On 23 July 1160, Caliph al-Fa'iz died of illness. Ibn Ruzzik at first considered raising an adult member of the Fatimid clan to the caliphate, but in the end settled on the nine-year-old al-Adid, whose father was one of the brothers of al-Zafir executed by Abbas on the very day al-Fa'iz had been raised to the throne. With a minor once again on the throne, Ibn Ruzzik's position was secure, and was strengthened further when he forced the young caliph to marry his daughter. However, these moves, coupled with Ibn Ruzzik's patronage of Twelver Shi'ism, alarmed the royal family. Sitt al-Qusur paid black soldiers, who attacked Ibn Ruzzik on 10 September 1161 in the hallway of his palace. Mortally wounded, Ibn Ruzzik nevertheless survived long enough to secure from the Caliph the recognition of his son, Ruzzik ibn Tala'i, as his successor, as well as the death of Sitt al-Qusur and the three men who had attacked him. On his deathbed, he reportedly confided to his son his three regrets: the construction of the Husayn Mosque outside the walls, which could be used to attack Cairo; that he did not have the opportunity to use Bilbays as a base against the Crusaders, despite the expenses lavished on it; and having put Shawar ibn Mujir al-Sa'di in the powerful position of governor of Upper Egypt, from where he now posed a threat to his own power. His premonition proved true: in 1162, Shawar chased Ibn Tala'i from Cairo, and became the "de facto" ruler of Egypt. In 1174, one of his descendants took part in an abortive large-scale conspiracy to overthrow Saladin and restore the Fatimids, who had been deposed three years previously, to power. Muslim chroniclers were divided in their assessment of Ibn Ruzzik: the Egyptian historian Ibn Zafir focused on his violent behaviour and greed, but the 13th-century polymath Ibn Sa'id al-Maghribi considered him among the most successful Fatimid viziers, along the likes of Ibn Killis or al-Afdal Shahanshah. This assessment is largely shared by modern historians; Thierry Bianquis describes him as "the last great man of the Fāṭimid state, who wanted to reconstruct a strong Egypt, which could carry out its own foreign policies".