ABSTRACT
The Fatimid Wazir al-Yazuri held office from June 1050 to February 1058, at a time of crisis for the Islamic world, when the Seljuk Turks arrived in Baghdad, Ifriqiya was overrun by the Banu Hilal and the Almoravids began their conquest of the far west. In the account of Ibn Muyassar, however, a very different version takes over, one in which al-Yazuri is rendered personally, and culpably, responsible for the whole affair: for the initial quarrel with the Zirids, and for what is a disastrous outcome, the overrunning and destruction of Ifriqiya by the Banu Hilal. In the eulogy of al-Yazuri under the year 450, however, as in Ibn al-Sayrafi’s biography of the Wazir and again in the chronicle of Ibn Muyassar, the two campaigns are not distinguished: Ibn al-Sayrafi refers to the first, al-Maqrizi perhaps only to the second, while Ibn Muyassar makes no mention of either.
