seeking forgiveness and humble supplication until the earthquake subsided; yet the fire that had appeared did not go out. The aforementioned courier arrived when it had already been burning for fifteen days—and it is still alight.

Ibn al-Sāʿī said: I read, in the handwriting of the justice Maḥmūd ibn Yūsuf al-Amaʿānī, Shaykh of the Sacred Precinct of al-Madinah ⦗1⦘—may the most excellent blessings and peace rest upon its Inhabitant—who wrote:

This fire that has broken out in the Ḥijāz is a mighty sign, an unerring ⦗2⦘ indication that the Hour is drawing near. Felicitous, therefore, is the one who seizes the opportunity before death ⦗3⦘ and hastens to set his affair aright with Allah—exalted is He—before his demise. This fire is in a stony land devoid of trees or vegetation ⦗4⦘; when it finds nothing to consume it devours itself. It burns the stones and melts them until they become like moist clay, then the wind strikes them so that they turn ⦗5⦘ into something resembling the slag of iron that comes out of a forge. May Allah make it a lesson for the Muslims and a mercy to all peoples, through Muḥammad and his pure family ⦗6⦘.

Abū Shāma ⦗7⦘ said: On the night of Friday, the first of Ramadan of this same year, the Mosque of Madinah—upon its Inhabitant be the most excellent blessings and peace—caught fire. The blaze began in the north-western corner: one of the custodians had entered a storage room there carrying a flame, which caught the doors ⦗8⦘, then swiftly reached the roof. It crept across the ceilings, moving toward the qiblah ⦗9⦘, and the people were unable to stop it. Within an hour the entire roof of the mosque had burned ⦗10⦘, some of its pillars collapsed, and its lead fittings melted ⦗11⦘—all of this before the townsfolk had gone to sleep. The roof of the Prophetic Chamber also burned, and parts of it fell into the chamber itself, where they remained until work was begun to rebuild its roof and that of the Prophet’s Mosque—upon its master be the best of prayers ⦗12⦘.