and others; he had sided with the amir Sarghitmush in many matters, both private and public, and thus perished on his account, being nearly eighty years old.(1) And there the notice ends.

[Restoration of the Judges]

Sarghitmush had dismissed the three judges of Damascus—the Shafiʿi, the Hanafi, and the Maliki, as noted above—and, before them, had removed Ibn Jamaʿah and installed Ibn ʿAqil. Once Sarghitmush was arrested, the Sultan ordered that the judges be reinstated as they had been. When this news reached Damascus the three judges refused to resume adjudication, though they did attend the moon-sighting on the eve of ʿId in the Umayyad Mosque and, on the morning of the feast, rode with the deputy-governor to the prayer-ground, as is the judges’ custom. Even so, they were uneasy and had vacated the judicial madrasas: Chief Qadi Abū al-Baqāʾ, the Shafiʿi, retired to his orchard in the Zuʿayfaraniyya;(2) Chief Qadi Ibn al-Sarrāj went back to his house in al-Taʿdīl; and Chief Qadi Sharaf al-Din, the Maliki, withdrew to al-Ṣāliḥiyya inside the Ṣamṣāmiyya. Many people were distressed on his account, for he had come a stranger from Egypt, poor and devout, and had conducted the office with distinction. It later became clear, however, that he had not been dismissed and would remain in office, as we shall relate; his students, friends, and many others rejoiced at the news.

On Sunday, the 4th of Shawwāl, a courier arrived carrying the writ of investiture for the Shafiʿi Chief Qadi Tāj al-Din Ibn al-Subkī, and another for the Hanafi Chief Qadi Sharaf al-Din al-Kafrī, while Chief Qadi Sharaf al-Din al-ʿIrāqī, the Maliki, retained his judgeship, for the Sultan recalled that he had personally appointed him to the Syrian judiciary and had dispatched him in his presence to Damascus. His public conduct and inner character were both praised—Allah willing—and the people rejoiced for him.

In Dhū al-Qaʿdah the hadith scholar Shams al-Din Muḥammad(3) ibn Saʿd al-Ḥanbalī died on Monday the third and was buried the following day at the foot of the mountain. He was nearly sixty years old. He wrote extensively and compiled hadiths; he had sound knowledge of the titles of individual fascicles(4) and the names of their transmitters among the later shaykhs. For the ḥāfiẓ al-Barzalī he prepared a sizeable collection from his own teachers, extracting from each of them one hadith—or more—and recording everything he had heard from them. The work was not completed before al-Barzalī himself died—may Allah have mercy on him.