Before 19/10/814
For a number of years before his death, [al-Manṣūr Ḥājjī] was unable to move, having lost the use both of hands and feet. His weakened condition, it was said, had resulted from some food which his slave girls, because of his bad temper and his tyranny, had given him to eat and which brought on this paralytic condition. More than one of the entourage of al-malik al-Ẓāhir who attended to the affairs of al-Manṣūr has narrated to me the following:
“It was his habit, in subjecting any of his slave girls to physical punishment, to beat them with more than five hundred strokes. Al-malik al-Ẓāhir as often as he heard their cries would send to interced for them, and al-Manṣūr, unable to oppose him, would release the girl who was being whipped; but he would still retain a feeling of secret animosity toward her because he had not fully vented his anger upon her. As was the custom of rulers and amirs in those days, he had a whole troupe of singing girls, numbering about fifteen (they were known later as Manṣūr’s singers and after his death were in my father’s home); and when al-malik al-Ẓāhir began to intercede on hearing the cries of the slave girls who were being punished, al-Manṣūr ordered that his singers should beat on their tambourines and that flutes should be played so that neither al-Ẓāhir nor anyone else could hear the cries. The women of al-Ẓāhir’s household, however learned of this pratice, and said to al-Ẓāhir: “When the sultan hears the singing grls beating their tambourines at a time when they are not singing, he may know that al-Manṣūr is flogging his girls and servants.” As a result, when al-Ẓāhir heard the singers playing the tambourines he would send immediatly to al-Manṣūr in order to intercede.