The city was adorned, and the vizier convened a session of congratulations. Then, on Sunday the twenty-sixth (1) of that same month, the caliph was blessed with another son, Abū Muḥammad Hārūn.

Ibn al-Jawzī said (2): In that same year Tāj al-Dawla Arslān assumed authority over Syria and besieged Aleppo, while the amir who held the iqṭāʿ of Kūfa, Khitlag, led the people on the pilgrimage.

Ibn al-Jawzī likewise reported that Ibn Jahīr had constructed an enormous pulpit for the khutbah in Mecca. When it arrived, however, the khutbah had already been restored to the Egyptians, so the pulpit was smashed and burned.

Among the notable figures who died this year were:

• Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Yaʿqūb ibn Aḥmad, Abū Bakr al-Yarbūʿī, the oil-vendor and Qurʾān-reciter (3). He was the last to narrate from Abū al-Ḥusayn ibn Samʿūn. Reliable, devout, and of excellent conduct, al-Khaṭīb wrote from him and said, “He was truthful.” He passed away this year at the age of eighty-nine; may Allah Most High have mercy on him.

• Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd Allah (4), Abū al-Ḥusayn ibn al-Naqqūr, the cloth-merchant. One of the long-lived musnids, he alone preserved many transcripts taken by Ibn Ḥabāba from al-Baghawī and his shaykhs, such as the recensions of Hudba, Kāmil ibn Ṭalḥa, ʿUmar ibn Zurāra, and Abū Muḥammad al-Bakrī (5). Prolific and scrupulous, he would charge a dīnār for reciting the hadith of Ṭālūt [ibn ʿAbbād] (6). Shaykh Abū Isḥāq al-Shīrāzī issued him a fatwa permitting him to accept payment for teaching hadith, since it occupied him from earning his livelihood. He died at the age of eighty-nine; may Allah Most High have mercy on him.

• Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Malik [ibn ʿAlī] ibn Aḥmad ibn Ṣāliḥ, the muʾadhdhin of Nīshāpūr and ḥāfiẓ (7).