In that same year: the victorious Sultan Salah al-Din al-Nāṣir (1) abolished the mukūs—the market tolls and other levies—collected from the pilgrims in Mecca. Pilgrims coming from the Maghrib (2) in particular had been required to pay large sums, and those unable to meet the demand were imprisoned, sometimes so long that they missed the standing at ʿArafah. The Sultan therefore compensated the city’s emir with an endowment (3) assigned to him in Egypt, and decreed that eight thousand ardabbs of grain be delivered to Mecca each year to assist him and his retinue and to ease the cost for the resident devotees who purchased provisions there. He also stipulated (4) regular grain allowances for those residents, to be conveyed to them as ongoing stipends—may Allah have mercy on him—throughout the year.

In the same year: the amir Shams al-Din Ibn Muqaddam (5) at Baalbek rebelled and refused to present himself to the Sultan, who was then encamped outside Homs. The reason was that he had learned that the Sultan’s brother, Turan Shah (7), had asked the Sultan (8) for possession of Baalbek and that the request had been granted. Ibn Muqaddam (9) therefore refused to vacate the city until the Sultan came in person and besieged him (10) without engaging in battle. Heavy rain and hail then fell, so the Sultan returned to Damascus in the month of Rajab, leaving deputies to maintain the siege without fighting (11). He later indemnified Ibn Muqaddam with a sum far better than what he had previously held; the latter departed, and Turan Shah took possession of the city.

Ibn al-Athir (12) reports that during this year provisions became exceedingly dear because rainfall was scant, and scarcity spread across Iraq, Syria, and Egypt. The hardship lasted until the year seventy-five, when rain finally came and prices fell. Thereafter (13) a severe epidemic ensued: a single illness (14)—pleurisy (15)—swept the lands and did not abate until the year seventy-six. In that plague (16) countless people perished, multitudes whose number is known only to Him who created them (17).