a violent agitation (1), and he slipped into (2) a state of ill humor. He became wholly absorbed in himself and his pains (3); all his senses and normal dispositions turned against him. For an entire week he kept away from people, while they remained oblivious to him, taken up with their games and the decorations they had set in place (4). Here was one laying down his very soul, and there another taking his ease amid the bounty he had bestowed (5). Thus those joys (6) were reversed into sorrows, and gravity swept away the jesting. The king developed quinsies in his throat that prevented him from speaking—such is the way of throat ailments. He had been advised to undergo blood-letting, [but he would not accept it, nor hasten to any treatment] (7). Yet the decree of Allah is ever destined, and it was long since inscribed in the Book.

When Wednesday, the eleventh of Shawwal of that very year arrived, he was taken to the mercy of Allah at the age of fifty-eight, of which (8) he had spent twenty-eight years on the throne (may Allah have mercy on him). The funeral prayer was performed for him in the Citadel Mosque of Damascus (9), and he was buried there (10) until (11) he was moved to a mausoleum built for him by the gate of the madrasa (12) that he had founded for the Ḥanafis on the thoroughfare—may Allah cover his grave with mercy and make Paradise his abode.

Poets composed many elegies for him; Abu Shama has collected them in al-Rawdatayn (13). How fine are the verses of al-ʿImad (14):

I marvel that death, when it came (15),
should strike a king of angelic traits.
How could the ever-turning sphere be laid to rest in earth,
when earth itself lies within a sphere?