Likewise, that year the eminent jurist and scholar Muḥammad ibn Maḥmūd ibn ʿAbd al-Munʿim (1) al-Marātibī, a Ḥanbalī, passed away. He was a man of broad learning in many disciplines. Abū Shāmah praised him, saying (2): “I kept his company long ago, and after his death Damascus has not seen his like among the Ḥanbalīs.” The funeral prayer was held for him in the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus, and he was buried at the foot of Mount Qāsiyūn—may Allah have mercy on him.

Among those who died was al-Ḍiyāʾ (3) ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ghumārī (4) al-Mālikī, who (5) assumed all the posts of Shaykh Abū ʿAmr Ibn al-Ḥājib when the latter left Damascus in 638 AH; he sat in his study circle and taught in his stead in the Mālikī zāwiya. The jurist Tāj al-Dīn Ismāʿīl ibn Jahbal (6) also died in Aleppo. He (7) was virtuous, devout, and pure-hearted—may Allah have mercy on him.

Then the year 645 AH began.

In it: the sultan, al-Malik al-Ṣāliḥ Najm al-Dīn Ayyūb ibn al-Kāmil, returned from Syria to Egypt. On his way he visited Jerusalem, distributing large sums of money among its people, and he ordered its wall to be rebuilt as it had been in the days of his grand-uncle al-Malik al-Nāṣir, the conqueror of the city. He deployed the armies to besiege the Franks: Tiberias was taken on the tenth of Ṣafar, and ʿAsqalān fell late in Jumādā al-Ākhirah.

In Rajab, the preacher ʿImād al-Dīn Dāwūd ibn Khaṭīb Bayt al-Ābār was removed from the pulpit of the Umayyad Mosque (8) and from the chair of instruction at the Ghazālīyyah. Both posts were assigned to the judge ʿImād al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Karīm ibn al-Ḥarastānī (9), who had succeeded Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ as shaykh of Dār al-Ḥadīth.