to gaze at it and to marvel at the whole business. In the end the matter was settled by imprisoning the fellow who had made this preposterous claim, and the pit was filled in again as it had been.
On Monday, the eighteenth of Rabiʿ al-Awwal, the judge of Aleppo, Nasir al-Din ibn al-Khashshab (1), arrived by express post on his way to Damascus and took up lodging in the Great ʿAdiliyya Madrasa.
He reported that the funeral prayer had been performed in Aleppo on Friday, the eighth of the same month, for the distinguished, proficient hadith scholar and memorizer, Shams al-Din Muhammad (2) ibn ʿAli ibn Aybak al-Suruji al-Misri—may Allah have mercy on him. Born in 715 AH, he had mastered a fine share of the science of hadith, memorized the names of narrators, and both collected and produced works.
At the beginning of Rabiʿ al-Akhir a great fire broke out on the lower slope of Mount Qasyun, consuming the Salihiyya market located near the Muzafari Mosque. Nearly one hundred and twenty shops were burned, and no blaze of equal size or ferocity had been seen for a long time. Truly, we belong to Allah and to Him we return (3).
On Friday, the sixth of that month, an order was issued that the blessing upon the Prophet be proclaimed from every minaret in the city on Fridays, just as it is proclaimed from the mosque’s own minarets, and so it was done.
On Tuesday, the tenth, the authorities asked the Chief Judge of the Shafiʿis, Taqi al-Din al-Subki, to lend the sultan’s dīwān a sum taken from the assets of absentee owners that were under his control. He refused emphatically. Thereupon the superintendent of the dīwāns and several members of the deputy’s entourage came, opened the orphans’ storeroom, and forcibly removed fifty thousand dirhams, which they handed over to a certain Bedouin in settlement of arrears owed him by the sultanic dīwān. A most extraordinary affair ensued, the like of which had not been witnessed before.
On Wednesday, the tenth of Jumada I, our companion, the shaykh, the imam, the scholar, the erudite critic versed in many branches of knowledge, Shams al-Din Muhammad (4) ibn Shaykh ʿImad al-Din Ahmad ibn ʿAbd al-Hadi al-Maqdisi al-Hanbali, passed away—may Allah envelop him in His mercy and lodge him in the gardens of Paradise. He had been ill for nearly three months with an ulcer and a consumptive fever; then his condition worsened, severe diarrhea set in, and his strength continued to ebb until he died that day before the call to the ʿAsr prayer.
His father told me that his final words were: “I bear witness that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah. O Allah, make me among those who repent often, and make me among those who purify themselves.”