—the Egyptian provinces, and in 652 AH he had the cavalry commander Aqṭāy slain; after that he deposed al-Ashraf and wielded sole authority, then married Shajar al-Durr, Umm Khalīl. He was generous, courageous, forbearing (1), and devout. His death came on Tuesday, the twenty-third of Rabīʿ al-Awwal. He endowed the Muʿizziyya Madrasa in Cairo, whose majāz—its entrance passage—is one of the finest of structures (2), though the inside is nothing extraordinary. Someone remarked about it, “This is a majāz with no ḥaqīqah at all.”

When (3) he was killed (may Allah have mercy on him), his mamluks accused his wife, Umm Khalīl Shajar al-Durr, of the deed. He had been resolved (4) to marry the daughter of the ruler of Mosul, Badr al-Dīn Luʾluʾ (5); so she ordered her maidservants to hold him fast, beating him with her wooden clogs while the girls twisted his private parts (6) until he died in that condition. When (7) his mamluks heard of this, they came (8) with his senior mamluk, Sayf al-Dīn Quṭuz, killed her, and cast her on a refuse-heap with her nakedness exposed, after the strong seclusion and lofty station (9) she had once enjoyed. Her signature had adorned edicts and decrees, preachers had mentioned her name in the khutbah, and coins had been struck in her honor; yet she vanished, leaving neither trace nor memory.

“Say: O Allah, Owner of sovereignty! You give sovereignty to whom You will and You remove sovereignty from whom You will; You exalt whom You will and You abase whom You will. In Your Hand is all good; truly, You are powerful over everything.” [Āl ʿImrān: 26]

After the death of their master, ʿIzz al-Dīn Aybak the Turkmen, the Turkish mamluks, at the counsel of his chief mamluk, Emir Sayf al-Dīn Quṭuz (10), installed his son Nūr al-Dīn ʿAlī and granted him the title al-Malik al-Manṣūr. The Friday sermons invoked his name, coins were minted for him, and affairs were conducted according to his wishes and commands.

In the same year a fierce turmoil erupted in Baghdad between the Rāfiḍah and the Sunnis; al-Karkh and the houses of the Rāfiḍah were plundered, even those belonging to the relatives of the vizier Ibn al-ʿAlqamī. This became one of the strongest motives for his later collusion with the Tatars.

That year as well, the Ḥaydarī dervishes (11) entered the Syrian lands; their distinctive mark is to wear furajīs (12) and tall conical caps, and they trim—