at Ashmūn. The Franks now advanced together with Louis, King of France (1). Damietta was crammed with stores, the war galleys were made fully seaworthy (2)(3), and Fakhr al-Dīn Ibn al-Shaykh marched with the army to the Damietta bridgehead. The Frankish fleet cast anchor opposite them in the month of Ṣafar, in 647 AH. They then disembarked, taking land side by side with the Muslims, and fighting broke out. The emir, son of the Shaykh al-Islām (4), was killed, as was the Emir al-Wazīrī. The army pulled back to the eastern bank on which Damietta stands, but then retreated altogether. A strange panic seized the townspeople: they fled throughout the night until not a single soul remained, all because of Ibn al-Shaykh’s poor leadership. Seeing the army’s flight and knowing the Sultan was ill, they too deserted, so the Franks entered the city without resistance, finding it packed with provisions, weapons, and mangonels. When the Sultan heard the news he grew enraged and distressed, hanged sixty of the city’s soldiers, and turned back, encamping at al-Manṣūrah in his father’s palace. A general call to arms was proclaimed; multitudes of volunteers converged and skirmished with the Franks, while hope for the Sultan’s recovery waned.

As for al-Karak, al-Nāṣir departed for Baghdad. His son al-Amjad proceeded to the Sultan’s court and surrendered al-Karak to him. The Sultan lavished honor on al-Nāṣir’s sons and granted them fiefs in Egypt.

Ibn Wāṣil says: King al-Ṣāliḥ Najm al-Dīn was proud-spirited and high-minded, chaste and modest, pure in speech and conduct. He tolerated neither frivolity nor jest, was dignified and given to long silences, and he purchased from among the Turks more slaves than any ruler before him, until they had become