Among the eminent figures who died in this year were:

• Shaykh ʿImād al-Dīn ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Ḥasan ibn al-Naḥḥās (1). He abandoned worldly company (2) and devoted himself to asceticism, Qur’an recitation, worship, continual fasting, and seclusion in his mosque (3) at the foot of Mount Qāsiyūn for roughly thirty years. He was counted among the finest of people. When he passed away, he was buried beside his mosque in a cemetery well known for him, and a bathhouse on the outskirts (4) of Ṣāliḥiyya is likewise attributed to him. The Sibṭ (5) praised him, and the chroniclers recorded his death as I have stated (6).

The Sibṭ himself died in the closing days of this same year: Shaykh Shams al-Dīn Sibṭ Ibn al-Jawzī (7)—Yūsuf, son of the amir Ḥusām al-Dīn Quzʾuġlī ibn ʿAbd Allāh, the former slave of the vizier ʿAwn al-Dīn Yaḥyā ibn Hubayra al-Ḥanbalī—may Allah have mercy on him. He was Shaykh Shams al-Dīn Abū al-Muẓaffar, a Hanafi scholar, originally from Baghdad and later resident in Damascus, universally known as Sibṭ Ibn al-Jawzī. His mother was Rābiʿa, daughter of Shaykh Jamāl al-Dīn Abū al-Faraj Ibn al-Jawzī, the famed preacher.

He was handsome, melodious of voice, an eloquent preacher, and a man of many virtues and writings. Among his works is “Mirʾāt al-Zamān,” in twenty volumes, one of the finest of historical chronicles. In it he incorporated (8) his grandfather’s “al-Muntaẓam,” added to it, and carried the narrative down to his own time; the result is among the clearest and best of histories. He came to Damascus sometime after 600 AH, gained favor with the Ayyūbid kings, who promoted and honored him. Every Saturday morning he held a preaching session at the column where preachers now stand by the gate of the shrine of ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn, and people would spend the night preceding Saturday in the Great Mosque, leaving their orchards in