many; he renovated the fortress of Safad ⦗1⦘ and its congregational mosque, and he restored the Great Mosque of Ramla and many others in the towns that the Franks had seized and whose mosques they had ruined ⦗2⦘. In Aleppo he built a magnificent residence, and in Damascus he raised the Ablaq Palace, the Ẓāhiriyya Madrasa, and other structures; he also struck fine, wholly pure dirhams and dinars, coins of honest weight that circulated fairly among the people—may Allah have mercy on him ⦗3⦘.

His benefactions and architectural accomplishments exceeded anything erected in the eras of the caliphs and the Ayyūbid kings, despite his continual engagement in jihad ⦗4⦘ for the sake of Allah. He mustered immense armies ⦗5⦘, and about three thousand Mongols returned to his allegiance; he granted them fiefs and appointed many of them as commanders. He was moderate in his dress and food, and so were his troops.

He is the one who revived the Abbasid caliphate after it had vanished, for the people had been without a caliph for nearly three ⦗6⦘ years. He also appointed ⦗7⦘ for each legal school an independent chief judge (qāḍī al-quḍāt). May Allah have mercy on him: he was alert, high-minded, and courageous, never relaxing his vigilance against the enemy by night or day. Rather, he confronted the foes of Islam and its people, gathering their scattered forces ⦗8⦘ and uniting their ranks. In short, Allah raised him up in these later times as a help and victory for Islam and its followers ⦗9⦘, a thorn in the throats of the renegades among the Franks, the Tatars, and the idolaters.

He abolished wine and expelled the reprobates from the land ⦗10⦘; whenever he perceived anything corrupt or harmful, he strove with all his power to remove it. In our account of his life we have already mentioned what points to the soundness of his inner motives and his outward conduct.

His secretary Ibn ʿAbd al-Ẓāhir composed for him an extensive biography ⦗11⦘, as did Ibn Shaddād.