with siege engines shipped from Ifriqiya over sea and carried over the mountains. The besieged tried repeatedly to break the siege with sallies, but were pushed back. In early June, the neighbouring fortresses of Shakir and Aqqar, also held by rebels, surrendered, and on 14 August 947, the final attack on Kiyana was launched. After bitter fighting, around noon the defence was broken, and the besieged withdrew to a keep. Al-Mansur offered a pardon if they would hand over Abu Yazid, but they refused. At dawn on the next day, the besieged tried to break through to safety, but were defeated. Abu Ammar was killed, but Abu Yazid managed to escape, only to fall in a ravine and be captured. Heavily wounded, he was interrogated by the caliph, before dying of his injuries after four days, on 19 August. Abu Yazid's skin was salted and stuffed, to be paraded in public in every town the victorious caliph passed on his way back, sat on a camel and dressed in a tall heretic's cap, with specially trained monkeys pulling at his beard and giving blows to his head. Abu Yazid's son Fadl resisted for a while in the Aurès and the area of Qafsa, but he was killed in battle in May/June 948. His severed head was dispatched to the caliph, who sent it together with the stuffed skin of his father to Sicily as a warning. The ship sank, but Abu Yazid's corpse was washed ashore at al-Mahdiya, where it was crucified and publicly displayed. Abu Yazid's other sons, Yazid and Ayyub, tried to continue the resistance in the Aurès, but they too were soon after killed. Legacy Abu Yazid's defeat was a watershed moment for the Fatimid dynasty. As the historian Michael Brett comments, "in life, Abu Yazid had brought the [Fatimid] dynasty to the brink of destruction; in death he was a godsend", as it allowed the dynasty to relaunch itself following the failures of al-Qa'im's reign. Immortalized in Fatimid historiography as the , the rebellion was conceived as an apocalyptic event foreseen by al-Mahdi, for which purpose he had constructed al-Mahdiyya, "as a refuge for the dynasty from the great enemy, and a citadel from which the whole world would then be conquered", and the victory over it as a resurrection of the dynasty. On the very day of Abu Yazid's death, al-Mansur declared himself as the