—among them the ruler of Yemen, al-Malik al-Mujāhid, who was taken away in fetters to Egypt. So wrote the returning pilgrims, for they were the ones who reported the affair.

Toward the end of Dhu al-Ḥijjah it became widely known that the governor of Aleppo, Amīr Sayf al-Dīn Arghun al-Kāmilī, had left the city with his mamluks and retainers. The Aleppine army tried to turn him back but failed; he wounded many of them and killed a number—indeed, to Allah we belong and to Him we return—then pressed on. It was said that he hoped to meet Sayf al-Dīn Baybughā on the road back from the Ḥijāz, join forces with him, and march on Damascus; and if the Damascene deputy should be occupied with the siege of Ṣafad, to storm the city by surprise and seize it.

While he was on the march, however, brigands attacked him from every side, plundered his baggage, and left him with only a handful of mamluks. He passed through Ḥamāh, where the local deputy offered to spirit him away, but he refused. When he reached Ḥimṣ he resolved to present himself in person to the sultan. The deputy of Ḥimṣ escorted him, and some of the chamberlains and commanders of the thousands came out to receive him. He entered on Friday, after the congregational prayer, the twenty-seventh of the month, in full pomp, and lodged in the Dār al-Saʿādah in one of the halls of the duwaydāriyya. End of the report.

[Then the year 752 AH began]

The new year opened—while the caliph was al-Muʿtaḍid bi-Llāh Abū Bakr, together with Abū al-Fath, son of al-Mustakfī bi-Llāh, Abū al-Rabīʿ Sulaymān—

(1) and the sultan over the Syrian lands, the Egyptian domains, the Two Holy Sanctuaries, and all the provinces and territories attached to them was al-Malik al-Nāṣir Ḥasan, son of Sultan al-Malik Muḥammad, son of Sultan al-Malik al-Manṣūr Qalāwūn al-Ṣāliḥī.

His deputy in Egypt was Amīr Sayf al-Dīn Baybughā (2), nicknamed Ḥāris al-Ṭayr, appointed in place of Amīr Sayf al-Dīn Baybughā Ārūs (3), who had gone to the Ḥijāz with a group of amirs intending to perform the noble pilgrimage. During his absence the sultan dismissed him, arrested Shaykhun (4) and confined him, seized Manjak the vizier—who was ustādh dār and commander of a thousand—confiscated his wealth, and replaced him by appointing Qāḍī ʿAlam al-Dīn ibn Zanbūr to the vizierate. He also restored to the office of duwaydāriyya Amīr Sayf al-Dīn Tashbughā al-Nāṣirī, who had been residing in Syria since his dismissal until he was reinstated late in the year, as noted earlier. The kātib al-sirr and the judges in Egypt remained those mentioned in the preceding year.

The year likewise opened while the deputy of Ṣafad (5) had already fortified the citadel, stocked it with the provisions, munitions, equipment, and fighting men it required, renounced allegiance to the state, and taken up arms. Armies from every corner of the realm therefore set out against him.