and demolished many of the surrounding residential quarters⦗1⦘. He also broke the bridge at Bāb Tūmā, whereupon the river burst its course and the water backed up until it formed a lake⦗2⦘ stretching from Bāb Tūmā to Bāb al-Salāmah. Everything that lay between the two gates was submerged, and many people were reduced to poverty. Truly, to Allah we belong and to Him we return.
[Among the notable figures who died there]
al-Malik al-Mughīth⦗3⦘ ʿUmar ibn al-Ṣāliḥ Ayyūb. Al-Ṣāliḥ Ismāʿīl had captured him and imprisoned him in a tower of the Damascus Citadel when he seized the city during al-Ṣāliḥ Ayyūb’s absence. His father exhausted every possible means to secure his release but could not prevail, opposed in this by Amīn al-Dawlah Ghazāl al-Maslamānī⦗4⦘, founder of the Amīniyyah madrasa in Baʿlabakk⦗5⦘. Thus the young man remained confined in the citadel from the year 638 AH until the night of Friday, the twelfth of Rabīʿ al-Ākhir of this year, when he was found dead in his cell from grief and sorrow; some say he was murdered—Allah knows best. He was one of the finest royal offspring, the most handsome in appearance and the most perfect in intellect. He was buried beside his grandfather al-Kāmil, in the latter’s mausoleum north of the congregational mosque, and the wrath of his father al-Ṣāliḥ Ayyūb against the ruler of Damascus⦗6⦘ grew all the more intense.
Shaykh al-Shuyūkh of Damascus, Taj al-Dīn Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allah ibn⦗7⦘ ʿUmar ibn Muḥammad ibn Ḥamawayh.
He was a distinguished scholar, historian, and author. He compiled an eight-volume work laying out the fundamental principles of various subjects, as well as al-Siyāsah al-Mulūkīyah (Royal Governance), composed for al-Kāmil Muḥammad, in addition to other writings. He studied hadith and memorized the Quran. It is said he had reached the age of eighty, though some denied that he had yet attained it. In 593 AH he travelled to the Maghrib and entered the court at Marrakesh of its king al-Manṣūr Yaʿqūb ibn Yūsuf ibn ʿAbd al-Muʾmin, remaining there until 600 AH. He later returned to Egypt⦗8⦘, where he was appointed Shaykh al-Shuyūkh following his brother Ṣadr al-Dīn ibn Ḥamawayh⦗9⦘—may Allah Most High have mercy upon him.