[Then came the year 704 AH]
It opened while the caliph, the sultan, the judges, and the officials were exactly those mentioned in the previous year.
On Sunday, the third of Rabiʿ al-Awwal, the classes and endowed stipends (1) established by Emir Baybars al-Jashankir al-Mansuri resumed in the al-Hakim Mosque after he had rebuilt it from the ruin caused by the earthquake that struck the lands of Egypt (2) at the end of 702 AH. He appointed the four qadis as lecturers for the four schools of law, together with Shaykh al-Hadith Saʿd al-Din al-Harithi, the grammar scholar Athir al-Din Abu Hayyan (3), the shaykh of the seven canonical readings Shaykh Nur al-Din al-Shattanawfi (4), and the instructor of the sciences Shaykh ʿAlaʾ al-Din al-Qunawi (5).
In Jumada al-Akhirah, Emir Rukn al-Din Baybars assumed the office of ḥājib jointly with Emir Sayf al-Din Baktamur (6), and the two became the chief chamberlains in Damascus.
In Rajab, a certain shaykh known as al-Mujāhid Ibrahim al-Qattān, who wore an extraordinarily wide cloak (dallaq), was brought before Shaykh Taqi al-Din Ibn Taymiyyah. The Shaykh ordered that cloak to be cut up, whereupon people from every side grabbed at it and tore it until nothing was left of it
He denied Isa, the Cross, and Maryam (*) … and began to love Muhammad after having despised him.
O Kaaba of beauty around which my heart has circled … O my heart, is there no ransom for repulsion by you?
I contented myself with a phantom of your image that visited … yet I was never satisfied with your union forever.
My longing, having exceeded its limit, has scorched me … and enough for you is a yearning that has transcended and prevailed.
I asked you for nothing except that you pass by our quarter … by your grace, O Lord of elegance and generosity.
May my eyelids perhaps shed their tears … and a heart that, since you forsook me, has found no repose.
You erred in abandoning me; had you been smitten, neither whisperers nor foes would have kept you from me.
He counted them as twenty-three couplets, and may God forgive him whatever he composed in poetry.
(*) By denying Isa and Maryam, he meant rejecting the divinity claimed by some People of the Book, alluding to the verse: “And [remember] when Allah said, ‘O Isa, son of Maryam, did you say to the people, “Take me and my mother as two gods besides Allah?”’” (Quran 5:116). He did not deny their prophethood, for that would be inconceivable for someone of his standing. May God have mercy on him.
(1) In manuscripts B and T: read hadarat.
(2) In B: “It was in the late year 702 AH”; in T: “It befell his homeland.”
(3) He is Muhammad b. Yusuf b. Ali b. Yusuf; he appears in the obituaries of 745 AH.
(4) He is Ali b. Yusuf b. Hariz al-Lakhmi, a Shafi‘i scholar of Qur’an recitation, died 713 AH. Al-Shitnufi (with doubled t) denotes his nisba from Shitnuf, Egypt (Ibn al-Nadim I/585; al-Durar III/141; Yaqut, s.v. Shitnuf).
(5) He is Ali b. Mahmud b. Humayd b. Musa, died 749 AH (al-Durar al-Kamina III/126).
(6) He appears in the obituaries of 724 AH.