—the like of which had not been witnessed in ages. It demolished countless houses as the water rose to a cubit or more, drowned a number of people, smashed the doors of the mosque, surged into the Kaʿbah itself and there too rose to roughly a cubit or higher. A momentous incident indeed, the details of which were set down by Shaykh ʿAfif al-Din al-Tabari.

On the twenty-seventh of Jumada al-Ūlā, Judge Jalal al-Din was removed from the chief judgeship of Egypt. News then arrived that the Syrian judge Ibn al-Majd had died shortly after his own dismissal, whereupon the sultan appointed Jalal al-Din to the judiciary of Syria, so he returned there, back to where he had started. The sultan next dismissed Burhan al-Din ibn ʿAbd al-Haqq, the Hanafi judge, and likewise removed the Hanbali judge Taqi al-Din. He ordered Taqi al-Din’s son, Sadr al-Din, to discharge the people’s outstanding claims, which came to nearly three hundred thousand.

On Monday the nineteenth of Jumada al-Ākhirah, five days after Jalal al-Din’s departure, the sultan summoned the leading jurists to his presence and asked whom they deemed suitable for the post of chief judge in Egypt. Their choice fell upon Judge ʿIzz al-Din Ibn Jamaʿah, whom the sultan appointed on the spot (1). He conferred the Hanafi judgeship on Husam al-Din Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Ghuri, the judge of Baghdad. Both men left the audience chamber for the Salihiyyah Madrasa wearing their robes of investiture. ʿIzz al-Din Ibn Jamaʿah then proceeded to the Dar al-Hadith al-Kamiliyyah, owned by his colleague Shaykh Kamal al-Din (2) al-Dimyati, where he taught and cited—with its full chain of transmission—the hadith, “Actions are only by their intentions” (3), offering commentary upon it.

Most of the judicial deputies (4) were dismissed, though some remained in office; among those retained was al-Munawi (5), whose appointment he himself had recommended.

On the twenty-fifth of that same month, the Hanbali judgeship was assigned to the learned imam Muwaffaq al-Din Abu Muhammad ʿAbd Allah ibn Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Malik al-Maqdisi in place of the one removed, leaving only al-Akhnaʾi, the Maliki, still serving among the judges.

In Ramadan, the Ṣabābiyyah complex—which the merchant Shams al-Din ibn Taqi al-Din ibn al-Ṣabab had founded—was opened as a House of Qur’an and a House of Hadith; previously it had been an appalling ruin (6).