—Zayn al-Umanaʾ (1) Ibn ʿAsākir of Damascus, a Shāfiʿī scholar. He studied under his two uncles, the ḥadīth masters Abū al-Qāsim and al-Ṣāʾin, and under a number of others. He lived to a great age and became unrivalled in transmission, outliving eighty by about three years. In his final days he could no longer walk, so he was carried in a litter to the Great Mosque and to the Nūriyya Dār al-Ḥadīth to dictate ḥadīth. People (2) benefited from him for a long period. When he passed away, large crowds attended his funeral, and he was laid to rest beside his brother, Shaykh Fakhr al-Dīn Ibn ʿAsākir (3), in the Ṣūfī cemetery. May Allah Most High have mercy on him.

Shaykh Bayram (4) al-Mārdīnī. He was a pious, reclusive man who preferred solitude. He resided in the western zāwiya of the Great Mosque—known as the Ghazāliyya—which is also called the Dūlaʿiyya Zāwiya, the Zāwiya of al-Qutb al-Nīsābūrī, and the Zāwiya of Shaykh Naṣr (5) al-Maqdisī, as noted by Shaykh Shihāb al-Dīn Abū Shāma (6). The day of his funeral was well attended (7), and he was buried at the foot of Mount Qāṣiyūn. May Allah, by His bounty and generosity, have mercy on him and pardon him.

[Then came the year 628]

The year opened with King (8) al-Ashraf Mūsā ibn al-ʿĀdil residing in al-Jazīra (9), occupied in repairing the damage Jalāl al-Dīn the Khwarazmian had inflicted on his lands.

In this same year the Tatars advanced into al-Jazīra (10) and Diyār Bakr, spreading corruption far and wide: they killed, plundered, and seized captives in their customary fashion—may Allah abase them.