They would dig a single trench and bury in it whole multitudes of people; prices had reached their utmost height, provisions were desperately scarce and costly, and death (1) was ceaselessly at work. In the month of Ṣafar alone about one hundred and thirty thousand souls perished there.
High prices likewise struck Syria, and a garāra of grain rose to two hundred.
A group of Tatars (2) from the ʿUwayrāniyya (3) tribe arrived in Syria when news reached them that Kitbugha, one of their own, had become sultan. The army welcomed them generously, after which they travelled on to Egypt with the amir Qarasunqur al-Manṣūrī (4).
Word came of the intensifying famine and mortality in Egypt: a single chicken was said to sell in Alexandria for thirty-six dirhams and in Cairo for nineteen, while eggs were three for one dirham. Donkeys, horses, mules, and even dogs were completely consumed—people had eaten them all, and nothing of those animals remained once they had been sighted.
On Saturday, the twelfth of Jumada al-Awwal, the eminent scholar Taqī al-Dīn ibn Daqīq al-ʿĪd (5) was appointed Chief Judge of Egypt in place of Taqī al-Dīn Ibn Bint al-Aʿazz. Thereafter, in Jumada al-Ākhirah, prices fell and the hardship and hunger in Egypt were lifted (6)—praise be to Allah.
On Wednesday, the second of Rajab, Judge Imām al-Dīn began teaching at the Qaymariyya in place of Ṣadr al-Dīn ibn Razīn, who had died.
Al-Barzalī said: In the same year a bolt of lightning struck the Dome of Zamzam, killing Shaykh ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Salām, the muʾadhin of the Sacred Mosque, who used to give the call to prayer from the roof of that very dome. He had transmitted a small number of hadiths.
And also in this year, the wife of al-Malik al-Ẓāhir, Umm Salāmish, arrived in Damascus from the land of al-Ashkarī toward the end of Ramadan. The city’s deputy sent her gifts and presents, and stipends and accommodations (7) were arranged for her; she and her family had previously been banished by Khalīl ibn al-Manṣūr when he first came to power (8).