824 AH, Mo, 31/01:
ʾAmīr kabīr Ṭaṭar gave a robe of honour to ʿAlam al-Dīn b. al-Kuwayz and appointed him as kātib al-sirr, in replacement of his son-in-law qāḍī Kamāl al-Dīn b. al-Bārizī. Al-Maqrīzī said: “The bow was taken by one who was not its fashioner, and affairs were bolstered by one who was not the man for them.” I say: “The meaning of the words of al-Maqrīzī is not to depreciate Ibn al-Kuwayz, but the office of kātib al-sirr is an important office, and the holder of it needs to have a broad knowledge of fiqh, grammar, poetry and prose, correspondence and letters, and an extensive knowledge of history, chronicles and the deeds of the ancestors. If not, it would be as under al-Mālik al-Ẓāhir Barqūq, when a letter arrived from one of the Persian kings and qāḍī Badr al-Dīn b. Faḍl Allāh was not capable of read it, and he was the kātib al-sirr. So the sultan, on the road to Damascus, had to summon shaykh Badr al-Dīn Maḥmūd al-Kulistānī, one of the Sufi’s of the Shaykhūn khānqāh, to decipher the words for him. This coincided with the approach of the death of Ibn Faḍl Allāh, and many ʾaʿyān were striving to become kātib al-sirr, by offering large amounts of money, but Barqūq paid no attention to them, and sent someone to summon al-Kulistānī, who did not even have a coat to make a decent appearance. He gave him a robe of honour and appointed him as kātib al-sirr, but this story has already been told completely in the chapter on the second sultanate of al-Malik al-Ẓāhir Barqūq. Al-Kilustānī pursued a course in which he won the admiration of al-Malik al-Ẓāhir and drew his attention to many matters of which the sultan had never heard from any other. After hem no one held the function as him, except qāḍī Nāṣir al-Dīn b. al-Bārizī and his son, this Kamāl al-Dīn, as they were both worthy of the office and more. When he was dismissed and this ʿAlam al-Dīn was appointed in his place, this worried the ʿulamāʾ, and these worries were justified when ʿAlam al-Dīn sat on the dais and read the petitions to ʾamīr kabīr Ṭaṭar he misread the name of Ibn Jammāz as Ibn al-Ḥimār. The naqīb al-jaysh corrected him publicly, saying Ibn al-Jammāz, Ibn al-Jammāz, and repeated this until the people laughed.