The Tatars, accompanied by the armies of Mosul and Mardin together with Kurdish contingents, laid siege to al-Bīrah and set up 23 mangonels. During the night the townspeople of al-Bīrah ⦗1⦘ made a sudden sortie against the Tatar camp, burned the catapults, plundered a large amount of goods, and returned to their homes unharmed. The besieging force remained there until the 19th of the month, after which they withdrew in anger, having achieved nothing. “Allah spared the believers from fighting, for Allah is Strong, Mighty.”

When the sultan learned that the Tatars had descended upon al-Bīrah, he spent 600,000 dinars on the army and then set out in haste, taking with him his son al-Saʿīd. Halfway along the road he was informed that the Tatars had already retreated ⦗2⦘, so he returned to Damascus. In Rajab he rode on to Cairo, entering it on the 18th; there he found 25 envoys representing the kings of the earth awaiting him. They received him, conversed with him, kissed the ground before him, and he entered the Citadel with great pomp.

When al-Barwānāh returned to the lands of Rūm, the senior amirs—among them Sharaf al-Din Masʿūd and Ḍiyāʾ al-Din Maḥmūd, the two sons of al-Khaṭir ⦗3⦘, Amin al-Din Mīkāʾīl, Ḥusām al-Din Bījār ⦗4⦘, and his son Bahāʾ al-Din ⦗5⦘—swore that they would align themselves with Sultan al-Malik al-Ẓāhir and oppose Abaghā. They pledged this oath to him, and he wrote to al-Ẓāhir informing him of the matter, requesting that a force be dispatched to their aid, that he remit to the sultan what had previously been delivered to the Tatars, and that Ghiyāth al-Din Kanjarī ⦗6⦘ remain in his position, seated upon the throne of Rūm.

That year the people of Damascus performed the prayer for rain on three consecutive days, yet no rain fell.

In the same year, during Ramadan, a man and a woman were discovered in broad daylight committing the heinous act of zina (fornication). ʿAlāʾ al-Din, the head of the dīwān, ordered that they be stoned, and they were stoned to death. Never before, since Damascus was founded, had anyone been stoned there. This is most extraordinary.

Later in the year the Damascenes sought rain twice more—at the end of Rajab and the beginning of Shaʿbān, corresponding to late January—but again no rain came.

That year as well, the sultan dispatched an army to Dongola. They routed the Sudanese forces, killed great numbers of them, and captured so many that a slave ⦗7⦘ was sold for three dirhams a head. Their king, Dāwūdāh ⦗8⦘, fled to the ruler of Nubia, who sent him on.