On Tuesday, the tenth of Rabiʿ al-Akhir, Shaykh ʿAli al-Hawrani (1), the gatekeeper of the Zahiriyya, was hanged at its door, for he had confessed to murdering Shaykh Zayn al-Din al-Samarqandi.

Midway through the month Judge Badr al-Din Ibn Jamaʿah assumed the lectureship of the Nasiriyya al-Jawwaniyya in place of Kamal al-Din Ibn al-Shurayshi (2). An official record had established that the post belonged to the Shafiʿi judge of Damascus, so he wrested it from Ibn al-Shurayshi.

On Tuesday, the twenty-ninth of Jumada al-Awwal, al-Sadr ʿAlaʾ al-Din ibn Sharaf al-Din ibn al-Qalanisi (3) returned to his family from Tatar territory after two years and some days in captivity (4). He had been imprisoned for a time, but Allah showed him kindness and delivered him; when he reached home his family rejoiced.

On the sixth of Jumada al-Akhirah a courier arrived from Cairo with news that the Commander of the Faithful, the Abbasid caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, had died; that his son, Abu al-Rabiʿ Sulayman, had succeeded him with the laqab al-Mustakfi bi-Allah; that the entire populace had attended the funeral on foot; and that he had been buried near Lady Nafisa after a reign of forty years.

The same dispatch carried an investiture decree appointing Shams al-Din [ibn] (5) al-Hariri, a Hanafi, to the judgeship, and granting oversight of the state bureaus to Sharaf al-Din ibn Muzhir (6).

The Khatuniyyah al-Jawwaniyyah (7) remained in the hands of Judge Jalal al-Din ibn Husam al-Din with the authorization of the Sultanate’s deputy.

On Friday, the ninth of Jumada al-Akhirah, the khutbah in the Great Mosque of Damascus was delivered in the name of the caliph al-Mustakfi bi-Allah, and prayers for mercy were said for his father. The Nasiriyya was restored to Ibn al-Shurayshi, while Ibn Jamaʿah was removed from it (8). Ibn al-Shurayshi lectured there on Wednesday, the fourteenth of Jumada al-Akhirah.

In Shawwal a massive swarm of locusts descended upon Syria, devouring crops and fruit and stripping the trees until they resembled bare sticks; nothing like it had ever been witnessed.

During the same month a council was convened for the Khaybarite Jews. They were compelled to pay the jizyah like their fellow Jews, but they produced a document which they claimed had been issued by the Messenger of Allah ﷺ exempting them from the tax. When the jurists examined it, they determined that it was a fabrication.