Mid-morning on Monday the sixteenth [of Ramadan] the drums of glad tidings were sounded in the Citadel and it was announced that Yalbugha al-Khāṣṣakī had been banished by the Sultan to Syria. The drums beat again at sunset, a third time after the ʿIshāʾ prayer, and once more on Tuesday morning. On every such occasion the three emirs—Manjak, Baydamur, and Asandamur—rode out in full array beyond the city limits and then returned.
People, it was said, were divided between those who believed the news and those who denied it; nevertheless, work had already begun to screen the Citadel and prepare for a siege—To Allah we belong and to Him we return.
It soon became clear that the tidings were false. All attention, therefore, turned to fitting the Citadel with protective curtains and hauling in gravel, stones, sheep, and stores. Reports arrived that the royal cortège itself, with Yalbugha in the midst of the entire Egyptian army, had already passed Gaza. Thereupon the Chancellor, the Royal Secretary, the Shāfiʿī judge, the army auditor with his inspectors, and the city governor set out toward Ḥamāh to meet Emir ʿAlī, who had just received his patent for the governorship of Damascus. The city was left without any ruler save the market inspector and a few judges; the people were like sheep without a shepherd. Yet, despite this, conditions remained good and affairs calm—no one, so far as we heard, encroached upon another. Meanwhile Baydamur, Manjak, and Asandamur were fortifying the Citadel and stockpiling weapons and provisions within it. Allah prevails over His decree: “Wherever you may be, death will overtake you, even though you be in lofty, fortified towers.” Screens were being raised above the battlements.
On Friday the nineteenth of the month Emir Baydamur performed the congregational prayer at the Kamālī window in the Musalla of ʿUthmān; Manjak prayed beside him in the judges’ enclosure. None of the chamberlains or inspectors were present, nor indeed any of the administrative staff; only a few soldiers remained in the city, the rest having departed to join the Sultan, while the officials had gone toward Ḥamāh to receive Emir ʿAlī, the newly appointed deputy of protected Syria. After the prayer Baydamur returned to the Citadel. Asandamur did not attend; some said he was indisposed, others that he had prayed inside the fortress.
On Saturday the twentieth a courier from the Sultan—one of the Banū al-Rasūl—arrived for the deputy of Damascus to ascertain whether he was loyal or rebellious. The Sultan inquired about his occupation of the Citadel and the khutbah he was delivering there, his storing of engines and provisions inside, the absence of mangonels and curtains upon it, and his disposal of the royal treasury as though he were a sovereign. The Commander of the Emirs disavowed all this, declaring that he had merely posted the fortress garrison and had never entered it, that its gates were open and that it was the Sultan’s own Citadel, and that his only adversary—meaning Yalbugha—would be judged by the sacred law before the four judges. He drafted a reply and sent it back with the courier, Kikildī, a mamluk of Taqtāy al-Dawādār, (1) and dispatched with him Emir Ṣāram al-Dīn, one of the commanders of ten, on that very day.
On Monday, the twenty-second of Ramadan, the city gates remained closed until nearly noon; only Bab al-Naṣr and Bab al-Faraj were open. The populace were in severe confinement and distress—To Allah we belong and to Him we return—but the Sultan and the victorious armies were now close at hand.