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a village called Dimul, one of the villages of Abwan, and the picture of the Mistress and the picture of the Angel Michael in the church of Thunah. Macarius the monk,
a disciple of the saintly Bessus of the Monastery of Abba Kame
4 renowned for his sanctity and beautiful manner of life, informed me about this.
The habitations of Egypt (Misr) were smitten with exceedingly great and hard punishments. The first of these was the occurrence of
a great earthquake in the forenoon
5 of Tuesday,
the second (day after) Easter, such that it overthrew a number of places at ar-Ramlah and Tinnis and elsewhere, but it did not have any effect at Alexandria. There was after it,
much plague, so that there did not remain in Tinnis of the thousands who were in it, except some hundred people. There was a house in it, and all who were found in it were lying
on their mattresses, and their money and everything which they possessed (was) in it. Then there were carried out from their houses the bedsteads, the domed canopies, the benches,
mattresses and money, and ar-Ramlah became deserted, and no one remained in it. Then affairs became serious, until (at length) war was waged by the Easterns and the Turks who were
masters of Cairo (Misr), against Nasr ad-Dawlah ibn Hamdan, and they applauded the Sultan that he had caused to be brought out a red tent which was pitched outside the gate of
the Castle at the place known as the Golden Gate, and (that) he had manifested his anger against the Bani Hamdan and those who (were) with them. There was among them in
Cairo (al-Kahirah) and Cairo (Misr) a party of Kurds, some five thousand men. On that day a crier cried among them and among
Footnotes
4 i. e. one of the monasteries of the Wadi'n-Natrun.
5 Daha is the period in the morning, one hour after sunrise up to about 10 a.m.
