The lord of Āmid (1), al-Malik al-Ṣāliḥ Nāṣir al-Dīn Maḥmūd ibn Muḥammad ibn Qara Arslān ibn Artuq (2), was courageous and fond of scholars. He enjoyed the companionship of al-Ashraf Mūsā ibn al-ʿAdil, repeatedly visiting his court. After him his son al-Masʿūd (3) assumed rule, but he proved to be a miser and a libertine. Al-Kāmil therefore wrested Āmid from him (4), carried him off to Egypt and imprisoned him; later he set him free, confiscated his property, and the man proceeded to the Tatars, who in turn stripped him of it as well (5).

Shaykh ʿAbd Allah al-Yūnīnī (6), known as Asad al-Shām, the “Lion of Syria” — may Allah have mercy on him and be pleased with him — [ʿAbd Allah ibn ʿUthmān ibn Jaʿfar] (7) hailed from a village near Baʿlabakk called Yūnīn (8).

He maintained a small zawiya [Baʿlabakk] that people visited. He was counted among the eminent righteous, renowned for worship, spiritual discipline, and for commanding right and forbidding wrong. So lofty was his resolve in renunciation and scrupulousness that he owned nothing: no money and no clothing of his own. He wore only garments lent to him, content with a single tunic in summer and a sheepskin cloak over it in winter; on his head he placed a cap of goatskin through which his hair was visible.

He never missed a military expedition, shooting from a bow that weighed eighty ratls. At times he would reside by Mount Lebanon, and in winter he would go to the warm springs of al-Fāsriyya (9) on the mountainside overlooking the village of Dūma east of Damascus, where people came to visit him (10). On other occasions he would come to Damascus itself, lodging at the foot of Mount Qāsiyūn with the Maqdisīs (11). He was granted elevated spiritual states and true unveilings, and he was widely known as the Lion of Syria.