the Muslims (1) slew most of them. The Tatars then withdrew to Aleppo, where they besieged the city for four months, cut off its provisions, and put a great many strangers to death in cold blood. To Allah we belong and to Him we return. The armies that had broken them at Homs remained where they were (2); they did not return to Aleppo but continued on to Egypt. Al-Malik al-Zahir received them in the full pomp of sovereignty and treated them generously (3). Aleppo therefore stayed under blockade, without any helper, throughout that period—but Allah, glorified and exalted is He, kept it safe.
On Monday, 7 Safar, al-Zahir rode out in all the regalia of kingship (4), with the emirs and troops walking before him. This was his first formal procession, and thereafter he continued to ride out regularly and to play polo.
On the eleventh (5) of Safar the emirs in Damascus rose up against their lord, ʿAlam al-Din Sanjar. They fought him, defeated him, and he withdrew into the Citadel. They besieged him there (6), but he slipped away to the fortress of Baalbek. Emir ʿAlaʾ al-Din (7) Aydakin al-Bunduqdari then took possession of the Citadel of Damascus. Formerly a mamluk of Jamal al-Din Yaghmur and afterward of al-Ṣalih Ayyub ibn al-Kamil—whose name al-Malik al-Zahir bore—he had been sent by al-Zahir to take Damascus from the Aleppan ʿAlam al-Din Sanjar. He captured it and resided in its Citadel on al-Zahir’s behalf (8). They next besieged the Aleppan in Baalbek until they seized him, after which they dispatched him, mounted on a mule, to al-Zahir in Egypt (9). Brought before the sultan at night, he was reproached, but al-Zahir granted him certain favors and treated him honorably.
On Monday, 8 Rabiʿ al-Awwal, al-Zahir (10) appointed as his vizier Bahāʾ al-Din ʿAli ibn Muhammad, known as Ibn al-Hanna (11). In Rabiʿ al-Akhir al-Zahir arrested a number of emirs after hearing that they intended to attack him.
In the same year he sent forces to al-Shubak, and they received it from the deputies of al-Mughith, lord of Karak.
Also in that year (12) al-Zahir equipped an army for Aleppo in order to drive the Tatars out of it (13). When the army reached Gaza, he wrote