on the night of Tuesday, the twenty-eighth of Jumada II, and the funeral prayer was offered for him the next day in the Umayyad Mosque after ẓuhr; he was then buried in the Bāb al-Ṣaghīr cemetery. He had been born on the 2nd of Rabiʿ I in 680 AH, amassed a vast collection of reports, and in his final years was the sole transmitter from a number of scholars. With his death the public audition of al-Bayhaqī’s “al-Sunan al-Kabīr” came to an end—may Allah have mercy on him.
A great fire broke out on the night preceding Friday, the 15th of Rajab, in the Ṣāliḥiyya quarter on the slope of Mount Qasyūn. The entire southern arcade adjoining the Hanbali mosque was consumed—east and west, north and south. Innā lillāh wa-innā ilayhi rājiʿūn.
On Friday, the 5th of Ramadan, the first khuṭbah was delivered in the mosque built by Sayf al-Din Yalbūgha al-Nāṣirī (1) west of the Horse Market; it opened that very day in remarkable beauty and splendour. The preacher was Shaykh Nāṣir al-Din (2) Ibn al-Rabwa, a Ḥanafī. Shaykh Shams al-Din, the Shāfiʿī from Mosul (3), had contested the post, producing the original endowment deed from the founder Yalbūgha together with lofty sultanic warrants, but Ibn al-Rabwa prevailed because he was deputy for Shaykh Qawām al-Din al-Utaqānī the Ḥanafī, resident in Egypt, and held an appointment from the sultan that post-dated the Mosulī’s. A formal decree was therefore issued in Ibn al-Rabwa’s favour. That day he donned the black robe of investiture from the Dār al-Saʿādah; black caliphal standards were carried before him while the muʾadhdhins proclaimed the takbīr in the usual manner. He delivered an excellent sermon, most of it on the virtues of the Qur’an, and in the miḥrāb he recited the opening of Sūrah Ṭā Hā. Many emirs, commoners, notables and several judges attended. It was a memorable day, and I was among those standing close by.
What astonishes me is that in Dhū al-Qaʿdah I came across a letter someone had sent to a friend in the land of Tripoli, in which he wrote:
“The master informs Shaykh ʿImād al-Din of what occurred along the coast: the fire that swept from the territory of Tripoli to the far end of the Beirut district and all of Kisrawān. It burned every mountain, and all the wild animals—tigers, bears, foxes and swine (4)—perished in the flames; no refuge remained for them. The fire raged for days while the people fled to the seashore for fear of it, and countless olive trees were destroyed. When the rain came, by Allah’s permission it put the blaze out.” He is speaking of the fire that broke out in Tishrīn, corresponding to Dhū al-Qaʿdah of this year. “He also said: ‘Astonishingly, a single leaf fell from a tree through the chimney of a house and set everything inside ablaze—furniture, garments and many silk ornaments. The greater part of these lands…’”