818 AH, Tu, 04/04:
The sultan started to build the madrasa and the mosque near the Bāb al-Zuwayla. He took the properties near the Shamāʾil prison and destroyed it. A lot of earth was removed, until an amount of earth as big as a mountain was collected. The sultan used camels and donkeys to remove it and the sultan said: [...] The reason for all of this was that during the conflict of Mintāsh the sultan had been imprisoned in the Shamāʾil prison and suffered there enormously because of the fear and the lamentable conditions. When he saw this, he made a vow to God, that, if God would save him from here, and made him ruler of Egypt, he would demolish that prison, and built a mosque instead of it, in which the name of God the exalted would be mentioned and the prayers performed. Then God liberated him from there, and the situation changed for him, until he became sultan and ruler of Egypt. He started to fulfil his promise. When he asked some of his nadīm for advice about his idea to built a madrasa and a mosque in Cairo to be mentioned there as the sultan before him had done, most of them advised him to take the copy that was the contract of the madrasa of Barqūq at Bayna al-Qaṣrayn, to have a madrasa there, between the madrasa’s of the two sultans. He did not agree with this and said: I made a vow to God to build a madrasa and a mosque on the place of the Shamāʾil prison and to release the people from that place of disaster of which everybody had heard that fear enters the heart of those who enter it. And after that, he started. He first entrusted the command on this to Badr al-Dīn b. Muḥibb al-Dīn, the ʾustādār, then after a while, he assigned the building to amir Ṭaṭar, the shādd, and gave him a robe of honour because of this. Then he entrusted the supervision of the building to Bahāʾ al-Dīn b. al-Burjī and he appointed the shādd’s, the engineers, the teachers and the craftsmen, the writers and the messengers and the barddār. An enormous amount of money was spent on this. I heard al-Muʾayyad say: I spent 400000 dinar on this building and many people became rich of this. They built many buildings of the provisions of the madrasa. The digging of the foundation started on Thursday 04/06.