He (1) dispatched great quantities of timber, lead, and other equipment for the restoration of the Mosque of the Messenger of Allah—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—and sent a pulpit that was set up there.

In the same year a tremendous fire swept through the lands of Egypt. The Christians were accused of starting it, and al-Malik al-Ẓāhir meted out to them a severe punishment.

That year as well, news (2) arrived that the Tatar sovereign Hülegü had died—may Allah’s curse and wrath be upon him—on the seventh of Rabiʿ al-Ākhir after an epileptic seizure in the city of Marāgha. He was buried in the fortress of Talā and a dome was erected over his grave. The Tatars then rallied around his son Abaqa, but Berke Khan marched against him, defeated him, and scattered his forces. Al-Malik al-Ẓāhir rejoiced greatly at the report and resolved to muster the armies to take possession of Iraq, yet he was unable to proceed because the troops were dispersed throughout their fiefs.

Again that year, on the twelfth of Shawwal, al-Malik al-Ẓāhir invested his son al-Malik al-Saʿīd Muḥammad Berke Khan (3) with the sultanate, took the oath of allegiance for him from the emirs, mounted him, and had the emirs walk before him in procession. Al-Malik al-Ẓāhir himself (4) carried the state mantle (al-ghāshiya), while Emir Badr al-Dīn Baysarā al-Shamsī bore the royal parasol (5). Riding alongside were Qadi Tāj al-Dīn [Ibn Bint al-Aʿaz] and the vizier Bahāʾ al-Dīn Ibn Ḥannā; the leading emirs were mounted, the others on foot, and thus they paraded through Cairo. It was a day long remembered.

In Dhu al-Qaʿdah al-Malik al-Ẓāhir celebrated the circumcision of his aforementioned son al-Malik al-Sayyid, together with that of several sons of the emirs; this, too, was a memorable occasion (6).

Deaths in that year (7): [al-Zayn] Khālid ibn Yūsuf ibn Saʿd al-Nābulusī (8), Shaykh Zayn al-Dīn, son of the great ḥadīth master and director of the Dār al-Ḥadīth al-Nūriyya in Damascus. He was learned in the science of ḥadīth and a memorizer of the names of narrators; in that field Shaykh Muḥyī al-Dīn al-Nawawī (9) had studied under him.