dead⦗1⦘. People said that one of them was a boy and the other a girl, and that they were already lifeless when I saw them. They added that one had died two days or so after the other, and a formal deposition to that effect had been written up and signed by a number of witnesses.
On that same day four emirs, known as the Sons of al-Kāmil⦗2⦘, were placed under guard: Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Muḥammad, an emir of the ṭablkhāna (kettledrum corps); Ghayāth al-Dīn Muḥammad, an emir of ten; ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn ʿAlī; Ibn Aybak al-Ṭawīl, also a ṭablkhāna emir; and Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Khalīl ibn Balbān, likewise of the ṭablkhāna. They were accused of siding with King Aḥmad ibn al-Nāṣir, who was in al-Karak, and of corresponding with him—Allah knows best their true state. They were therefore shackled and conveyed to the Victorious Citadel through the Secret Gate⦗3⦘ opposite the Gate of Dar al-Saʿādah: the three ṭablkhāna emirs entered by that gate, while Ghayāth was brought in through the main entrance, and they were separated once inside.
The mahmal departed on Thursday, the fifteenth of the month, and on that day the preacher Ibn al-Jalāl donned the robe confirming his tenure as khatib. Thus attired, he rode in procession with the judges, as is customary for preachers.
During this month a great mangonel was installed at the gate of the Green Parade Ground. Its arms were eighteen cubits long and its bowstring twenty-seven cubits. Crowds turned out to view it. On Saturday it hurled a stone weighing sixty ratls that reached the wall facing the palace in the great parade ground. The catapult master declared that no fortress in the Muslim world possessed its equal, and that it had been built by al-Ḥajj Muḥammad al-Ṣāliḥī to be stationed inside al-Karak, but Allah decreed that it should instead be brought out to besiege al-Karak. May Allah bring events to a good conclusion.
Later in the month another four emirs were arrested. The first was Āqbughā ʿAbd al-Wāḥid, who had supervised the istidāriyya for the great Sultan al-Nāṣir. He had been fined in the days of the latter’s son al-Manṣūr, sent to Syria, and appointed deputy in Ḥoms, where his conduct was deemed unsatisfactory. The people criticized him, he was removed, granted the precedence of a thousand in Damascus, and appointed commander of the right wing. In these days he was accused of supporting Sultan Aḥmad ibn al-Nāṣir in al-Karak, so he was seized and taken to the Citadel together with Emir Sayf al-Dīn Balak⦗4⦘ and Emir Sayf al-Dīn Salāmush, all of them ṭablkhāna emirs. They too were conveyed to the Victorious Citadel. May Allah ordain a favorable outcome.
In this very month the judiciary of Ḥoms was detached from the Damascus magistracy by a renewed sultanic decree in favor of Judge Shihāb al-Dīn al-Bārzī. This followed lengthy wrangling between him and the Chief Judge Taqī al-Dīn al-Subkī; some of the state dignitaries championed al-Bārzī and procured for him the said decree.