He let the matter pass (1) for his sake. [Yet Sultan Taqi al-Din ʿUmar did not comply with that request, so the ruler of Rūm] (2) sent twenty thousand soldiers to besiege him. Sultan Taqi al-Din ʿUmar then rode out with eight hundred cavalry, among them Saif al-Din ʿAli ibn Ahmad al-Mashṭub (3). They engaged the enemy and, by Allah’s permission, routed them (4)(5).

King Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn (6) thus secured control of the fortress of Raʿbān, which was part of what he had granted Ibn al-Muqaddam (7) in compensation for Baʿlabakk. Taqi al-Din ʿUmar used to boast of this encounter, claiming that he had defeated twenty thousand—some said thirty thousand—with only eight hundred horsemen. His success lay in attacking them by night, catching them unawares; they could not stand before him but fled to the last man. He killed many of them and seized everything they had left in their tents. It is also said that he struck them (8) on the day the Sultan crushed the Franks at Marj ʿUyūn; Allah knows best.

The demolition of the fortress of Bayt (9) al-Aḥzān (10) near Ṣafad

The Sultan then set out with his armies for the fortress the Franks had built the previous year. They had dug a well in it, made it a supply point for themselves, and handed it over to the Templars. The Sultan marched against it, besieged it, breached it from every side, and cast fire into it until he levelled it to the ground, razing it to the foundations. He carried off the stores it contained (11): one hundred thousand pieces of weaponry and a large quantity of provisions. From it he captured seven hundred prisoners; some he executed, while the rest he sent on (12) to Damascus. He then returned to Damascus, aided and victorious, though ten of his amirs had died from the heat and disease that afflicted them during the fourteen-day (13) siege. Thereafter the people resumed visiting the shrine of Jacob according to the ancient custom (14).