so everybody rose with him. The Sultan then stepped forward, descended from that elevated seat, and we could not tell what had impelled him (1). Just then Shaykh Taqi al-Din Ibn Taymiyya—may Allah have mercy on him—entered through the doorway, and the Sultan headed straight toward him. He came down entirely from the portico while all the people, together with the judges, the emirs, and the rest of the court, remained standing (2). The two exchanged greetings and spoke privately for a moment (3), after which they proceeded to a small alcove that opened, through a lattice window, onto a garden. There they sat for a while. Presently they returned— the Shaykh’s hand clasped in the Sultan’s— and the assembly again rose to its feet. During the Sultan’s brief absence the vizier Fakhr al-Din Ibn al-Khalili (4) had arrived and seated himself to the Sultan’s left, above Ibn Ṣaṣrā.
When the Sultan came back he took his place on the throne, and Shaykh Taqi al-Din sat cross-legged before him at the very edge of that seat (5). The Sultan then began to extol the Shaykh before the emirs and the judges with praises the like of which I had never heard from
(1) MS B reads: “yudra.”
(2) MSS F and K read: “qasid fa-nazala … wa-l-nas wa-l-qudat” (“he came purposely and dismounted … the people and the judges”).
(3) Some sources have: “taʿānaqa wa-takarsha” (“they embraced and performed takarush”). The embrace is self-explanatory, whereas takarush (also mukārasha) denotes a greeting in which a traveler meets his host and each presses his belly against the other with nimble movements—a custom attested in the Mamluk period. See: Dahman, Muʿjam al-alfaz al-tarikhiyya fi al-ʿasr al-mamluki, p. 143; al-Khatib, Muʿjam al-mustalahat al-tarikhiyya, p. 405; Wahib Diab, Takmila Taj al-ʿArus, p. 284. Dahman also notes in this lexicon and in his commentary on Ibn Tulun’s Iʿlam al-wara (p. 40) that he once saw two Indian men greet each other in this manner, adding that the custom is no longer known in our region. See further: al-Safadi, al-Wafi bi-l-wafayat, 16:292; al-Ayni, ʿAqd al-Juman, 1:200.
(4) MSS F and K read: “al-Khalil,” referring to ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAziz b. al-Hasan al-Dari (d. 711 AH); see Aʿyan al-ʿAsr 3:635–638.
(5) MSS F and K read: “jalasa ʿala …”. The bracketed passage is missing from the base manuscript because the scribe’s eye skipped ahead.