On Wednesday, the 2nd of Muḥarram, the ḥadīth master Shaykh Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-ʿAlāʾī (1) delivered the lesson in the chair endowed by the lord of Ḥimṣ. Our own teacher, the ḥadīth scholar al-Mizzī, ceded the seat to him. Jurists and dignitaries were in attendance, and he presented an excellent and beneficial discourse.
On Friday, the 4th of Muḥarram, the Chief Judge ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn al-Qūnawī (2) assumed the office of Shaykh al-Shuyūkh at the Sumaysāṭiyya, in place of the Mālikī judge Sharaf al-Dīn (3). As usual, jurists and Ṣūfīs were present.
On Sunday, the 18th of Ṣafar, Taqī al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, son of Shaykh Kamāl al-Dīn ibn al-Zamlakānī, lectured at the Masrūriyya, replacing Jamāl al-Dīn ibn al-Sharīshī, who had been transferred to the judgeship of Ḥimṣ. The people attended and invoked mercy upon his father (4).
On Sunday, the 25th of Ṣafar, the eminent amir, lord of the lands of Rūm, Tamurtāsh ibn Jūbān, arrived in Damascus on his way to Egypt. The viceroy and the army went out to welcome him. He was a handsome young man, well-proportioned and fair-featured. When he reached the sultan in Egypt, the latter honored him with a gift of one thousand, while his entourage were distributed among the emirs and treated with exceptional generosity. The reason for his journey to Egypt (5) was that the ruler of Iraq, King Abū Saʿīd, had killed his brother Khwāja Dimashq (6) in Shawwāl of the previous year. Tamurtāsh’s father, Jūbān—then the administrator of the realms—had contemplated fighting Sultan Abū Saʿīd but was unable to do so. Fearing for his life, Tamurtāsh therefore fled to Sultan al-Nāṣir in Egypt.
In Rabīʿ al-Awwal, the governor of Syria, Sayf al-Dīn Tankiz, traveled to Egypt to visit the sultan, who received and honored him. During this journey he purchased the Dār al-Fulūs, located near the Buzuriyyīn and the Jawziyyah, to their east—today the Buzuriyyah market is called the Wheat Market (7). He bought the house and rebuilt it into a magnificent residence; no house in Damascus is finer. He named it Dār al-Dhahab, demolished the Hammām Suwayd opposite it, and converted the site into a house for Qurʾān and ḥadīth, which emerged in the utmost… (8)