Thus Syria was brought to a condition of comparative order. Meanwhile Barjawan had sent forces to reduce Barqa and the African Tripoli, and thus the whole Fatimid Empire was brought to subjection. The Katami Fahl b. Ismaʿil was appointed governor of Tyre, the eunuch Yanas was put in charge of Barqa, and the eunuch Maysur was given the African Tripoli, whilst the frontier posts of Gaza and Asqalon were entrusted to the eunuch Yaman. But more important than any of these arrangements was Barjawan’s great achievement in sending an embassy to the Greek Emperor and concluding with him a truce for five years. Although Barjawan remained for nearly three years regent of Egypt, Syria, North Africa, and the Hijaz, his position was far from secure. His danger came from an unexpected quarter; not from the Katama faction and Ibn ʿAmmar, but from the young Khalif who was beginning to resent Barjawan’s conduct as regent. According to one account the feeling was personal and largely due to Barjawan’s manner towards his ward, whom he seems to have treated with contempt and active dislike, applying to him the nick-name of “lizard.” For a long time al-Hakim nourished his resentment in secret and then, four days before the end of Rabiʿ II., in the year 390, he sent to him the message, “The little lizard has become a great dragon and wants you.” Much alarmed, Barjawan presented himself before the Khalif, and was slain by Abu l-Fadl Raydan, the bearer of the royal parasol, who stabbed him in the belly with a knife (cf. Ibn Khallikan, i. 53). Whatever measure of truth there is in this account it probably hits off some salient features in the way that a caricature sometimes gives a truer portrait than a photograph. Undoubtedly al-Hakim was quick to feel resentment, many proofs of this appear in his later life; and undoubtedly there was already something uncanny in his actions and manners, the symptoms in all probability of incipient insanity; and no doubt interested persons were busy in fanning the smouldering embers of resentment. Other accounts, reported by Nowairi and Bar Hebraeus, the former always a most weighty authority for this period, represent al-Hakim as chafing at Barjawan’s control, at his confinement to the precincts of the palace and at the prohibition against his riding abroad, the declared reason being the fear of assassination at the hands of the Katama partisans, which may have been not without good ground. According to these two historians the whole plot was due to the parasol bearer Raydan, who had become the Khalif’s confidant, Barjawan being occupied with matters of state and wasting no time with the youth who was the titular sovereign and who, it may be supposed, was a moody and unpleasing personage, and thus the parasol bearer was able to persuade his master that Barjawan was trying to emulate Kafur, and intended to make the Khalif a merely ornamental figure kept in the palace, and brought out from time to time to grace some state function.