عام المجاعة الكبرى بمصر

In 596 AH the Nile stopped in Egypt without rising to thirteen cubits, and a severe dearth and famine came, which lasted into the year 598 AH, as al-Suyuti relates. ¹

He reports that people ate carrion and human flesh, and that this spread and became known. He says they went so far as to dig up graves and eat the dead. Death from hunger was so common that a man walking could see nothing but a dead or dying person. The villages perished, so a traveller would pass by a village with its houses open and its people dead. ¹

Al-Suyuti notes that al-Dhahabi related stories about this that are very harrowing. ¹