and the districts of al-Sawad and Zarʿ. He reached Damascus on the first day of Dhu al-Qaʿdah, entered the city, and found that the sultan had already set out for the Noble Ḥijaz with forty of his closest emirs on Thursday, the second of Dhu al-Qaʿdah.

[After the shaykh had arrived in Damascus and settled there, he did not cease engaging the people in every branch of learning. He disseminated knowledge, composed books, issued fatwas both orally and through lengthy written replies, and exercised independent reasoning in matters of the Sacred Law. In some rulings his ijtihād led him to agree with the imams of the four schools, while in others he issued opinions contrary to them and to what is well known in their schools. He compiled many selections in numerous volumes in which he delivered opinions based on his own ijtihād, supporting them with evidence from the Book, the Sunnah, and the sayings of the Companions and the early generations.] (1)

When the sultan departed for the ḥajj, he dispersed the armies throughout Syria and left Arghun in Damascus. On Friday Shaykh Kamal al-Din ibn al-Zamalkani donned the robe of investiture for the Agency of the Treasury (2) in place of Ibn al-Shurayshi and attended the ceremony at the Shubbak.

The sultan’s vizier (3) addressed the city, demanded large sums of money from the people (4), carried out confiscations, ordered beatings with staves, and humiliated a number of leading figures, among them Ibn Faḍl Allah Muḥyī al-Din.

During the same period Shihab al-Din ibn Jahbal (5) was appointed to teach at the Ṣalāḥiyya in Jerusalem in place of Najm al-Din Dawud al-Kurdi, who had died (6); he had been teaching there for about thirty years. Ibn Jahbal left for Jerusalem after Eid al-Aḍḥā.

In this year the king of the Qifjaq, known as Tuqṭāy Khan (7), died. He had ruled for twenty-three years and was thirty years old at the time of his death (8). He was gallant and courageous, following the Tatar religion of worshipping idols and celestial bodies. He honored the anthropomorphists, philosophers, and physicians, and showed greater favor to the Muslims than to any other group. His army was so formidable that no one dared confront him, owing to the vastness, strength, numbers, and equipment of his forces. It is said that on one occasion he levied one man out of every ten in his army, and that expeditionary force numbered 150,000 men.