who came out to bid him farewell, imploring Allah to return him to them; it was a scene long remembered.

He reached Cairo on Saturday the eighteenth of the month, and met the Sultan on Friday the twenty-fourth. The Sultan honoured him and received him in a grand assembly (1) attended by the judges of Egypt and Syria and by the jurists, and he reconciled matters between him and them.

One of our companions (2) told me: Judge Jamal al-Din ibn al-Qalansi, the Judge of the Victorious Armies, related to me during a conversation we had one night, at a time when Shaykh Taqi al-Din—may Allah have mercy on him—was being held (3) in the Citadel of al-Mansura (4). Some ignorant people had spread—and certain enemies of the sunnah had circulated—fabricated reports (5) with no basis in fact. Yet those rumours slipped into the hearts of the Shaykh’s followers through the whispers that Satan casts into a person’s breast, and that only because of their deep concern and love for him.

I said to him, as we talked: “People are saying this and that—that the Shaykh might be taken out of the citadel, accusations would be levelled against him, he would be subjected to discretionary punishment, and paraded through the streets.”

He replied, “My dear sir, none of that will ever happen, and the Sultan—may Allah perpetuate his felicity—will not permit it…”