Among the notable figures who also died in this same year (1) were:
Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī, surnamed al-Malik al-Afḍal (2) Nūr al-Dīn, son of Sultan Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Yūsuf (3) ibn Ayyūb.
He had been his father’s designated heir. He ruled Damascus for two years after his father’s death, whereupon his uncle al-ʿĀdil seized it from him. He then came close to taking control of Egypt after the death of his brother al-ʿAzīz, but his uncle al-ʿĀdil Abū Bakr forestalled him. Reduced to the lordship of Ṣarkhad, he lost that as well to the same uncle. In the end he became ruler of Sumaysat (4), and there he died in this year. He was a cultured man, a poet, and an accomplished calligrapher. His body was carried to Aleppo and buried outside its walls.
Ibn Khallikān (5) relates that he once wrote to the Caliph al-Nāṣir li-Dīn Allāh, complaining of his uncle Abū Bakr and his brother ʿUthmān—the caliph, like him, being a Shīʿī (6):
[from al-Basīṭ]
My lord, Abū Bakr and with him ʿUthmān have, by the sword,
snatched ʿAlī’s rightful claim away;
He whom his father set above the two of them—
matters stood firm the moment he held sway.
They broke with him, untying the knot of their pledge,
though the text on the issue is clear as day.
So look at the fortune bound to this very name:
what befell the last of them is what met the first. (7)
al-Amīr Sayf al-Dīn ʿAlī (8), son of al-Amīr ʿAlam al-Dīn Sulaymān (9) ibn Jandar (10).
(1) Edition: reads “And among those who died there were the notables.”
(2) Bibliographic: Entry on al-Malik al-Afḍal in Ibn al-ʿĀṭ̣ir’s al-Kāmil (vol. 3, pp. 356–357), Mirʾāt al-Zamān (vol. 8, p. 420), al-Takmilah of al-Mundhirī (vol. 3, p. 140), Dhayl al-Rawdatayn (p. 145), Wafayāt al-Aʿyān (vol. 3, pp. 419–421), Mukhtaṣar Abī al-Fidāʾ (vol. 3, p. 142), Siyar Aʿlām al-Nubalāʾ (vol. 21, p. 294), al-ʿIbar (vol. 5, p. 91), al-Nujūm al-Zāhirah (vol. 6, p. 262), and Shudhūrāt al-Dhahab (vol. 7, pp. 178–179).
(3) Edition: reads “Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn ibn Yūsuf,” which is a manifest error—Bashshār.
(4) As Ibn Khallikān notes: “Samsāṭ,” with a ḍamma on the first sīn, hamza on the mīm, sukūn on the doubled yāʾ, fatḥa on the second sīn, and a final ṭāʼ; it is a fortress in the interior of Syria on the Euphrates in the land of the Rūm, between the fortress of ar-Rūm and Malatya (Wafayāt al-Aʿyān 3:421; Muʿjam al-Buldān 3:258).
(5) Wafayāt al-Aʿyān (vol. 3, p. 420) records a slightly different version.
(6) al-Nāṣir li-Dīn Allāh composed verses refuting these in Wafayāt al-Aʿyān (vol. 3, p. 421).
(7) The first and last couplets appear in Mirʾāt al-Zamān (vol. 8, p. 420), where it is added that he later disowned this poem.
(8) Biography of Sayf al-Dīn ʿAlī in Mirʾāt al-Zamān (vol. 8, pp. 419–420) and Dhayl al-Rawdatayn (pp. 145–146).
(9) Edition: reads “ibn Sulaymān,” which is a clear error—Bashshār.
(10) Manuscripts A, B, and Mirʾāt al-Zamān give “Ḥaydar,” a corruption not supported by the biographical sources, including al-Dhahabī’s Tārīkh al-Islām (vol. 13, p. 713).