At the beginning of Rabīʿ al-Ākhir the death occurred of Muʿallim Dāwūd (1), who had been in charge of the Army Bureau, to which the oversight of the civil bureaux was eventually added. Thus the two posts were united under him—something that, to my knowledge, had never been combined in anyone before. He was the most conversant of people with army records, the names of its personnel, and the locations of the iqṭāʿ grants. His father had served as deputy to the supervisors of the armies and had been a Rabbanite Jew; this son embraced Islam about ten years, or so, before his father’s own death. Outwardly he appeared upright—Allah knows best what lay within him. About a month before his passing he fell ill, and on this day he died. The funeral prayer was performed for him in the Umayyad Mosque, opposite the Eagle, after ʿAṣr, and he was then borne to a tomb he had prepared in his orchard at Ḥawsh. He was nearly fifty years old.

Early in the same month a noble sultanic rescript arrived ordering that the monies previously taken from Christian women—together with the levy earlier exacted from them—be returned. All of it had been an injustice, yet taking from the women was the more outrageous and grievous wrong. Allah knows best.

On Monday, the fifteenth of the month, the deputy of the sultanate—may Allah strengthen him—commanded a raid on the orchards of the dhimmīs. There they found pressed wine in jars and large vats (2); the whole of it was poured out, praise and thanks be to Allah, until it ran through the alleys and streets.

The Tura River (3) even rose from the quantity spilled. The deputy then ordered that the dhimmīs in whose possession it had been found be heavily fined, and they were already under taxation. A few days later a proclamation was made in the city that dhimmī women were not to enter the bathhouses together with Muslim women but only those reserved for them; and that, should dhimmī men enter the baths together with Muslim men, marks were to be placed on the necks of the unbelievers—bells, rings, and the like—by which they might be recognized. The dhimmī women were further ordered to wear shoes of mismatched colours, one white and the other yellow, or something similar.

When Friday the nineteenth of the month—that is, Rabīʿ al-Ākhir—arrived, the three judges and a number of muftis were summoned.

From the Shāfiʿī side came his two deputies, Judge Shams al-Dīn al-Ghazī and Judge Badr al-Dīn ibn Wahbah; Shaykh Jamāl al-Dīn, son of the Judge of Zabadānī; the author, Shaykh ʿImād al-Dīn ibn Kathīr; Shaykh Badr al-Dīn Ḥasan al-Zurʿī; and Shaykh Taqī al-Dīn al-Fāriqī.

On the other side were the two Chief Judges, Jamāl al-Dīn the Mālikī and Jamāl al-Dīn the Ḥanbalī; Shaykh Sharaf al-Dīn, son of the Judge of the Mountain, the Ḥanbalī; Shaykh Jamāl al-Dīn ibn al-Shurayshī (4); Shaykh ʿIzz al-Dīn ibn Ḥamzah, son of Shaykh al-Salāmiyyah, the Ḥanbalī; and ʿImād al-Dīn al-Ḥanāʾī. Thus I met with the deputy of the sultanate in the hall