The year began with him in excellent health and wellbeing, and he and his brother al-ʿĀdil Abū Bakr rode out to hunt east of Damascus.

He and al-ʿĀdil had agreed that once he had finished (1) dealing with the Franks during this period, he would march to the lands of Rūm, while sending his brother al-ʿĀdil to Khlāṭ. When both had completed their tasks, they would advance together to Azerbaijan and the Persian territories, for there was no power between them and those lands able to oppose or repel them.

When the pilgrims returned from the Noble Ḥijāz on Monday, the eleventh of Ṣafar, the sultan went out to receive them; with them was also his brother Sayf al-Islām, the ruler of Yemen (2). He honoured him and embraced him, then returned to the Victorious Citadel, entering it through the Iron Gate (3); that was the last time he ever mounted in this world.

Soon thereafter (4) he was struck by a bilious fever on the night of Saturday, the sixteenth of Ṣafar. At dawn al-Qāḍī al-Fāḍil, Ibn Shaddād, and his son al-Afḍal visited him. He complained to them of how restless he had been the previous night, enjoyed their conversation, and kept them for a long sitting. The illness, however, intensified and persisted. On the fourth day the physicians bled him (5); dryness set in (6) and he perspired so profusely that it soaked the floor. The dryness then grew even worse (7), so he summoned the senior emirs and leading notables. Allegiance was pledged to his son al-Afḍal Nūr al-Dīn ʿAlī (8), who was serving as deputy ruler over Damascus, at a time when clear signs of extreme weakness and bouts of unconsciousness had begun to appear.

From that point only al-Qāḍī al-Fāḍil, Ibn Shaddād, and the city’s qadi, Ibn al-Zakkī, were admitted to him. His condition worsened further (9) on the night of Wednesday, the twenty-seventh of Ṣafar. He summoned Shaykh Abū (10) Jaʿfar, the imam of al-Kalāsa, to spend the night by his side, reciting the Qur’an and prompting him with the testimony of faith should the moment come. The shaykh related that while he was reciting to him in the throes of death (11) he reached the verse: “He is Allah—there is no deity except Him, the Knower of the unseen and the seen” (al-Hashr 59:22), whereupon he said, “Indeed, it is so—true.”