In Rabīʿ al-Awwal the amir Sayf (1) al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Muẓaffar al-Dīn ʿUthmān ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn Mankūrīs (2), lord of Ṣahyūn, passed away. He was buried in his father’s mausoleum during the seventies of the century, having ruled Ṣahyūn and Barzayah for eleven years. His son Sābiq al-Dīn then assumed authority, wrote to al-Malik al-Ẓāhir asking leave to present himself, and permission was granted. When he arrived, the sultan granted him the district of Khīzā and dispatched deputies of his own to the two towns.

On the fifth of Jumādā al-Ākhirah the sultan reached the Euphrates with his army, having heard that a detachment of Tatars was there. He personally forded the river with his troops and inflicted a great slaughter upon them, killing large numbers (3). The first to plunge into the river that day (4) were the amir Sayf al-Dīn Qalāwūn (5) and Badr al-Dīn Baysarī (6), and the sultan followed them. He then dealt with the Tatars as he had done before (7) and advanced toward the district of al-Bīrah (8), which was besieged by another Tatar force. When they heard of his approach they fled, abandoning their wealth and baggage. The sultan entered al-Bīrah in magnificent pomp and distributed abundant funds among its people. He returned to Damascus on the third of Jumādā al-Ākhirah with the captives, left it on the seventh for Egypt, and was met by his son al-Malik al-Saʿīd; together they entered Cairo, a day long remembered.

Among what Qāḍī Shihāb al-Dīn Maḥmūd al-Kātib (9)—whose children are known as Banū al-Shihāb Maḥmūd—composed on the sultan’s crossing of the Euphrates with the army (10) are these verses, taken from al-Kāmil:

Go where you will—the Protector is your neighbor;
Rule on, for Fate itself bends to your desire. (11)

For the faith you championed has left no vengeance
for its foes, O buttress of its cause.

When the severed heads began to dance, the taut strings
of your bows set them swaying to their tune. (12)