In this year:
An imam was appointed for the Abū Bakr shrine inside the Great Mosque of Damascus, and the five daily prayers began to be performed there.

In the same year:
Shaykh Taqī al-Dīn Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ (1) al-Shahrazūrī, the Shāfiʿī jurist, took up the professorial chair in the al-Shāmiyya al-Jawāniyya madrasa, next (2) to the bimaristan, during Jumādā al-Ūlā.

Likewise this year:
Al-Nāṣiḥ [Ibn al-Ḥanbalī at the Ṣāḥiba madrasa] (3) began teaching at the foot of Mount Qāsiyūn, in the institute founded by al-Khātūn Rabīʿa (4) bint Ayyūb, the sister of Sitt al-Shām.

In this year:
King al-Ashraf imprisoned Shaykh ʿAlī al-Ḥarīrī (5) in the fortress of ʿIzzata.

In this year:
Severe dearth and high prices struck Egypt, the Syrian territories, Aleppo, and al-Jazīra because of the meagerness of both heavenly and subterranean waters. Thus the year corresponded to Allah’s saying: “We will surely test you with something of fear and hunger and a loss of wealth, lives, and fruits; but give good tidings to the patient (155) who, when calamity strikes them, say, ‘Indeed we belong to Allah, and indeed to Him we shall return.’” (al-Baqara 2:155–156). (6)

Ibn al-Athīr (7) records at length that yet another band of Tatars set out from Transoxiana this year. Their advance was prompted by letters the Ismāʿīlīs had sent them, reporting the weakness of Jalāl al-Dīn Khwārazm-Shāh, that he had antagonized all the surrounding kings—including the caliph—and that al-Ashraf ibn al-ʿĀdil had already defeated him twice.

Jalāl al-Dīn, moreover, had begun to exhibit conduct betraying a want of judgment. A eunuch page of his named Qilij, whom he loved dearly, died, and he mourned him so intensely that he ordered the emirs to walk in the funeral procession (8); they marched for several farsakhs [to his grave]. He then commanded the townspeople to come out in mourning and to enumerate the boy’s merits. When some neglected to do so, he threatened to kill them until certain emirs interceded. Still he refused to allow Qilij to be buried; the corpse was carried about with him in a litter, and whenever food was set before him he would say, “Take this to Qilij.”

Someone ventured to tell him, “O King, Qilij is dead” (9). He thereupon ordered the man executed, and he was put to death (10). From then on, whenever they addressed Jalāl al-Dīn they would say, “Kiss him,” whereupon he would kiss the ground and remark, “He is now in a better state than before”—meaning that he regarded the boy as merely ill, not dead.