Although wazir under a Fatimid Khalif, Ibn as-Sallar was strictly orthodox and gave the whole of his patronage to orthodox teachers of the Shafiʿite school. This position in Alexandria gained him many adherents, and their attachment was still more secured by his foundation of a Shafiʿite college there. He continued the same attitude after his assumption of office at Cairo, so that he was regarded by the people of Egypt as an orthodox champion against the heretical Khalifate. By nature he was cruel and vindictive. An anecdote is related of him that when he was in the army in the days before he held office he had to apply to Ibn Masum, the Secretary of War, for help to defray extraordinary expenses incurred by him in the administration of the province of Gharbiya, as the result of which he found himself heavily in debt. The Secretary only replied: “By God, thy discourse entereth not my ear,” and Ibn as-Sallar left his presence full of indignation. Long afterwards, when he had risen to a high position, he made search for Ibn Masum, who hid himself fearing retaliation from the one whom he had treated contemptuously as a petitioner. At last the Secretary was found and brought before the wazir who had him lain on a board and a nail driven through his ear, Ibn as-Sallar asking him at each cry he uttered, “Doth my discourse yet enter thy ear or not?” (Ibn Khall. ii. 351). In the plots against the wazir, az-Zafir’s chief confidant was a young man of his own age, Nasir ad-Din Nasir, the son of the general ʿAbbas who, next to the wazir, was the most powerful man in Egypt. About this time ʿAbbas was setting out with an army against the Franks taking with him his son Nasir. For a moment we must pause to consider the position of this son, the favourite of the young Khalif. Many years before, in 503 Bullara, the wife of Abu l-Futuh had come to Egypt with a child ʿAbbas. Some time afterwards the wazir as-Sallar married her, and in due course his step-son ʿAbbas grew up and became a general in the Egyptian army, and had a son, Nasir, who was brought up by his grand-mother in the house of Ibn as-Sallar. Now this youth went with the army which Ibn as-Sallar was sending against the Franks in the company of his father and the Syrian Osama. At Bilbays, on the point of quitting the land of Egypt, ʿAbbas can only talk about the delightful climate of Egypt, its many beauties, and regret that he is being exiled to the comparatively unattractive land of Syria. But Osama interrupted his discourse and asked him why, if he liked Egypt so much, did he not get rid of the wazir Ibn as-Sallar and take the wazirship himself, then he would be settled in Egypt permanently. ʿAbbas gave serious attention to these proposals and brought in his son Nasir, and the project was discussed by the three, the father ʿAbbas presumably being well aware of his son’s plotting with the Khalif against the wazir who had sheltered that son in his home and was the husband of his grand-mother.