and he did the same on the Friday that followed. On Saturday, the fifteenth of Muḥarram, he played polo in the parade ground, and on Sunday, the sixteenth (2) of Muḥarram he appointed al-Ṣāḥib Shams al-Dīn ibn Gibrīāl (1) to supervise the dīwāns. The tightening of fiscal controls over the dīwāns was assigned to Fakhr al-Dīn Īyās al-ʿAsarī (3) in place of al-Qaramānī, who departed to assume the deputy-governorship of al-Raḥba; robes of honor were bestowed upon both of them and upon his vizier (4). Robes were likewise conferred upon Ibn Ṣaṣrā and upon al-Fakhr, the scribe of the mamlūks, who had accompanied the sultan on the ḥajj. Sharaf ibn Ṣaṣrā was granted the custodianship of the dīwān (5). Fakhr al-Dīn ibn Shaykh al-Salamiyya took charge of the Umayyad Mosque (6); Bahāʾ al-Dīn ibn ʿAlīm was appointed to administer the religious endowments, while al-Mankursī was made auditor of those endowments.
On the morning of Thursday, the twenty-seventh of Muḥarram, the sultan set out on his return to the Egyptian territories; the armies moved ahead of him, and others accompanied him (7).
Toward the end of Ṣafar, Shadr al-Dīn ibn al-Wakīl, Mūsā ibn Muhanā, and the amir ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Alṭanbughā (8) were sent by express courier to Muhanā; they met him at Tadmur, after which Alṭanbughā and Ibn al-Wakīl returned to Cairo (9).
Late in Jumādā al-Ākhira (10) Amīn al-Mulk and a number of other senior figures were arrested and heavily fined; in his stead Badr al-Dīn ibn al-Turkmanī, formerly keeper of the treasury, was appointed.
In Rajab four mangonels were completed (11)—one for the Citadel of Damascus and three to be taken to al-Karak. Two of them were test-fired at the Maidan Gate in the presence of the viceroy Tankiz and the general public (12).
In Shaʿbān the excavation of the canal undertaken by Sūdī, the deputy of Aleppo, was finished. It stretched forty thousand cubits from the Sājūr River to the Qūwayq River, with a width of two cubits and a depth of two cubits. The project cost three hundred thousand dirhams (13), yet it was carried out justly, and no one was wronged.