On the same day, a caravan left, including some people for whom ‘Abd al-Rahman’s intercession with the khan had been effective; the majority of them were Mamluks in the secretarial professions. After one day’s traveling, the company was attacked by Bedouin who stripped them of all their possessions and left them naked but for their trousers. It was in that state that they arrived at al-Subayba after two days of rapid travel. Having replaced their clothing, they headed for Safad and rested there for a few days. At that point, one of the boats of Ibn ‘Uthman, sultan of Byzantium, arrived and transported them as far as Gaza from where they traveled overland to Egypt.
On the first day of Sha‘ban, ‘Abd al-Rahman parted from his travel companions and urged his camel-driver toward al-Mahmudiya, the quarter where he lived.
Conclusion
Once we reached al-Mahmudiya, I headed straight for my house on foot, without either burnous or possessions. After such a long absence I was longing to hug my wife and daughter. I knocked insistently on the door, and Sha‘ban opened it. There he stood, mouth agape, eyes staring. He was so surprised and shocked he almost fainted.
I gave him the warmest of embraces as he welcomed my return and gave thanks to the Creator for my safe delivery. I asked him about my wife and daughter, but all he could do was keep saying, “A miracle from God! I have prayed to you, O God, to keep my Master safe from harm, and here You have brought him back to his family safe and sound! You have answered my prayer!”
“What about my wife, Sha‘ban?” I insisted. “Where’s my daughter?”
“It’s hard for me to stand, Master. Please sit here beside me, and I’ll tell you. When the Egyptian army returned to Cairo, the rumor spread that you’d been killed. ‘The great polymath from the Maghrib has been killed by the Mongol wolf,’ they all said. When your wife heard the news, her nerves gave way. Her brother — God curse him — convinced her to go back with him to her family in Fez. I blamed him for what he was doing, but he kept saying over and over again, ‘You’ve blamed me, old man, you’ve blamed me! Keep on doing it, I love being blamed!’ On the day they left, I tried to stop them, but he was too strong for me.”
“How is the little girl, Sha‘ban?”
“Like all little girls of her age, she fell sick. All that encouraged her mother to take her back to Fez to consult a physician there. But I’m sure she’s fine.”
Now that I had returned, albeit bruised and battered, I had a host of questions. However, I decided to postpone them till I was safely reinstalled in my office and could think about the next move. Every day I asked Sha‘ban a few more questions; sometimes the answers I got were useful, but, more often than not, they just led to yet more questions. For more than a month I did not leave the house. The only relief I could get from my misery was through prayers, intercessions, and continual supplications for relief from my worries. Toward the end of the month, I started to get the better of my depression, particularly once I had decided to make preparations for a journey to Fez in search of my wife who had disappeared. However, my plans on that score were interrupted by an unexpected visit from one of Sultan Faraj’s messengers. He came to tell me about his journey to Timur in order to convey to him the Mamluks’ acceptance of the peace agreement. He also told me that, just before the Mongols finally departed, Damascus and the mosque had been set on fire again. As he was about to leave, he urged me, with a sinister sneer in his voice, to accept a purse of money from Timur in payment for the mule he had purchased from me. However, I refused to accept the purse until I had consulted the sultan on the matter.
By noon on the same day I managed to overcome my weariness and depression enough to make my way to the al-Ablaq Palace. I needed to remove any shadow of suspicion of treason and bribery as soon as possible and to nip any plots and intrigue in the bud.
While waiting for my meeting with the sultan, I asked the chamberlain — who was only recently hired — where Yashbak was and learned that he had been appointed viceroy of Alexandria. So there was yet more news to make a bad situation worse and lessen my hopes of restoration to favor. When I went into Faraj’s chamber, I found him busy talking to his companions. I walked over and greeted him. In a clearly audible voice I told him about the mule, the way that Timur had taken it from me, the amount of money in the purse, and my innocence of any malice in the matter. I asked that it be either returned to its owner or else registered in the treasury.
“No, no,” replied the sultan in a drunken stupor, “it belongs to you.” It was clear that he rejected the entire story and disapproved of the fact that I had used it as a pretext for coming to see him.
My relationship with this sultan will never be one of warmth and respect; the psychological barrier that separates us can never be bridged. But I no longer care about what goes on in the palace. My own sense of pride, my preoccupation with my own new situation, and other factors all combine to vitiate my need for all that. Thus it was that, when I received the purse, albeit with a deduction for the person who brought it, I praised God for releasing me from any incipient difficulties over this matter of the mule.
It was almost the end of Sha‘ban, and there was still no news from Fez or Umm al-Batul. I was still extremely worried. For that reason, I wrote to the Mamluk sultan requesting his permission to travel to the Maghrib, merely pointing out that I longed to see my family and homeland. Unfortunately the response to this request took the form of a decree appointing me Maliki judge in Cairo for the third time. Into this new responsibility I read a desire on the sultan’s part to keep me under the watchful eye of the Mamluk administration. All I could do now was to come up with some other way of escaping my situation. The best way I could think of was to insist on the strictest possible application of the law, a total rejection of applying two different standards, and an avoidance of any kind of recommendation or intercession when it came to dealing with cases and grievances. As a result, not even a year went by before I was dismissed from the position yet again. The position was sold to the person who paid for it in a kind of financial dog-fight, a man named Jamal al-Din al-Bisati, someone well versed in the fields of intrigue and bribery. Even so, I did not wait until my inevitable dismissal before trying another avenue of escape.
In Safar 804, I decided to write to the Marini sultan in Morocco, Abu Sa’id, even though I knew nothing about him because the Maghrib was so distant and communication about events was so poor. I decided to concentrate on the threat that the Tatars represented and on making him aware of the need to remain on his guard against the expansionist ambitions of the man who had gained total control over the khanate and its dominions, Timur Lang the Mongolian. I recounted to the Maghribi ruler the period I had spent as an adjunct to the khan’s retinue in Damascus, but avoided mentioning the fact that I had written for him a description of the Maghrib region. I then provided a short account of Tatar history, from the time when they launched a series of attacks across the River Oxus under their king, Genghiz Khan, all the way to his children who had divided up his widespread dominions in East and Central Asia. All these lands had also come under the control of Timur, son of Chagatai, ravager of peoples and lands, who had further expanded Mongol territories. In my document I compared the Tatars with the Arabs for their courage and Bedouin qualities of endurance, all with the aim of encouraging its primary reader to mobilize and toughen the Arabs of the Maghrib in readiness for emergency situations.
My aim in writing to the Marini sultan was not just to replicate my motivations in producing the earlier document for Timur. I also wanted to persuade the sultan to write a letter to Sultan Faraj requesting that I be allowed to return to the Maghrib. I had to find someone to deliver the letter, then wait to see what happened.