repugnant language (1); yet he paid them no heed. Out of their intense fear of him they wrote to Sayf al-Dīn Ghāzī, lord of Mosul, proposing to invest him with the kingship over them so that, through him (2), they might fend off al-Malik al-Nāṣir, the ruler of Egypt. He refused, apprehensive that the move was a trap, for (3) the eunuch Saʿd al-Dawlah Kumushtakīn (4)—whom (5) King Nūr al-Dīn had stationed with him as a watchdog to keep him (6) from engaging in anything unseemly—min al-fawāḥish wa-l-khamr wa-l-laʿb wa-l-lahw (immorality, wine, gaming, and frivolity) (7)—had slipped away from him. When that servant heard of his master’s death he feared arrest and fled in secret. Once (8) Ghāzī was certain of his uncle’s passing, he dispatched men in pursuit of the servant; but the man escaped, and Ghāzī seized his belongings.

Saʿd al-Dawlah entered Aleppo (9), then proceeded to Damascus, where he agreed with the emirs that he would take (10) his master’s son, al-Malik al-Ṣāliḥ Ismāʿīl, to Aleppo and rear him there (11), while Damascus would be entrusted to the atabeg Shams al-Dīn ibn al-Muqaddam and the Citadel to the eunuch Jamāl al-Dīn Rayḥān.

When al-Malik al-Ṣāliḥ left Damascus, the emirs and grandees (12) accompanied him to Aleppo (13) on the twenty-third of Dhū al-Ḥijjah of that same year. Upon their arrival the boy was seated upon the throne of its kingdom (14). They then placed the sons of al-Dāyah under guard: Shams al-Dīn ʿAlī ibn al-Dāyah—brother of Majd al-Dīn, who had been Nūr al-Dīn the Martyr’s milk-brother—and his three brothers. Shams al-Dīn ʿAlī had supposed that Nūr al-Dīn’s son would be entrusted to him for upbringing, deeming himself the one most entitled to that task; but they dashed his hopes and threw him and his brothers into the dungeon.

King Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn then wrote to the emirs, rebuking them for removing the boy from Damascus to Aleppo and for imprisoning the sons (15) of al-Dāyah, and he