It is related that he once said, “Three men have embarrassed me.

First: al-Bandahī came to my gathering. I set before him various fruits, among them some exquisite apricots. He ate and kept on eating, so I remarked, ‘They clog the stomach.’ He retorted, ‘I do not care for a great man who turns physician.’

Second: al-Farandī—this was when I had returned from the royal court in a foul mood—asked, ‘Where is our master coming from?’ I answered, ‘From the curse of God.’ He replied, ‘May God bring our master’s estrangement to an end.’

Third: al-Māfarrūkhī. In the days of his beauty I teased him, saying, ‘I saw you beneath me.’ He answered, ‘With three others just like me.’

Al-Bustī composed the following verses on al-Ṣāḥib:
O you who breathed life into a kingdom whose bones were dust,
and by your wisdom re-gathered an affair once scattered;
You are the vizier, though no formal patent was delivered to you,
and the realm after you, if it forgoes consultation, will never be secure.

Al-Ṣāḥib died in Ṣafar 385 AH, at the age of fifty-nine. His father had served as vizier to Rukn al-Dawlah.

378 – The Samanid Abū’l-Qāsim Nūḥ ibn Manṣūr ibn Nūḥ
Ruler of Bukhara and Samarkand and the heir of its line of kings. He was Abū’l-Qāsim Nūḥ ibn Manṣūr ibn Nūḥ ibn ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Naṣr ibn Aḥmad ibn Ismāʿīl ibn Aḥmad ibn Asad ibn Sāmān.

He died in Rajab 387 AH, and his reign lasted twenty-two years.