I say: This is confusion itself, and it was only after his death that I found this statement, in his handwriting. I never heard it from him in spoken words, and it’s a shame to mention it. As for the statement “Al-Malik al-Ẓāhir Barqūq bought him from the merchant”, this is correct, but before 801. That he did not pay the price for him is possible, but that al-Malik al-Nāṣir Faraj manumitted him is a statement that is not made by anyone but him, and the consensus of the Ẓāhirī mamluks is that al-Malik al-Ẓāhir manumitted him, and issued clothing and horses to him, among a large number of other mamluks, of whom a great group are still alive today. Before he died, al-Malik al-Ẓāhir made another liberation of mamluks, which included al-Malik al-ʾAshraf Barsbāy al-Duqmāqī, al-Malik al-Ẓāhir Jaqmaq al-ʾAlāʾī and others. Now it was the custom of Barqūq not to issue horses to his julbān until they had been in the barracks for years, not to make two issues in one year and to make one for his mamluks in a long period of time, following it with another only after another long interval. This was also the custom of the rulers before him. According to this the purchase of Ṭaṭar must have been before the year 801. When al-Malik al-Ẓāhir wished to manumit Ṭaṭar he included him in a number of student mamluks. Ṭaṭar was short of stature and al-Ẓāhir thought he was young and sent him back to the barracks, with the younger mamluks. Amir Jarbāsh al-Shaykhī al-Ẓāhirī, the raʾs nawba, was standing there and he took Ṭaṭar by the arm and said: Oh sultan, this is a jurist, a student, a veteran worthy of favour. So al-Malik al-Ẓāhir ordered horses for him, and Suwaydān the Koran reader and the ʾimām of sultan al-Malik al-Ẓāhir wrote his manumission. When he was an amir and after he became sultan, whenever he saw Nāṣir al-Dīn Muḥammad, the son of Jarbāsh al-Shaykhī, he prayed to God to have mercy on his father, and said: AL-malik al-Ẓāhir Barqūq only freed me because of the intercession of Jarbāsh-May God have mercy on him- and he was good to his son. As for the statement “Ṭaṭar remained in the barracks until al-Malik al-Nāṣir returned to the sultanate after his brother al-Manṣūr ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz,”, this would be in the year 80, and this is a mere meaningless conjecture, as Ṭaṭar was in that time one of the leaders of the insurrection, and was in line for the amirate and for wālī of one of the districts. For instance, before this, in the conflict with Timurlank, in the year 803, he was one of the leaders of the faction that wanted Shaykh Lājīn al-Jarkasī sultan in Cairo and returned to Egypt. At that time he was already one whose mischievous actions were to be feared. In the year 808 Barsbāy al-Duqmāqī (al-Malik al-ʾAshraf) had become one of the khāṣṣakī, one of the sāqī’s, khāṣṣ and one of the ʾaʿyān. He was one of the younger companions of Ṭaṭar, who became attached to him and by his intercession obtained what we have mentioned and others. This continued until Ṭaṭar interceded for him after al-Malik al-Muʾayyad imprisoned him in Marqab and banished him to Damascus. All this happened while Ṭaṭar was higher than him and than others of the ʾaʿyān of the Ẓāhirīya, who called him ʾaghā from those days on. If, as al-Maqrīzī says, al-Malik al-Nāṣir freed him in 808, Ṭaṭar would have been one of the younger mamluks of al-Nāṣir, as the mamluks he manumitted were those he inherited from his father, this being his first large group manumission. They included a large group, like al-Malik al-ʾAshraf ʾĪnāl al-ʿAlāʾī, the actual sultan, amir Ṭawkh min Timrāz, the actual ʾamīr majlis, amir Yūnus al-ʿAlāʾī, one of the actual amirs of 100. Those would be veterans in relation to Ṭaṭar, greater and older in age. This assertion could only be made by one who is not informed about the institutions of sultans and in general does not know how rulers act. Were it not that al-Maqrīzī made this statement in a number of his works I would not have addressed myself to answering him, for this is something about which no one has any doubt and no two men differ. But I excuse him for what he has reported, since he was not in the government service and transmits information about the Turks from ordinary individuals. And he had made many errors of this and similar kinds, to many of which I directed his attention and he corrected them, relying on my statements; there they are, emended in his own writing, in passages referring to Turks, their names, and their acts. End