, among them the chief judge Badr al-Din Ibn Abī al-Fath (1), who had already been granted the diploma of appointment to the office of Chief Judge together with his uncle (2) Taj al-Din (3). He would issue rulings in the matters over which he presided, first in association with his uncle and later on his own.

In the sacred month of Muḥarram, the viceroy of the sultanate ordered the demolition of two villages in Wādī al-Taym—Mashghara (4) and Talfiatha (5). The reason was that they had rebelled and their inhabitants were spreading corruption on earth. The two settlements occupied naturally fortified ground that could be reached only at great cost, for one had to climb to them horseman by horseman. They were therefore razed and rebuilt at the bottom of the valley so that the governor’s authority and any summons could reach them with ease. King Ṣalāḥ al-Din Ibn al-Kāmil told me that a thousand horsemen worked on the village of Talfiatha, while five hundred donkeys carried its dismantled stones down into the valley over the course of several days.

On Friday, the sixth of Ṣafar, after the congregational prayer, the funeral prayer was held for Chief Judge Jamāl al-Din Yūsuf (6), son of Chief Judge Sharaf al-Din Aḥmad, son of Aqḍāʾ al-Quḍāt Ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Kafrī (7), the Ḥanafī. He passed away on the preceding Thursday night after an illness that lasted nearly a month; he was forty-three years of age. He had been appointed Chief Judge of the Ḥanafīs, preached in the Yalbughā Mosque, presided over the assemblies of the Nafisiyya (8), and taught in several Ḥanafī madrasas. He was also the first to deliver a sermon in the newly built mosque inside Bāb Kaysān in the presence of the viceroy.

In Ṣafar also died Shaykh Jamāl al-Din ʿUmar (9), son of the judge ʿAbd al-Muḥsin (10) Ibn Idrīs al-Ḥanbalī, who was the muḥtasib of Baghdad and judge of the Ḥanbalīs there. The Rāfiḍa set upon him, and he was savagely beaten in front of the vizier’s headquarters, which soon led to his death—may Allah have mercy upon him. He was one of those who stood firmly for the truth, enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong, and was among the most vigorous critics of the Rāfiḍa and other people of innovation—may Allah have mercy on him and soak his grave with mercy.