al-Muntasir bi-Allah

المنتصر بالله

Abbasid caliph, pledged allegiance after his father al-Mutawakkil was killed in 247 ¹, and he died in 248 ². According to al-Suyuti, he was first pledged heir apparent; then al-Mutawakkil wanted to advance al-Mu'tazz over him and asked him to step down, and when he refused, al-Mutawakkil kept lowering his standing. The Turks agreed with him to kill his father; five men entered upon the caliph and killed him on 5 Shawwal 247 ³. According to al-Suyuti, he was handsome and dignified, of full intellect, eager for good and little given to injustice. Among his sayings: 'The pleasure of pardon is sweeter than the pleasure of vengeance, and the ugliest of al-Muqtadir's deeds was retaliation.' Yazid al-Muhallabi said of him: 'You were generous to the Talibiyyun after they had blamed the age, time after time, and you restored the kinship of Hashim, so that I see them, after enmity between them, as brothers' ⁴. According to al-Mas'udi, Bugha al-Saghir plotted his father's murder. He put Bugha to the test through his son Faris, then through his brother Wasif, then through Bugha himself, and Bugha said: 'He kills the son while the father remains; let us begin with the father first' ⁵. According to al-Mas'udi, he was proclaimed on the morning of the night his father was killed at al-Ja'fari, aged twenty-five. His mother was an umm walad called Habashiyya Rumiyya. He stayed seven days in the al-Makhura pavilion where his father was killed, the place where Shiruyah had killed his father Khusraw Parviz. Muhammad ibn Sahl the scribe saw in its carpet the figure of Shiruyah, who killed his father and ruled six months, and the figure of Yazid ibn al-Walid, who killed his cousin and ruled six months; he said: 'I do not see his rule lasting longer than six months', and so it was. He died in 248 ⁶.