And an army under his nephew, Taqī al-Dīn ʿUmar, set out and captured the borderlands of the Maghrib, where the Friday sermon was delivered in the name of the Abbasids.

Next the Franks rose up over Jerusalem; they advanced, by land and sea, like the onset of a pitch-black night, and ringed Acre in order to win it back. Their siege dragged on, and they dug a trench around their own lines. The Sultan then encircled them, and the investment—against them and against him—lasted a little over twenty months. In the meantime there raged battles and clashes that would turn the hair of young men grey. They did not break off until they had seized the city, and further campaigns and engagements followed between them and the Sultan.

When both sides had bitten hard and each host was exhausted, the two religious communities concluded a truce.

His determination to uphold jihad and eradicate the enemy was such that no one in any age has been credited with its like.

Ibn Wāṣil relates, in connection with the siege of ʿAzāz (1): “Jawalī had a tent in which the Sultan would sit and exhort the men. Some Bāṭinis (Assassins) came disguised as soldiers. One of them leapt at him and struck with a dagger; had it not been for the ring-mail coif (2) beneath his turban, he would have killed him. The Sultan seized the assassin’s hand with both of his own, and the man kept stabbing weakly at the Sultan’s neck while the mail deflected the blows. Emir Bāzkūj rushed forward, grabbed the dagger, and was cut by it; the Batini did not release it until they had hacked him to pieces. A second assailant sprang forward; Ibn Mankalān grappled with him, but the Batini wounded him in the side and he died, although the assassin was also slain. A third attacker jumped in; Emir ʿAlī ibn Abī al-Fawāris seized him and pinned him beneath his arm (3), whereupon the lord of Ḥimṣ (4) stabbed him dead.”