onto the rump of his mule, yet he neither turned nor so much as altered his expression. He would enter a disputation without moving a single limb.

He founded a large madrasa in Damascus, was dispatched more than once as an envoy, and lectured in various venues.

His head was struck off in cold blood by Hülegü in Ṣafar 656 AH, together with some seventy leading notables of Baghdad, among them his sons (1): the market-inspector Jamāl al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, Sharaf al-Dīn ʿAbd Allāh, and Tāj al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Karīm—may Allah have mercy on them.

His son:

267 – al-Ṣāḥib Sharaf al-Dīn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Yūsuf ibn al-Jawzī al-Hanbalī, the lecturer.

He was one of the eminent, devoted to abundant Qurʾan recitation, and thoroughly versed in jurisprudence and its principles. When his peerless brother, the distinguished scholar Jamāl al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, assumed the professorship of the Mustanṣiriyyah in 642 AH, Sharaf al-Dīn was appointed market-supervisor (ḥisbah) of Baghdad, the ceremonial parasol being carried before him. In 653 AH he taught at the Bashīriyyah.

Al-Mustʿaṣim later sent him to Khurāsān to Hülegü; he returned and reported the Mongol ruler’s firm resolve to march on Iraq with a vast army, yet no preparations were made. When al-Mustʿaṣim himself went out to meet Hülegü, the latter asked that someone be sent to Khūrestān to hand it over. Sharaf al-Dīn therefore departed with the caliph’s signet-ring, accompanied by a party of Mongols, and informed the people there of the true situation. On his return he found that Hülegü had already left Baghdad, having reduced it to rubble. He met him at Asadābād, where Hülegü was told of Sharaf al-Dīn’s warning to the people of Khūrestān, and so had him executed at Asadābād.