He imposed the sharia in which he was expert: hands hacked off for stealing, whippings for drunkenness, adulterous women stoned. He also expanded it, justifying everything smoothly withholy writ. Unbelievers were expelled or killed if they did not pay their taxes. Yazidis were driven from their homes and their women abducted to be sold and raped with organised efficiency. Enemies were crucified, burned alive, drowned in cages, beheaded with slow saws, while everything was filmed and posted online for the world to observe and dread. He sometimes shared the videos first with the kufr women he kept chained in a nearby room for his own pleasure.

Now, like bin Laden, he had a Kalashnikov as a prop. His caliphate had crumbled away, but he fortified his followers by invoking the Battle of the Trench in 627, when Muhammad with 3,000 men had prevailed against a force of 10,000, and had pulled his Ahzab rivals over to his side. He appealed to the soldiers of the caliphate to fight like that, to the last drop of blood. Muhammad had dug a trench to frustrate his enemies. Caliph Ibrahim had dug a tunnel, but it was dead-ended, and he had to deploy his suicide vest to make himself disappear.

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