In that same year: Shaykh ‘Izz al-Din (Ahmad) al-Farūthī al-Wāsiṭī assumed the Friday pulpit of Damascus after the death of Zayn al-Din Ibn al-Murahhal. He preached and led the istisqāʾ (prayer for rain) for the people, yet no rain fell. A few days later he preached again at the Mosque of al-Qadam, but still the heavens did not open (1). The people then lifted their hands in supplication—without any formal sermon or rain rite—and they were given rain. A few days later al-Farūthī was dismissed and replaced by the preacher Muwaffaq al-Din Abū al-Maʿālī Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Munʿim ibn Ḥasan al-Mahrānī al-Ḥamawī, formerly the khatib (2) of Ḥamāh, who had been transferred (3) to Damascus that very year. He mounted (4) the pulpit and preached. Al-Farūthī was aggrieved, went in to the sultan, and supposed the vizier had dismissed him without royal knowledge; he found, however, that the sultan already knew and excused himself by saying the dismissal was due to al-Farūthī’s weakness. Al-Farūthī replied that on the night of mid-Shaʿbān he had performed one hundred rakʿahs, each with one hundred recitations of “Say: He, Allah, is One,” yet they refused to reinstate him and kept al-Ḥamawī. (Such conduct (5) shows baseness, poor judgment, and insincerity on al-Farūthī’s part; the sultan was right to remove him.)

On that same day the sultan arrested the amir Sunqur al-Ashqar (6) and others. Sunqur and the amir Ḥusām al-Din Lājīn—the armour-bearer—escaped. A town-crier proclaimed in Damascus: “Whoever brings him in shall receive one thousand dinars; whoever hides him will be hanged.” The sultan and his mamluks rode out after him, but [they found no trace of him, and the festival day arrived while the sultan and his mamluks were still searching] (7). The preacher led the ʿId prayer on the Green Parade Ground, yet gloom hung over the people because of divided counsels, the army’s turmoil, and the general confusion. On the sixth of Shawwāl the Bedouin seized Sunqur al-Ashqar and returned him to the sultan, who sent him in chains to Egypt (8).

That very day the sultan appointed ‘Izz al-Din Aybak al-Ḥamawī deputy governor of Damascus in place of al-Shujaʿī. Al-Shujaʿī returned from Rūm on the second day after his dismissal (9). Al-Farūthī went out to meet him and said (10), “We have been removed from the pulpit.” He replied, “And we from the deputy-governorship.” Al-Farūthī then recited: “Perhaps your Lord will destroy your enemy and make you successors in the land, and then He will see how you act” (Qur’an 7:129). When Ibn al-Silaʿūs heard this he grew angry with him. He had intended to assign him the Qaymariyya, but abandoned the plan and departed.