and they conferred upon him the honorific title al-Manṣūr. The ruthless king Hūlāgū Khān (1) then sent word to al-Malik al-Nāṣir, the lord (2) of Damascus (3), summoning him to his presence. Al-Nāṣir, however, dispatched his young son al-ʿAzīz together with many costly gifts and presents. Hūlāgū Khān took no notice of the boy; instead, he became angry (4) with the father for refusing to appear, seized the child, and declared, “I shall march to his lands myself.” Al-Nāṣir was alarmed, sent his womenfolk and family to al-Karak for protection, and the people of Damascus were overcome by intense fear—especially when (5) news reached them that the Tatars had crossed the Euphrates. Many of them travelled to Egypt in mid-winter; numerous people died on the road and their belongings were plundered (6). To Allah we belong and to Him we return.

Hūlāgū Khān advanced on Syria (7) with his troops and armies. Mayyāfāriqīn (8) had resisted him for a year and a half, so he dispatched his son Ashmuṭ, who captured the city by force, deposed its ruler (9) al-Kāmil ibn al-Shihāb Ghāzī ibn al-ʿĀdil, and sent him to Hūlāgū, who was then besieging Aleppo; there, in his very presence, Hūlāgū put him to death. He appointed one of al-Ashraf’s mamluks to govern the city and had al-Kāmil’s head paraded throughout the provinces. They entered Damascus carrying the severed head, set it up on the outer Bāb al-Farādīs gate, and later buried it in the Masjid al-Raʾs inside the inner Bāb al-Farādīs (10). Over this event Abū Shāma (11) composed a poem praising al-Kāmil’s virtues and his striving, likening him to al-Ḥusayn, who was slain in oppression, and noting that his head was buried beside al-Ḥusayn’s (12).

In the same year, Khwāja Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (13) established an observatory in the city of Marāgha (14) and moved to it a great quantity of