the earth: 'and we follow their belief.' It is said that the Sharif fell ill afterwards and his legs swelled; it is also said that one of the jurist-enemies slipped poison into his shoe, God knows best.
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Al-Shirazi writes al-Muhadhdhab, 455-469/1063-1077
Between 455/1063 and 469/1077 al-Shirazi wrote his great fiqh compendium al-Muhadhdhab fi fiqh al-imam al-Shafi'i which — with al-Tanbih — became one of the five reference works of the Shafi'i school and drew a vast critical apparatus, among it al-Nawawi's eighteen-volume al-Majmu' sharh al-Muhadhdhab; in it the brilliant controversialist gave way to a genuine mujtahid establishing his own doctrine.
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Siege of Aleppo
Draft card for Siege of Aleppo; its sources are not yet checked on the page.
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Siege of Antioch (1084–85)
Draft card for Siege of Antioch (1084–85); its sources are not yet checked on the page.
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Siege of Damascus
Draft card for Siege of Damascus; its sources are not yet checked on the page.
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Siege of Mayyafariqin (1085)
Draft card for Siege of Mayyafariqin (1085); its sources are not yet checked on the page.