and the greater part of the houses of Damascus. The people fled to the open squares; sixteen merlons fell from the Great Mosque, the Qubbat al-Nasr (Dome of the Eagle) cracked … until he went on to say—on his own responsibility: “Those whose deaths were tallied in that year numbered one million one-hundred thousand souls.” He then added, “I copied this from the Chronicle of Abū al-Muẓaffar Sibt Ibn al-Jawzī.”

Khurasan, meanwhile, was in turmoil and warfare over the throne, and the army of Sultan Ghiyāth al-Dīn al-Ghūrī engaged the unbelievers of India, whereupon the infidels were routed.

Ibn al-Buzūrī informed me in his Chronicle: “The Jazīra, Syria, and Egypt were shaken by an earthquake; countless places in Damascus, Ḥimṣ, and Ḥamā collapsed, ruin overwhelmed Tyre, Acre, Nablus, and Tripoli, one village sank into the earth, and several fortresses were destroyed.”

Al-Muʿizz ibn (1) Ismāʿīl ibn Sayf al-Islām, the ruler of Yemen, fought an ʿAlid (2) who had risen against him; he defeated the ʿAlid, slew six thousand of his troops, subjugated (3) the populace, claimed Umayyad ancestry, and styled himself Commander of the Believers.

The professor of the Niẓāmiyya arrived; he had been dispatched by al-Nāṣir as an envoy to al-Ghūrī.

Ṭāshtekīn was appointed to undertake the pilgrimage and to wage war against al-Muʿizz in Yemen. He wrote to the emirs, warning them and urging them to obey the caliph; they then attacked al-Muʿizz and killed him.

Year 598 AH: Mortality in Egypt diminished simply because so few remained alive. Many a large village was left without a single inhabitant; indeed, some reported that a town which once possessed four hundred weaving-looms was left without a soul.