Damascus—after the death of al-ʿĀdil. [The shaykh] ʿIlm al-Dīn [al-Sakhāwī] then composed for him a maqāmah in which he lavished praise upon him ⦗1⦘. They report that he was humble, loved the poor and the jurists, and would greet people whenever he passed them, even while riding in all the pomp of his vizieral procession. Yet in this very year misfortune overtook him. It was al-Kāmil who engineered his dismissal and exile; he wrote about him to his brother al-Muʿaẓẓam, who thereupon placed his possessions and stores under sequestration and removed his son from oversight of the bureaus ⦗2⦘—a post the son had held during his father’s absence.

In Rajab of this year ⦗3⦘ al-Muʿaẓẓam reinstated the tax-farming of revenues from singing slave-girls, wine, female musicians, and other acts of indecency and abomination that his father had abolished, to the point that no one had dared to bring even a handful of wine into Damascus except by covert stratagem ⦗4⦘. May Allah reward al-ʿĀdil with good, and may He not reward al-Muʿaẓẓam for what he has done. Al-Muʿaẓẓam excused his conduct by saying that he had only perpetrated this wrong because of the shortage of funds ⦗5⦘ for the troops and their need of expenditures in fighting the Franks. [This stems from his ignorance, flimsy religion, and lack of comprehension; such behavior merely empowers the enemy, grants them victory, embeds the disease within the ranks, and saps the soldiers’ resolve so that they flee in retreat. It is a course that devastates lands, ruins habitations, and topples dynasties, in keeping with the report: “When someone who knows Me disobeys Me, I set over him one who does not know Me.” This is obvious and hidden from no person of discernment.] ⦗6⦘

Among the renowned and notable figures who died this year were:

• The Sultan al-Malik al-ʿĀdil Abū Bakr ibn Ayyub, as noted above ⦗7⦘.

• The judge Sharaf al-Dīn ⦗8⦘ Abū Ṭālib ʿAbd Allah, son of Zayn al-Quḍāt ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Sulṭān ibn Yaḥyā ibn ʿAlī al-Qurashī al-Dimashqī, a cousin of Ibn al-Zakī. He was the first to lecture at the outer Shāmiyya as well as at the Rawāḥiyya, and he deputized on the bench for his cousin Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn—