he acceded to their proposal on the condition that her dower be the Kingdom of Baghdad. He gave them the customary royal allowance, bestowed upon them abundant gifts, robes of honor, and money, and instructed the envoy to purchase a village out of the public treasury and dedicate it as a waqf (charitable endowment) for the khanqah he intended to build in Damascus near al-Tawwāwīs. The regent in the Sultan’s absence—who was also the ḥājib al-ḥujjāb—together with the court dignitaries and leading notables, went out to receive him.
On Sunday, the 7th of Rabīʿ al-Ākhir, I read a letter that had arrived from Aleppo in the hand of the upright jurist Shams al-Dīn al-ʿIrāqī, one of its citizens. He related that on Monday, the 17th of Rabīʿ al-Awwal, he was in the presence of the deputy of the Sultan in the Dār al-ʿAdl when a man was brought who had fathered a child that lived for only an hour and then died. The father had brought the corpse with him, and all those present— including the writer of the letter—saw it. It was a perfectly formed infant who had, upon each shoulder, a head with a round face, both faces turned in the same direction. Glory be to the All-Knowing Creator. (1)
We were also informed that in this very month the minaret that had been built for the Sultan’s madrasa (2) in Egypt collapsed. It had been erected (3) in an unusual fashion, for it consisted of two minarets rising from a single base above the vaulted gateway of the school. When it fell, it killed a great many of the craftsmen working there, passers-by, and the boys in the kuttāb. Of the pupils, it is reported that only six (4) survived. Altogether, some three hundred souls perished; some said more, others less. Truly, to Allah we belong and to Him we return. (4)
On Monday, the twenty-ninth of the month—the last day of it—the deputy sultan, Emir Sayf al-Dīn Baydamur, set out to the Ghayḍah to repair it and remove the harmful trees and dense undergrowth. Accompanying him were all the military emirs, his retainers, and the entire ḥalqa cavalry; not a single man stayed behind. They all labored there with their own hands and with their servants, and a multitude of peasants from al-Marj, the Ghūṭah, and elsewhere were brought in. He returned on Saturday, the fifth of the following month, after they had cleared it of thorns, brushwood, and refuse.
A curious incident befell one of the beggars. A group of them gathered before dawn to receive bread distributed as charity at the tomb of the wife of the commander of commanders, Tankiz, at Bāb al-Khawāṣṣīn. They quarreled among themselves, seized one of their number, strangled him severely, and took from him a sack containing about four thousand dirhams together with some gold. They fled in haste. When he revived from his swoon he found them gone, so he lodged a complaint with the city governor, but up to now they have not been apprehended. The person who informed me