791 AH, 17/08
In the meanwhile al-Nāṣirī’s amirs were retreating, and an additional large number of his followers went over to Minṭāsh. When al-Nāṣirī saw that his soldiers were now few in number and that most of his followers had deserted him, he sent the caliph al-Mutawakkil ʿalā Allāh to Minṭāsh to sue for peace (al-ṣulḥ) and cessation of the strife (al-fitna).
When the caliph went down to Minṭāsh and addressed him on the subject, Minṭāsh replied: “I am loyal to the sultan; he is my master and the son of my master, and the amirs are my brothers. My only enemy is al-Nāṣirī, who swore to me when I was in Sīwās, and again in Aleppo and Damascus, that we two should act as one, and that the sultan should rule his kingdom as he wished. Then when victory came to us and al-Nāṣirī became ʾatābak al-ʿasākir, he arrogated all power to himself, put the sultan under restraint, prevented him from exercising his authority, and favored his own comrades the Yalbughāwīya while he alienated me and my comrades the ʾAshrafīya; then, not satisfied with this, he sent me fight the peasants [Popper corrects: the Arabs] (al-Nāṣirī had sent him among a number of amirs to the Eastern Province to fight the Arabs when the peasants there had suffered severely from depredations). Minṭāsh continued: “Moreover, al-Nāṣirī gave me only a hundred thousand dirhams; he also took for himself the best fiefs, and gave me the poorest, for the one that he settled upon me yields annually only 600,000 dirhams. By God, I shall not desist until either I kill him, or he kills me and becomes sultan with sole and entire authority, without anyone to share it.” The caliph attempted to appease him, but he would not retract, and when the caliph left he was still repeating what he had said before.