and tripped them up, while he had grown high-handed and suspicious of his own amirs, funneling his wealth to the fortress of Ṣarkhad (1).

Ibn al-Qalansi says: “He carried tyranny to excess, seized people’s assets and tortured them. When he learned that Zangi was making for Damascus, he dispatched to hasten him, proposing to hand the city over to him—a delirious notion he had conceived—and declared: ‘If you do not come, I shall surrender it to the Franks.’ He penned this with his own hand, whereupon the populace became alarmed (2). The very flower of the realm—his mother, driven by her religious zeal to excise the disease—had him destroyed, and many prayers were offered on her behalf.”

He was killed in Rabiʿ al-Awwal 529 AH, at the age of twenty-three. Authority then passed to his brother Mahmud, after which their mother married Zangi, lord of Aleppo (3).

330 – Ibn al-Akfani, Abu Muhammad Hibat Allah ibn Ahmad ibn Muhammad*

The shaykh, imam, polymath, hadith scholar, and man of trust, the mentor of Syria: Abu Muhammad Hibat Allah ibn Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Hibat Allah ibn ʿAli ibn Faris al-Ansari,