On Sunday, the fifth of Jumada al-Ula, the Tayyibaniyya Madrasa (1) was officially opened. It had formerly been the residence of Emir Sayf al-Din Tayyiban, situated near the Shāmiyya al-Jawāniyya, between that complex and Umm al-Ṣāliḥ. The building had been purchased with the third of his estate that he had earmarked for charitable purposes, then converted into a madrasa, and a window was opened onto the road on its southern side. In accordance with the founder’s stipulation, the inaugural lesson that day was delivered by Shaykh ʿImad al-Din ibn Sharaf al-Din, cousin of Shaykh Kamāl al-Din ibn al-Zamalkānī. Present with him were the Chief Justice al-Subkī, the Mālikī judge, and a number of dignitaries. He commenced with Allah’s words: “Whatever mercy Allah opens to people, none can withhold it” (Fatir 2).
On the night of Sunday, the twenty-sixth of Jumada al-Ula, not one of the muezzins appeared on the elevated platform of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus at the time of the iqāmah for the Maghrib prayer except a single muezzin. He waited for someone to join him, but no one came for roughly the space of a degree of the sun’s movement, or a little more, so he pronounced the iqāmah alone. After the imam had entered the prayer, the remaining muezzins straggled in during the prayer until they numbered fewer than ten. This was remarkable, for out of thirty or more muezzins only one had initially been present. Several shaykhs attested that they had never witnessed anything similar.
On Monday, the seventeenth of Jumada al-Ākhirah, the judges assembled at the Shrine of ʿUthmān. The Hanbali judge (2) had ruled concerning the Dār al-Muʿtamid, which adjoins the Madrasa of Shaykh Abū ʿUmar Yalbughā and is an endowment, that it be annexed to the Dār al-Qurʾān and that additional endowments be set aside from it for the poor. The Shafiʿi judge blocked him, arguing that the outcome would be its conversion into a Dār al-Ḥadīth. The discussion then shifted; they said, “This house has not been completely demolished,” and therefore the ruling did not apply, for according to the madhhab of Imam Ahmad a waqf may be sold only if it is totally ruined and nothing useful remains. The Hanafi judge accordingly affirmed its status as a waqf, just as before, and the Shafiʿi and Mālikī judges ratified his decision. Thus the matter was settled, though it involved lengthy proceedings and unusual happenings.
On Wednesday, the twenty-seventh of Jumada al-Ākhirah, the gatekeeper of the newly established madrasa called the Tayyibaniyya, next to Umm al-Ṣāliḥ, was found murdered, his throat slit. Money belonging to the madrasa had been taken from him, and the perpetrator was never discovered. The porter was a righteous and well-regarded man—may Allah have mercy on him (3).
[Biographical notice of Shaykh Shams al-Din Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah]
On the night of Thursday, the thirteenth of Rajab, at the time of the ʿIshāʾ call to prayer, our companion, the eminent shaykh and scholar Shams al-Din Muḥammad (4) ibn Abī Bakr ibn Ayyūb al-Zuraʿī—Imam of al-Jawziyyah and the son of its superintendent—passed away. The funeral prayer was performed for him after ẓuhr.