I add: He died in Rabīʿ al-Awwal of this very year and was buried in his own house (1) at the head of Darb al-Rayḥān, near the congregational mosque. A window that opens east of the Ṣadriyya Madrasa still looks onto his burial plot today. Ibn ʿUnayn—the satirist (2)—composed the following lines about him:

The Egyptian was hardly slack in what he did—
when he set the tomb inside his home;
he delivered the living from pelting him with stones
and kept the dead far from the heat of his flame.

Al-Muʿtamid, governor of Damascus (7), the champion Ibrāhīm known as “al-Muʿtamid,” was among the finest, most restrained, and best-conducted of governors, distinguished both in deed and in inner character. He was originally from Mosul and came to Syria, where he entered the service of Farukshāh ibn Shāhanshāh ibn Ayyūb. Later al-Badr Mawdūd, Farukshāh’s brother and at that time the shihna (military governor) of Damascus, appointed him his deputy; his administration in that capacity was warmly praised. Thereafter he himself served as shihna of Damascus for forty years, during which many curious and extraordinary events occurred. He frequently covered the faults of people of standing, especially the sons of notable families (8) and households of repute.

Among the incidents of his tenure was the following. A weaver had a small son who wore earrings (9). One of their neighbors assaulted the child, murdered him in secret, stripped off his jewelry, and buried him in a cemetery. When the family lodged a complaint against the man (10) he refused to confess. The boy’s mother wept bitterly (11) and begged her husband to divorce her; he complied. She then approached the very man who had killed her son, asked him to marry her, and pretended to love him. He married her, and she remained with him for a time.

On one occasion she questioned him about her son, whose murder people attributed to him. He admitted, “Yes, I killed him.” She replied, “I long for you to show me his grave so that I may look upon him.” He took her to the grave of Khashkhāsha (13) and opened it. When she saw her child she broke down in tears; she had brought with her a knife kept for that very day. She struck the man until she killed him, then buried him in the same grave with her son. The cemetery attendants arrived and carried her away