—toward the end of the day, the seventh of Dhu’l-Ḥijjah, and he was buried mid-morning on Saturday in the al-Ḥajūn cemetery⦗1⦘. May Allah, exalted is He, show him mercy and ennoble his resting place.

[Then the year 718 AH began.]

[The caliph and the sultan were the same, as were the governors and judges, save for the Mālikī judge in Damascus; that post was now held by the eminent scholar Fakhr al-Dīn ibn Salāmah, succeeding Judge Jamāl al-Dīn al-Zawāwī—may Allah have mercy on him]⦗2⦘.

News arrived⦗3⦘ in Muḥarram from Upper Mesopotamia, the eastern provinces, Sinjār, Mosul, Mardin, and their surrounding regions, reporting dreadful inflation, severe depopulation, scant rainfall, the tyranny of the Tatars⦗4⦘, the disappearance of foodstuffs, soaring prices, dwindling resources, the loss of blessings and the onset of calamities. Matters became so desperate that they ate whatever they found—lifeless objects, animals, even plants⦗5⦘—and they sold their own children and families; a child was sold for fifty dirhams or less. Many people⦗6⦘ refused to buy Muslim children out of fear of sin⦗7⦘. Some women would declare themselves Christian so that someone would purchase their child, allowing her to profit from the price while the child found someone to feed him and keep him alive, safe from destruction. To Allah we belong and to Him we shall return. Hardships occurred whose detail would take too long to recount and whose description ears shrink from hearing. About four hundred of them migrated toward Marāgha⦗8⦘, but a snowfall wiped them out completely. Another party attached themselves to a band of Tatars; when they reached a steep pass, the Tatars ascended it and then forbade the refugees to follow, unwilling to burden themselves with them, so they too perished to the last. There is no power nor strength except in Allah, the All-Mighty, the All-Wise.

At dawn on Monday, the seventh⦗9⦘ of Ṣafar, Judge Karīm al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Karīm ibn al-ʿAlam Hibat Allāh, the sultan’s private commissioner over all the provinces, arrived in Damascus. He took up residence in Dār al-Saʿādah for four days and ordered the construction of the Qubaybāt Mosque⦗10⦘, now known as the Karīm al-Dīn Mosque⦗11⦘. He then set out to visit Bayt al-Maqdis, distributed abundant charity, and work on his mosque commenced after his departure.