The battle between the sultan's men and the Sahib al-Shama

الوقعة بين أصحاب السلطان وصاحب الشامة

291 AH

In 291 al-Tabari records the battle between the sultan's men and the men of the Qarmatian, the Sahib al-Shama. In Muharram the sultan's men defeated the Qarmatian's men and took many of them prisoner; then the Qarmatian fled into the desert ¹. According to Ibn al-Jawzi, he was seized at a place called al-Taqarmati and taken to al-Raqqa wearing a burnous. He was then placed on a chair two and a half cubits high on the back of an elephant, and al-Muktafi brought him into Baghdad with a conical piece of wood in his mouth like a bridle. Al-Muktafi ordered a platform ten cubits high built in the old prayer ground. On Monday, with seven days left in Rabi' I, thirty-four prisoners were brought before him; their hands and feet were cut off and their necks struck one by one. Then he was brought forward and given two hundred lashes, had his hands and feet cut off, was branded and burned. His head was raised on a pole, and his body was crucified at the end of the upper bridge ².