In Rajab he pronounced the inviolable permissible (1) … and in Muḥarram he laid Jerusalem waste.
In the same year the Franks [-may Allah curse them-] seized the city of Damietta. They entered it under a pledge of safety, only to betray its people: they slaughtered the men, carried off the women and children as captives, violated the women, and dispatched the mosque’s pulpit, the loose-leaf quarter-volumes of the Quran, and the severed heads of the slain to the islands. They then turned the congregational mosque into a church [Had your Lord willed, they would not have done so].
In that year as well al-Muʿaẓẓam (2) grew furious with the judge Zaki al-Din ibn [Muḥyī al-Din ibn] [the qāḍī of the city]. The reason was that his aunt, Sitt al-Shām bint Ayyūb [she had] fallen ill in the house that she later endowed as a madrasa. She summoned the judge so that she might entrust her testament to him; he went to her with witnesses and wrote the will exactly as she dictated. Al-Muʿaẓẓam (3) protested: “He goes to my aunt without (4) my permission, and he and the witnesses hear what she says!” It also happened that the judge had demanded an accounting from the collector of the ʿAzīziyya endowment and, in his presence, had the man beaten with rods. Al-Muʿaẓẓam had loathed this judge since the days of his father [al-ʿĀdil]. Consequently, al-Muʿaẓẓam sent the judge a bundle containing a qabāʾ (long robe) and a kulūta (skull-cap): the robe was white and the cap yellow. Some say both were red and threadbare (5). The messenger swore on the sultan’s behalf that he must put them on and sit in judgment while wearing them. By Allah’s grace (6) the order reached him while he was standing ready to hold court in the portico of his house at the Post Gate; he had no choice but to don them (7) and conduct the session so attired. He then withdrew to his home and succumbed to the illness (that led to his death). His demise came [in Ṣafar of the following year] (8).
Sharaf ibn ʿUnayn (9) al-Zarʿī, the poet, had adopted an air of piety and devotion; some even say he secluded himself in the mosque (10). Al-Muʿaẓẓam therefore sent him wine and a backgammon board to occupy himself with. Ibn ʿUnayn (11) replied with the following lines:
[from the kāmil metre]