people first passed through Syria in the year ninety-nine. They granted the people a guarantee of safety and had it read from the pulpit in Damascus. Despite this, they took captive what is said to have been a hundred thousand or more Muslim children. In Jerusalem, the hill of al-Sālihiyyah, Nablus, Homs, Dārayyā, and elsewhere, they perpetrated killing and captivity on a scale known only to Allah. Indeed, it is said that they took nearly a hundred thousand Muslims captive. They proceeded to violate the most virtuous Muslim women in mosques and elsewhere, including al-Aqsā Mosque, the Umayyad Mosque, and others. They razed the congregational mosque in al-Uqaybah to the ground.
We ourselves observed their army and saw that most of them did not pray. We saw neither a caller to prayer nor an imam in their army. They seized the Muslims’ wealth and children and destroyed their homes on a scale known only to Allah.
Those associated with their rule were none but the worst of creation: either a heretical hypocrite who did not inwardly believe in Islam; one of the worst adherents of religious innovation, such as the Rāfidah, Jahmiyyah, Ittihādiyyah, and their like; or one of the most wicked and openly sinful people.
In their own lands, despite having the means, they do not perform pilgrimage to the Ancient House. Although some among them pray and fast, establishing prayer and paying zakat are not their prevailing practice. They fight for the dominion of Genghis Khan. Whoever submits to their authority, they regard as