—namely, the headship of the Dār al-Ḥadīth in the Inner Nāṣirī Madrasa. Al-Ṣadr Amīn al-Dīn Ibn al-Qalānsī, the steward of the public treasury, resigned it to him, and the leading dignitaries and notables attended the inaugural session (1).
Toward the end of the same year the construction was completed of the mausoleum beneath the ṭārimah attributed to Emir Sayf al-Dīn Arghūn Shāh, former viceroy of the sultanate in Damascus, together with its southern wing. People now prayed there, for it had previously been only a small mosque; he rebuilt and enlarged it until it came to resemble a congregational mosque. May Allah accept this from him. Finished.
[Then the year 751 AH began.] It opened with al-Nāṣir Ḥasan ibn al-Nāṣir Muḥammad ibn Qalāwūn as sultan over Syria and Egypt. His deputy in Egypt was Emir Sayf al-Dīn Baybughā (2), and his brother Sayf al-Dīn Manjak served as vizier, while a group of leading commanders acted as advisers. The Egyptian judges and the keeper of the royal secrets were the same as in the preceding year. The viceroy in Syria was Emir Sayf al-Dīn Aytamush (3) al-Nāṣirī. The judges there also remained the same, save for the Hanbalī court, which was now held by Shaykh Jamāl al-Dīn Yūsuf al-Mardāwī. The secretary of the chancery, the Shaykh al-Shuyūkh Tāj al-Dīn, and the protocol scribe likewise kept their posts. Added to the roster were Sharaf al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb ibn Judge ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Ibn Sharnūkh (4); the market inspector, Qāḍī ʿImād al-Dīn Ibn al-ʿAzfūr; the superintendent of awqāf, al-Sharīf; the overseer of the Great Mosque, Fakhr al-Dīn Ibn al-ʿAfīf; and the city’s preacher, Jamāl al-Dīn Maḥmūd Ibn Jumlah (may Allah have mercy on him).
On Saturday, the tenth of Muḥarram, a proclamation was issued in the city by order of the viceroy, following a letter he had received from Egypt, forbidding women to wear long, wide sleeves, silken mantles, any luxurious garments or costly fabrics, or short veils. We were told that in Egypt they enforced this with great strictness—even, it was said, to the point of drowning some women for it; Allah knows best (5).
At the beginning of this year the Qur’an House situated to the south of the mausoleum of Lady Tankiz (6), in the quarter of Bāb al-Khawwāṣīn, was renovated and completed. It had been converted from a large hall, formerly a madrasa belonging to the eunuch Ṣafī al-Dīn ʿAnbar, the retainer of Ibn Ḥamzah, who was one of the eminent benefactors—may Allah accept it from him.