Khalaf ibn ʿAllān (1) al-Qaysī, of Damascus.

He was born in 594 AH. A leading notable from an old, distinguished family, he served as supervisor of the state bureaus in Damascus and elsewhere. Later he relinquished every post, turning wholly to worship and the transcription of hadith. He wrote with great speed, producing three full notebooks in a single day. He read aloud the Musnad of Imam Ahmad (2) three times, and he transmitted Sahih Muslim, Jamiʿ al-Tirmidhi, and other works. Al-Barzalī, al-Mizzī, and Ibn Taymiyya received hadith from him. He was buried that same day at the foot of Mount Qāsiyūn, at the age of eighty-six—may Allah be pleased with them all.

Shaykh Ṣafī al-Dīn (3) Abū al-Qāsim Muḥammad ibn ʿUthmān ibn Muḥammad al-Tamīmī, the Ḥanafī.

He was the leading Ḥanafī scholar in Buṣrā and taught at the Amīniyyah there for many years. Gifted, virtuous, learned, and devout, he lived apart from people. He was the father of the chief judge Ṣadr al-Dīn ʿAlī (4). His life was exceptionally long: born in 583 AH, he passed away on the night of mid-Shaʿbān of this year, at the age of ninety-seven (5)—may Allah have mercy upon him.

[Then came the year 681 AH]

It began while the caliph was al-Hākim bi-Amr Allah and the sultan was al-Malik al-Manṣūr Qalāwūn (6). In that year the Tatar king Ahmad sent envoys to al-Malik al-Manṣūr seeking reconciliation and the sparing of blood between them. Among the embassy was Shaykh Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī (7), a pupil of Naṣīr (8) al-Ṭūsī. Al-Manṣūr consented and dispatched letters (9) to the Tatar king (10) to that effect.

[Qadi Shams al-Dīn Ibn Khallikān attended the lesson at the Amīniyyah on the seventeenth of Ṣafar, together with Qadi ʿIzz al-Dīn ibn al-Ṣāʾigh and a number of others] (11).