a year, during which he also held the teaching chair of the Atabakiyya Madrasa. He afterwards moved to Egypt, where he was appointed both professor and military judge. He died there on Sunday, the 6th of Ṣafar, having reached nearly ninety years of age⦗1⦘ (may Allah have mercy on him).

Al-Birzālī compiled for him a catalogue of teachers that we heard from him in Damascus; it listed twenty-two shaykhs.

The shaykh, imam and ascetic scholar, Zayn al-Din Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Raḥmān⦗2⦘ ibn Maḥmūd ibn ʿUbaydān al-Baʿlabakkī al-Ḥanbalī, was one of the eminent Ḥanbalīs. He authored works on ḥadīth, jurisprudence, taṣawwuf, the disciplines of the heart, and much else, and was a man of many pious endeavours. In the days of Sultan al-Ẓāhir an incident befell him: it appears that his reason was disturbed—either his mind wandered, or, having pursued severe ascetic discipline so that the fire of hunger consumed his innards, he began to behold phantoms without substance and imagined them to be external realities, whereas they were nothing but the corrupt products of a troubled mind.

He died in Baalbek halfway through Ṣafar, was buried at Bāb Satha, and had not yet reached sixty. The absentee funeral prayer for him was performed in Damascus, together with that for Judge al-Zurʿī.

The amir Shihāb al-Din Qaratāy⦗3⦘, deputy governor of Tripoli, endowed numerous waqfs and charitable gifts. He died in Tripoli on Friday, the 18th of Ṣafar⦗4⦘ and was buried there (may Allah have mercy on him).

Shaykh ʿAbd Allāh⦗5⦘ ibn Yūsuf ibn Abī Bakr al-Asʿardī, the muwaqqit (time-keeper), excelled in the science of time-keeping, the astrolabe and related disciplines, yet people derived little benefit from him because of his ill-nature and harshness⦗6⦘. His eyesight later failed, and he fell from a qaysariyya into the ḥasā, whereupon he died⦗7⦘ on the afternoon of Saturday, the 10th of Rabīʿ al-Awwal, and was buried at Bāb al-Ṣaghīr.

The amir Sayf al-Din Balabān⦗8⦘, Turana⦗9⦘ ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Naṣirī, was among the leading commanders in Damascus, and many events occurred in his life whose details would be too long to recount here. He died in his house near the Fīrūz Minaret on the night preceding Wednesday, the 11th of Rabīʿ al-Awwal, and was buried in a grave he had prepared beside his residence. He endowed Quran-reciters there and established a mosque on the site, providing it with an imam and a muezzin⦗10⦘.