succession; although Abu'l-Hasan Muhammad eventually managed to escape, his hopes of seizing the throne were never realized, and the caliphal succession henceforth firmly remained with the line of al-Muqtadir. Facing the Shi'a and Byzantine challenges Outside the Buyid domains, on the other hand, the Abbasid caliph's authority over the wider Muslim world declined. Until the conclusion of a peace with the Buyids in 955, the Samanids of Khurasan refused to acknowledge his caliphate, and, in the west, the rival Isma'ili Shi'a Fatimid Caliphate was growing more and more powerful, conquering Egypt in 969 and beginning its expansion into the Levant. Even in Baghdad, the pro-Shi'a sympathies of the Buyids meant that Shi'a influence, although numerically small, was growing. Shi'a practices were introduced in the city, such as the ritual condemnation of the Umayyad caliph Mu'awiya, or the celebration of the Ghadir Khumm festival, attested since 963. Alids assumed the leadership of the annual Hajj caravans, and street clashes between Sunni and Shi'a partisans are recorded in several years during this period. At the same time, al-Muti' played a leading role as a mediator in the formation of an anti-Fatimid coalition that included the Qarmatians under al-Hasan al-A'sam and the Hamdanid ruler of Mosul, Abu Taghlib, with the backing of the Buyids. This coalition managed to stop the Fatimid expansion into the Levant until 973/74. In the process, the Qarmatians recognized al-Muti's suzerainty in the (Friday sermon) and their coins, and denounced the Fatimids as impostors. In 951, when the Qarmatians returned the Black Stone to the Kaaba in Mecca, whence they had taken it in 930, al-Muti' is rumoured to have paid them 30,000 gold dinars as the Stone's ransom. Another source of danger was the Byzantine advance against the Hamdanids in Upper Mesopotamia and northern Syria. In the 960s the Byzantines broke the centuries-old border at the Taurus Mountains and seized Cilicia and Antioch, reducing the Hamdanid emirate of Aleppo to a tributary vassal in the process. In 972, the Byzantine raids reached Nisibis, Amida, and Edessa. Muslim refugees from these cities flooded to Baghdad and clamoured for protection. Unwilling and unable to help, Izz al-Dawla pointed them to al-Muti', since the jihad was still formally the caliph's responsibility. Bereft of any military or financial resources, al-Muti' was powerless to help them, and his prestige suffered accordingly; the riots engulfed the Shi'a quarter of Karkh, which went up in