Abu Ziyan Muhammad ibn Uthman

أبو زيان محمد بن عثمان

Abu Ziyan Muhammad ibn Uthman ibn Yaghmurasan, third of the Abd al-Wadid kings; he took the rule when his father died of dysentery in the fifth year of Yusuf ibn Ya'qub's siege of Tlemcen in 703 — his brother Abu Hammu Musa answering the troops that their sultan was the elder brother Abu Ziyan — and the city endured to a full eight years and three months, eating carrion, cats, mice and the dead, tearing roofs for fuel, a measure of wheat at two and a half mithqals of gold and a cat at one and a half, until Yusuf ibn Ya'qub was stabbed by a eunuch slave and torn limb from limb — 'and God lifted the affliction from the house of Ziyan as if they had been raised from the graves', their mint striking 'how near is God's relief' in wonder at it.