Abu Shamah said:
So the Friday sermon was delivered in his name in the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus and in all the other mosques (1) on Friday, the sixteenth of Muharram of that same year.

This caliph is the thirty-ninth in the Abbasid line. Since the days of al-Saffah and al-Mansur, no one from the Abbasids had assumed the caliphate whose father and grandfather had not themselves been caliphs—apart from this man. As for caliphs whose fathers had not been caliphs, they are numerous: al-Mustaʿin Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn al-Muʿtasim; al-Muʿtadid ibn Talhah ibn al-Mutawakkil; al-Qadir ibn Ishaq ibn al-Muqtadir; and al-Muqtadi ibn al-Dhakhīrah ibn al-Qaʾim bi-Amr Allah.

Mention of al-Zāhir’s capture of al-Karak and the execution of its ruler

In this same year al-Zāhir rode out of Egypt (2) at the head of the victorious armies, heading toward the district of al-Karak. He summoned its ruler, al-Malik al-Mughīth ʿUmar ibn al-ʿĀdil Abū Bakr ibn al-Kāmil (3). When, after great effort, the man appeared, the sultan sent him under arrest to Egypt, and that was the last that was ever heard of him (4). The reason was that he had been corresponding with Hūlāgū (5), urging him to march once more on Syria; letters from the Tatars had reached him as well, instructing him to hold firm, promising him the deputyship over the region, and assuring him that twenty thousand troops would come to join him (6) in order to conquer Egyptian territory. The sultan produced the jurists’ fatwas sanctioning his execution and presented them to Ibn Khallikān (7)—whom he had summoned from Damascus—and to a group of amirs. He then advanced, seized al-Karak on Friday, 13 Jumada al-Awwal, entered it that same day in full royal splendor (8), and afterward returned to Egypt, aided and victorious.

In this year as well, envoys from Berke Khan (9) came to al-Zāhir, saying, “You know my love for Islam (10), and you know what Hūlāgū has done to the Muslims. So march from your side while I come at him from mine, that together we may crush him or drive him from the land; I will grant you all the territories that were in his possession (11).” Al-Zāhir approved this proposal, thanked him, bestowed robes of honor upon the envoys, and treated them with great generosity.