Then the year 504 began.

• At the outset of this year (1) a group of Baghdadis (2)—jurists and others, among them (3) Ibn al-Zāghūnī (4)—made ready to set out for Greater Syria for jihad, intending to fight (5) the Franks. News had reached them that the Franks had captured several cities, among them Sidon in Rabīʿ al-Awwal, and other towns as well. When they later learned of the Franks’ overwhelming numbers, (6) many of the party turned back.

• In the same year the Khātūn, daughter of Malik Shāh and wife of the Caliph, arrived in Baghdad with great pageantry (7). She took up residence in the house of her brother, Sultan Muḥammad. Her trousseau was conveyed on one hundred and sixty-two camels and twenty-seven mules, and Baghdad was decked out for her arrival. Her ceremonial audience with the Caliph took place on the night of the tenth of Ramaḍān—a night long remembered.

• In Shaʿbān, Abū Bakr al-Shāshī (8) began teaching at the Niẓāmiyya along with the Tājiyya, and his session was attended by ministers, high officials of the state, and others.

• The pilgrims that year were led by the amir Qīmāz, but the people of Khurāsān were unable to complete the ḥajj because of severe thirst and the scarcity of water.

Among the notable figures who died this year was Idrīs ibn Ḥamzah (9), Abū al-Ḥasan al-Shāfiʿī al-Ramli al-ʿUthmānī: one of the foremost debaters on behalf of the Shāfiʿī school. He first studied under Naṣr ibn Ibrāhīm (10), then under Shaykh Abū Isḥāq al-Shīrāzī (11). He traveled through Khurāsān until he crossed the Oxus, settled in Samarqand, and taught in its madrasa until he passed away there this year. May Allah, Exalted be He, have mercy on him.