the aṭlāb (1) under their respective banners, displaying all the equipment and engines of war at their disposal. It was a day long to be remembered. Ibn Ṣaṣrā, who was both the military judge and the Chief Qāḍī of Syria, also set out with the army.
They marched until they entered Aleppo on the eleventh of the month, and from there they pressed on; on the sixteenth they reached the land of Rūm, arriving at Malatya (2). They began the siege on the twenty-first of Muḥarram. The city had been well fortified, provisioned, and its gates securely shut. When its governor and its judge beheld the size of the army, they came down and asked for safe-conduct. Security was granted to the Muslims and the troops entered the city. A number of Armenians and other Christians were killed, many women and children were taken captive, the violence even touched some Muslims, and vast spoils were seized; much Muslim property was carried off as well. After three days—on Wednesday the twenty-fourth of Muḥarram—they withdrew, making for ʿAyntāb (3) and then for Marj Dābiq (4). Damascus was festooned with decorations (5) and the victory drums were beaten.
On the first of Ṣafar the deputy governor of Malatya entered the city, bound for the Sultan (6). In the middle of the month its qāḍī, the noble Shams al-Dīn, arrived together with a number of its Muslim inhabitants.
At daybreak on Friday, the sixteenth of Rabīʿ al-Awwal, Tankiz entered Damascus escorted by the Syrian and Egyptian armies (7). The populace turned out, as usual, to watch the spectacle. The Egyptians remained only a short while and then marched back to Cairo.
Malatya had been an iqṭāʿ granted to Jūbān (8) by the Tatar king. He had appointed a Kurdish lieutenant there who exceeded all bounds, doing wrong and committing oppression. The townspeople therefore wrote to Sultan al-Nāṣir, wishing to be included among his subjects. When the Sultan’s forces went to the city, captured it, and acted as they did, Jūbān later returned, rebuilt it, and resettled in it a number of Armenians and others.
On the nineteenth of this same month news reached us that the chamberlain Baktemur, Aydughdi Shuqqayr, and others (9) had been arrested. The seizure had taken place on Thursday, the first of the month. They had conspired against the Sultan; when word of it reached him, he seized them and placed their wealth and possessions under sequestration. In Baktemur’s house a large amount of money, furnishings, timber, and other stores was discovered.