Overview

In 238 AH, as al-Suyuti relates, the Byzantines raided Damietta and plundered and burned it, and took six hundred women captive, then left quickly by sea. ²

The caliph at the time was al-Mutawakkil. The date and the numbers rest on a single source and need an additional source.

al-Mufarraj ibn Sallam's Conquest of Twenty-Four Fortresses

In al-Baladhuri: after Khalafun rose a man called al-Mufarraj — one copy: al-Mufarrikh — ibn Sallam who opened twenty-four fortresses and seized them; he wrote the postmaster in Egypt his news and that he deemed the absentee prayer unlawful for himself and the Muslims with him, asking the imam to contract him over his district and appoint him, to leave the state of usurpers — and he built a congregational mosque. Then his companions mutinied and killed him; Sawran — also read Sudan — succeeded and sent his envoy to al-Mutawakkil asking patent and letter of appointment, but al-Mutawakkil died before the envoy reached him, and al-Muntasir died whose caliphate was six months; al-Musta'in Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn al-Mu'tasim ordered his Maghreb agent Utamish — the caliph's mawla — to contract it for him, but before his envoy could leave Samarra Utamish was killed and Wasif the caliph's mawla took the district and contracted and dispatched it.

The Byzantine raid on Damietta

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al-Mufarraj ibn Sallam's Conquest of Twenty-Four Fortresses