The venerable shaykh and Qur’an reciter (1) Shams al-Dīn al-Maqsāṭī (2) was Abū Bakr ibn ʿUmar ibn al-Mushiʿ al-Jazarī, known as al-Maqsāṭī, the deputy khaṭīb. He taught people the seven canonical readings (3) as well as certain rarer variants, had a working knowledge of grammar, and was marked by piety and earnest striving.

He died on the night of Saturday, 21 Jumādā al-Ākhira, and was buried the next day at the foot of Mount Qāsiyūn, opposite the Nāṣirī ribāṭ (4). He was past eighty years of age—may Allah have mercy on him.

[Then the year 714 AH began]

It opened—and the officials were the very same as in the previous year (5)—except for the vizier (6) Amīn al-Mulk; his place was now filled by Badr al-Dīn (7) al-Turkumānī.

On 4 Muḥarram, al-Ṣāḥib Shams al-Dīn ibn Gibrīāl returned from Egypt to assume oversight of the bureaus, and his associates went out to welcome him.

On Friday, 10 Muḥarram, a royal decree was read from the sultan’s gallery in the presence of the viceroy, the judges, and the amirs, ordering the remission of all outstanding balances from 698 AH up to the end of 713 AH. Prayers for the sultan multiplied. The reader was Jamāl al-Dīn (8) ibn al-Qalānṣī, and the herald was Ṣadr al-Dīn (9) ibn Ṣabīḥ, the muezzin.

The following Friday another decree was read, stipulating the release of the prisoners and that no more than half a dirham be taken from any of them; a further decree abolished the forced labor imposed on peasants in connection with confiscations and the like. This was read by Ibn al-Zamlakānī and proclaimed on his behalf by Amīn al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Muʾadhdhin al-Najībī.

Later in Muḥarram the sultan summoned before him the jurist Nūr al-Dīn ʿAlī al-Bakrī and resolved to execute him, but the amirs interceded. He therefore banished him and forbade him to issue fatwas or teach.