Restoration of the Sunni Adhan in Karkh and Restrictions on the Shi'a

In the year 448 AH, after Sultan Tughrilbak had settled in Baghdad, the call to prayer was given in the shrines and mosques of Karkh with the words «al-ṣalāt khayr min al-nawm» ("prayer is better than sleep"); the phrase «ḥayy ʿalā khayr al-ʿamal» ("hasten to the best of deeds") was removed; and the inscription «wa ʿalā khayr al-bashar» was chiselled off the doors of houses and alleys. ²

Sunni reciters entered Karkh through the Basra Gate and recited poems praising the Companions. The chief of chiefs, Ibn al-Muslima, instructed Ibn al-Nasawi to kill Abu ʿAbd Allah ibn al-Jallab, shaykh of the cloth merchants at Bab al-Taq, for openly displaying what the source calls extremist rafḍ; he was killed, and his body was publicly displayed on the door of his shop. The Shiʿi theologian Abu Jaʿfar al-Tusi fled, and his house was looted. In Safar 449 his house was raided; his notebooks and the chair from which he lectured were seized and burned, together with three white majānīq that pilgrims carried on their visits to Kufa. Ibn al-Muslima then ordered black banners raised in Karkh, which alarmed its people; he strove to harm them, and it was only Amid al-Mulk al-Kunduri who warded them off. ³