On the morning of Wednesday, the thirtieth of Ramadan, robes of honor were conferred upon Chief Judge Sarī al-Dīn Ismāʿīl (1), a Mālikī who had come from Ḥamā to assume the Mālikī chief judgeship in place of Chief Judge Jamāl al-Dīn al-Masallatī, who had been dismissed. His deed of investiture was read aloud in the Mālikī prayer-niche of the Great Mosque, and the judges and notables were in attendance.

On the morning of Wednesday, the seventh of Shawwal, Amīr Ḥayyār ibn Muhannā arrived in Damascus in a posture of obedience after long-drawn battles with the state armies. All those clashes had been waged simply to secure his audience on the imperial carpet, which he had consistently declined out of fear of being fettered, imprisoned, or even killed. After all that, he now appeared, intending to travel on to Egypt to make peace with the great amir Yalbughā. He was received by the chamberlains, the protocol officers, and a throng of people who streamed out to watch. He lodged in the Qasr al-Ablaq, accompanied by ʿUmar Shāh, the deputy of Ḥamā, who stayed with him. The very next day he set out with him for Egypt (2).

Qāḍī Walī al-Dīn ʿAbd Allāh, agent of the public treasury, read to me a letter from his father, Chief Judge Bahāʾ al-Dīn Abū al-Baqāʾ, head of the Shāfiʿī judiciary in Egypt. In it he related that the great amir had revived a teaching circle in the Mosque of Ibn Ṭūlūn, appointing seven instructors from the Ḥanafī school and granting each jurist a monthly stipend of forty dirhams and one irdabb of wheat. He added that a number of scholars who had not been Ḥanafīs had transferred to the school of Abū Ḥanīfa in order to obtain places in that lesson.

[The Tafsīr Lesson in the Umayyad Mosque]

On the morning of Wednesday, the twenty-eighth of Shawwal in the year 767 AH, I attended the Qurʾānic exegesis lesson founded by the king of the amirs, the deputy of the sultanate, Amīr Sayf al-Dīn Manklī Bughā—may Allah have mercy on him. The session is funded from the mosque endowments he renewed while he was its superintendent—may Allah reward him. He designated fifteen students from all the legal schools, assigning each student a monthly stipend of ten dirhams, twenty to the repeater (muʿīd), twenty to the absentee-scribe, and eighty to the teacher. He also distributed charity upon inviting people to the lesson. The judges and dignitaries gathered, and I commenced the first commentary on Sūrat al-Fātiḥah. It was a memorable day; all praise and gratitude belong to Allah, through Whose help success and purity are attained. End.

[Year 768 AH]

(The year opened while the ruler of the Egyptian and Syrian lands, the Two Sanctuaries, and the other territories was King al-Ashraf ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn al-Malik al-Nāṣir Muḥammad ibn Qalāwūn; the atābak of the armies and administrator of his realm was Amīr Sayf al-Dīn Yalbughā al-Khāṣṣakī; and the governor of Damascus was Amīr Sayf al-Dīn Manklī Bughā…) (3)