Abu'l-Fath al-Fadl ibn Ja'far ibn al-Furat was the scion of a bureaucratic dynasty, the Banu'l-Furat, that had occupied senior posts in the fiscal bureaucracy of the Abbasid Caliphate at Baghdad since the reign of Caliph al-Mu'tadid (r. 892–902) and had gone on to become one of the two major factions within the Abbasid administrative elite in the first decades of the 10th century.
[2] Abu'l-Hasan Ali ibn al-Furat and his son al-Muhassin were executed in 924 as a result of the unrestrained persecution of their political rivals,[1][6] after which Fadl became the most senior member of his family.
[2] Eventually Fadl himself was appointed vizier in May 932, after the previous incumbent al-Husayn ibn al-Qasim, had been deposed due to his inability to manage the dismal finances.
Fadl himself had been instrumental in disclosing that Ibn al-Qasim had only managed to balance the budget with revenue that was no longer available, thus precipitating his downfall.
The refugees fleeing both often rioted in Baghdad, and even attacked the vizier in his own residence; Fadl only escaped death by leaping into his barge and rowing away.
[10] At the same time, Upper Mesopotamia was in the hands of Mu'nis al-Muzaffar, now hostile to the Caliph, while much of southern Iraq was being controlled or raided by the Qarmatians.
[2] In 937 (AH 325), the amir al-umara Ibn Ra'iq appointed him again to the vizierate, and married his daughter to Fadl's son Ja'far.