ruin followed in its wake—so immense that Shaykh Abū Shāma, in his Dhayl (1), reports that the Sultan al-Malik al-ʿĀdil (2) paid from his own treasury to shroud roughly two hundred and twenty thousand corpses in the space of a single month that year. In Egypt that same year (3) people ate dogs and carrion, and a great many infants and children were consumed: a child (4) would be roasted by his own parents and eaten. This became so widespread that no one any longer found it objectionable. They then began to scheme against one another, devouring whomever they could overpower; if a strong person subdued a weak one he would slaughter him and eat him, and a man would host his companion only to kill and consume him once they were alone (5). In one place four hundred human heads were discovered.

Many physicians perished—summoned to attend the sick, they were slaughtered (6) and eaten; a man would call for a doctor, then kill and consume him. On one occasion a wealthy man summoned a skilled physician. The doctor, fearful, nevertheless went with him (7) in great anxiety. Along the way the man gave alms to everyone he met, continually remembering Allah and glorifying Him (8). This heightened the doctor’s suspicions, yet greed pushed him to go on. When they arrived at the house, it turned out (9) to be a ruin, which further alarmed the physician. A man emerged from within and said to his companion (10), “Even with all this delay you have brought us a catch!” On hearing this, the doctor fled; the two men chased him at full speed, and he escaped only after tremendous effort (11).

That same year a severe plague struck the territory of the ʿAnzah tribe between the Hijaz and Yemen. They had lived in twenty villages; eighteen of them were wiped out, leaving not a single soul or even a hearth-fire. Their livestock and wealth remained with no one to care for them, and no one could live in (12)—or even enter—those villages: anyone who so much as approached one of them (13) died on the spot.