At the beginning of Rabiʿ al-Ākhir, Jamal al-Din Aqūsh, the deputy governor of al-Karak, arrived from Egypt on his way to Tripoli, where he was to serve as vice-regent in place of Qaratay (1), who had passed away.
In Jumada al-Ūlā the judge Shihāb al-Din Ibn al-Majd ʿAbd Allah was summoned to the Dār al-Saʿāda and appointed superintendent of the public treasury (wakālat bayt al-māl) in succession to Ibn al-Qalansi. His letter of investiture arrived from Egypt, and people offered him their congratulations (2).
During the same month the amir Najm al-Din Ibn al-Zaybaq was recalled from the governorship of Nablus and appointed Controller of the Bureaus (shadd al-dawāwīn) in Damascus, the office having stood vacant for several months after Ibn al-Khashshab (3).
In Ramadan, Shaykh Badr al-Din Abū al-Yusr Ibn al-Saʾiʿ (4) delivered the Friday sermon in Jerusalem in place of Zayn al-Din Ibn Jamāʿa, the latter having declined the post and chosen to return to his homeland.
The Case of Judge Ibn Jumla (5)
In the last ten days of Ramadan a rivalry and altercation (6) broke out between Judge Ibn Jumla and Shaykh al-Zahīr, the chief of the amirs, who had acted as intermediary in Ibn Jumla’s appointment to the judiciary. The dispute concerned matters between him and the dawādār mentioned earlier, Nāṣir al-Din; each of the two swore an oath that contradicted the other’s. They separated from the Dār al-Saʿāda while still inside the mosque.
When the judge returned to his residence at the ʿĀdiliyya, Shaykh al-Zahīr sent for him so that judgment might be rendered in the way deemed expedient, by order of the viceroy. In reality it appears to have been a hidden stratagem, outwardly presented as support for the judge. Acting precipitously, the judge imposed a disciplinary beating on him in his presence. As soon as he left, Ibn Jumla’s aides seized him, paraded him through the city on a donkey on Wednesday, the twenty-seventh of Ramadan, and beat him severely while proclaiming, “This is the punishment of one who lies and encroaches upon the Sacred Law!”
The populace sympathised with him, for it was the fasting month, indeed the last ten days, and he was an elderly man observing the fast on the twenty-seventh. It is said that he received 2,171 lashes that day—Allah knows best. Before nightfall legal opinions were sought against the aforementioned judge, and emissaries circulated among the shaykhs for that purpose by order of the viceroy. On the twenty-ninth of Ramadan the viceroy of the sultanate convened, in the Dār al-Saʿāda, a large assembly attended by the judges and the leading muftis.