He was learned in numerous disciplines—both the fundamental sciences and their ancillary branches, and more besides. He died on Saturday afternoon, the seventh of Shaʿbān, at the ʿAdiliyya Madrasa, at the age of fifty-five. He possessed fine manners and was delightful company, and he would often say, “I am unable to place offices in the hands of those who truly deserve them.” Among his works is a treatise entitled ʿArūḍ (Prosody). Concerning it Abū Shāma (1) composed these verses (metre: khafīf):

Ahmed, son of al-Khalīl—may God still guide him,
as once He guided al-Khalīl, son of Ahmed;
That man distilled the science of prosody, while this one
unveils its secret—and his return is all the more praised.

After him the office of judge passed to Rafīʿ al-Dīn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn ʿAbd al-Wāḥid ibn Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī al-Jīlī, together with the professorship at the ʿAdiliyya. He had been the qāḍī of Baalbek. The vizier Amīn al-Dīn (2)—formerly a Samaritan who embraced Islam and served al-Ṣāliḥ Ismāʿīl—brought him to Damascus, and he and the judge conspired to consume people’s wealth unjustly. Abū Shāma (3) says: “He displayed reprehensible conduct, tyranny, dissoluteness, injustice, and the confiscation of property.”

I add: Others relate that he would sometimes appear at the Kāmilī shrine at al-Shubbāk on a Friday while drunk (4), and that wine bottles would be seen floating on the pool of the ʿAdiliyya on Saturdays. In matters of inheritance he followed extremely corrupt practices. Allah dealt with him in direct opposition to his aim and destroyed him at the hands of the very person who had been the cause of his success, as will soon be explained, if Allah Most High wills.

[The year 638 AH begins]

Events of the year: Al-Ṣāliḥ Ismāʿīl, ruler of Damascus, surrendered the fortress of Shaqīf Arnūn (5) to the Frankish lord of Sidon. This provoked severe denunciation from Shaykh ʿIzz al-Dīn (6) ibn ʿAbd al-Salām, the city’s preacher, and from Shaykh Abū ʿAmr ibn al-Ḥājib (7), head of the Mālikī school. Al-Ṣāliḥ imprisoned them for a time, then released them while confining them to their homes, and he appointed others to the pulpit and to the teaching