al-Muktafi bi-Allah

المكتفي بالله

Abbasid caliph whose caliphate lasted six years and nineteen days; he died in 295 and was buried in the house of Muhammad ibn Abd Allah ibn Tahir ¹. According to al-Suyuti, he was born on 1 Rabi' II 264; his mother was a Turkish woman called Jijak, and his beauty was proverbial. His father named him heir, and he was pledged allegiance on the Friday eleven days before the end of Rabi' II 289, while he was at Raqqa. The vizier al-Qasim ibn Ubayd Allah took up the burden of the oath, and he reached Baghdad on 7 Jumada I. He demolished the dungeons his father had built and turned them into mosques, returned the gardens and shops his father had seized to their owners, and governed well, so the people loved him. In his last illness he said: 'I regret nothing but the seven hundred thousand dinars I spent of the Muslims' money on buildings I did not need.' He died young, on the night of Sunday, twelve days into Dhu al-Qa'da 295 ². According to al-Mas'udi, he left eight million dinars and twenty-five million dirhams in the treasuries, and nine thousand head of livestock, yet he was stingy and close-fisted. His daily table had ten dishes, and a kid every Friday; someone was set to count the leftover bread, sound loaves were returned the next day and broken pieces went into crumbled bread. He ordered a palace built at al-Shammasiyya opposite Qatrabbul and took estates and farms without payment, so many prayed against him, and he died before the building was finished ³. According to al-Mas'udi, when his illness grew severe with dysentery he summoned the judge Muhammad ibn Yusuf and Abd Allah ibn Ali ibn Abi al-Shawarib and had them witness his bequest of the succession to his brother Ja'far. He used to recite Ibn al-Rumi's line on the lauzinaj sweet, 'when it appears, you are amazed or wonder', and among his own verses is 'Life is only the hour you are in, and what has passed' ⁴. Ibn al-Nadim reports that the queen of the Franks wrote to him on white silk, seeking his friendship and asking to marry him, and sent the letter with a servant named Ali, one of Ibn al-Aghlab's servants, who had reached her land from the Maghrib ⁵. According to Ibn al-Jawzi, when he came to the caliphate (dated 295 in this account) he went down to the palace and ordered the dungeons demolished and the site made a congregational mosque, so that prayer was established in the three great mosques. On the day he entered the Hasani palace, al-Qasim ibn Ubayd Allah was given a kunya by word of mouth, put into six robes of honour, given a sword, and mounted on a horse whose bridle and saddle were gold ⁶. Also according to Ibn al-Jawzi, the oath of allegiance to him after his father was taken from the people of Baghdad on the Friday evening eleven nights before the end of Rabi' II 289, four days before al-Mu'tadid died; he was at Raqqa, took the oath from those there, then came down to Baghdad, arriving on Monday, eight days into Jumada I. He put al-Qasim ibn Ubayd Allah in charge of the soldiers' stipends and took the oath from them. The treasury held ten million dinars and jewels worth ten million dinars, apart from equipment and horses. He was twenty-five years, six months and twenty days old when he was pledged allegiance ⁷.