al-Radi bi-llah Abu al-Abbas Muhammad ibn al-Muqtadir
Abbasid caliph [322–329], Abu'l-Abbas Muhammad ibn al-Muqtadir, born 297 to a Roman slave Zulum, hailed the day al-Qahir was deposed — Ibn Muqla wrote up the deposed caliph's faults to be read to the people.
Reign · Abbasid Caliphate · no. 32 in the chain · 934–940 CE
Ruled the caliphate
Events of the reign
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Al-Radi prefers al-Suli's chess to a garden's flowers
Al-Radi, in one of his gardens, asked his companions whether they had seen anything finer; they praised the garden, and he said that al-Suli's chess-playing was finer than those flowers and all they described.
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Abu al-Hasan al-Ash'ari dies at Baghdad, 324/935-6
Abu al-Hasan al-Ash'ari died at Baghdad in 324/935-6, and a group of Hanbalis and scholars joined in finding fault with him. Al-Bayhaqi reports through Zahir ibn Ahmad al-Sarakhsi: when al-Ash'ari's end drew near at his house in Baghdad he summoned me and said, 'Bear witness that I declare no one of the people of the qibla an unbeliever, for all point to one object of worship; all this is but a difference of wording'.
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The Euphrates flood and the ruin of Bab al-Anbar
In 329 the Euphrates rose eleven cubits and burst from the Anbar side, sweeping villages, people, cattle and beasts; water poured down the Sarat into Baghdad's western quarters drowning Bab al-Anbar street to the last house, toppling the Sarat's iron bridge — while the Tigris rose eighteen cubits in May–June.
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The execution of al-Shalmaghani and Ibn Abi Awn
In 322 Ibn Muqla seized al-Shalmaghani and found in his house notes from believers addressing him as no men address each other, including one in the vizier Ibn Wahb's hand; though he recanted, the jurists finally shed his blood and he and Ibn Abi Awn were crucified and burned. His doctrine: God indwells all things to their capacity, and the lahut appeared in five nasut figures paired with five devils — Adam/Iblis, Noah/Iblis, Salih and the she-camel's hamstringer, Abraham/Nimrod, Moses/Pharaoh.
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Ibn Ra'iq's ascendancy and the rise of the amir al-umara
In 324 Muhammad ibn Ra'iq, amir of Wasit, prevailed: the vizierate and the diwans lapsed, he and his secretaries held all, the treasuries emptied into his hands, and al-Radi remained a figure — 'nothing of the caliphate but the name'. By 325 the provinces were held by rebels or revenue-less governors 'like the party-kings', and nothing was left to the caliph but Baghdad and the Sawad.
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The affair of Ibn Shanabudh
In 323 came the famous affair of Ibn Shanabudh: made to repent of reading the shadh variants, the record written against him before the vizier Ibn Muqla. His prayer was answered — he had called down the severing of the vizier's hand, and Ibn Muqla's hand was indeed cut off.
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al-Kulayni completes al-Kafi at Baghdad, about 328/940
At Baghdad al-Kulayni completed his voluminous Kitab al-Kafi, on which he is said to have worked for twenty years; though mostly a collection of traditions of the Imams, it was meant as a guide to authoritative Imami doctrine in theology and fiqh, and so is arranged by subject.
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Court poet to Badr al-Kharshani at Damascus, 328/939
At the beginning of 328/939 al-Mutanabbi became court poet to the amir Badr al-Kharshani — the Badr ibn Ammar of the Diwan — governor of Damascus for Ibn Ra'iq, who had just taken possession of Syria. Of Arab stock, Badr seemed to the poet the long-awaited Maecenas, and the panegyrics addressed to him carry sincere admiration; but intrigues of jealous rivals ended the friendship in about a year and a half, and al-Mutanabbi, no longer feeling safe, hid in the Syrian desert until Badr's departure for Iraq freed him.
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The deposition of al-Qahir and the blinding of his eyes
In 322 the soldiers moved on al-Qahir — Ibn Muqla in hiding had set them against him — seized him on 6 Jumada II and hailed Muhammad ibn al-Muqtadir as al-Radi. Al-Qahir refused to release them from their bay'a; Sima, commander of the Hujariyya, had him blinded with a red-hot nail, his eyes running down his cheeks. Earlier that year he had slaughtered Mu'nis and his confederates and walled Ibn al-Muktafi alive between two walls for plotting his own deposition.