In Ramadan of that same year (1) the caliphal robes of investiture reached Sultan Ṣalāḥ al-Din while he was in Damascus, [and the ceremony was extraordinarily magnificent] (2). His titulature was enlarged to include the style Muʿizz Amīr al-Muʾminīn (“Strengthener of the Commander of the Faithful”), and a robe of honour was likewise conferred upon his brother Turan Shah (3), who received the title Muṣṭafā Amīr al-Muʾminīn.

That year the Sultan (4) dispatched his nephew Farrukhshah (5) b. Shāhinshāh b. Ayyūb ahead of him to confront the Franks, who had resolved to fight the Muslims and were ravaging the environs of Damascus [pillaging its villages and districts. He instructed him to keep them occupied until they had penetrated deep into the land and not to engage them until he himself arrived] (6). Yet when the two forces met the Franks pressed the attack, whereupon he routed them, killing among their princes the lord of Nazareth and al-Hanfrī, one of their greatest and bravest chieftains, a man whom battle scarcely ever daunted—yet Allah humbled him in this raid. Sultan Ṣalāḥ al-Din then rode after his nephew, but he had scarcely reached al-Kiswah when he was met by heads borne aloft on lances, together with booty, captives, and spears (7), the army gleaming with the brown and bright white of its mail and its burnished swords.

In this same year the Franks—may Allah curse them—built a fortress for the Templars at Bayt al-Aḥzān (8), turning it into an outpost for war against the Muslims and a block on their roads (9). Their kings broke the treaties that had existed between them and Ṣalāḥ al-Din, and they raided the surrounding lands from every side so as to preoccupy the Muslims and scatter (10) their armies in a single quarter. The Sultan therefore stationed his nephew Taqī al-Din ʿUmar (11) at the frontier of Ḥamāh, together with Shams al-Din Ibn Muqaddam (12).