Arrest of al-Ka'ki and Demolition of Baratha Mosque

In 313 the vizier Abu'l-Qasim al-Khaqani was hunting Qarmati propagandists when reports fixed on a man called al-Ka'ki, head of the Rafida on the western side. Arrested, he slipped through the fences and escaped; in his house they found his caliph's letter-writer and men posing as students — the man was flogged three hundred lashes, paraded on a camel, and cried out as "the reward of one who curses Abu Bakr and 'Umar." When al-Muqtadir learned the Rafida gathered at the Baratha mosque cursing the Companions, he sent Nazuk, who seized thirty men carrying white-clay seals al-Ka'ki stamped "Ali b. Isma'il, the Imam al-Mahdi, friend of God." Al-Khaqani then dared seek the mosque's demolition, producing a fatwa of jurists declaring it a masjid dirar, and al-Muqtadir ordered it torn down ².