(1) Among these elegies is a poem by the venerable Shaykh, the Imām Ṣafī al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Muʾmin ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq, lecturer at the Bashīriyya school in Baghdad—may Allah envelop him in His mercy—(2):

Blessed is your resting place, O seal of the scholars, in the station of intimate nearness alongside the God-fearing—

the friends of the All-Merciful, the radiant lords, the guiding Imāms, the righteous elite.

Alas for death! How much abundant knowledge, keen insight, and brilliant intellect it folded away with you;

what lucid exposition that healed hearts of misguidance and cleared from them the rust of gloom (3).

Where now are those vast sciences and that faultless reasoning when questions arise and verdicts are required?

Where is that noble character and the gracious, cheerful face that welcomed every visitor at first meeting?

Since you departed, the very eye of virtue has grown inflamed, while the eyes of the people of wretchedness have cooled;

now there is no scholar to refute what they say and the ornate sophistry they weave to mislead (4)—

the aberrations of the devotees of Greek philosophy, of the Muʿtazilites, and of the Murjiʾites (5).