Youth has slipped away and grey hairs have set in;
The moment of departure has arrived—what are you waiting for?
You act as though blind, bereft of sight,
As though your very frame were hide of stone.
What further sign could you hope to behold
If only the eye of your heart were truly clear?
Ibn al-Dabbāgh also mentioned him in Ṭabaqāt al-Ḥuffāẓ.
ʿĪsā ibn al-ʿAṭṭār informed us; Jaʿfar informed us; al-Silafī informed us; Thābit ibn Bundār informed us; al-Ḥusayn ibn Jaʿfar informed us; al-Walīd ibn Bakr informed us; ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad al-Hāshimī informed us; Ṣāliḥ ibn Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-ʿAjlī narrated to us; my father narrated to me; Dāwūd ibn Yaḥyā ibn Yamān narrated to us, from his father, from Sufyān, who said:
“There is no young man in Kūfa more intelligent than Abū Usāmah.”
Abū al-Walīd passed away in Dīnawar, in Rajab of the year 392 AH.
35 – al-Badīʿ al-Hamadhānī, Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn Yaḥyā
The erudite, eloquent master, Abū al-Faḍl Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn Yaḥyā al-Hamadhānī—Badīʿ al-Zamān—the author of the Maqāmāt, the very model that al-Ḥarīrī later followed.
(*) Sources: Abu Mansur al-Thaʿalibi, Yatimat al-dahr, vol. 4, pp. 256–301; al-Hamadhani, al-Ansab; Yaqut, Muʿjam al-udabaʾ, vol. 2, pp. 161–202; Ibn al-Athir, al-Kamil fi al-tarikh, vol. 9, p. 209; Ibn al-Athir, al-Lubab, vol. 3, p. 392; Ibn Khallikan, Wafayat al-ayan, vol. 1, pp. 127–129; al-Dhahabi, Tarikh al-Islam, 4/105/2–106/2; al-Dhahabi, al-Ibar, vol. 3, p. 67; al-Safadi, al-Wafi bi-l-wafayat, vol. 6, pp. 355–358; al-Yafiʿi, Mirat al-janan, pp. 449–450; Ibn Kathir, al-Bidaya wa-l-nihaya, vol. 11, p. 340; Ibn Taghribirdi, al-Nujum al-zahira, vol. 4, pp. 218–219; Ibn al-ʿImad, Shadharat al-dhahab, vol. 3, pp. 150–151; Rawdat al-janat, p. 66; Ismaʿil Pasha al-Baghdadi, Hadiyyat al-ʿarifin, vol. 1, p. 69; Aʿyan al-shiʿa, vol. 8, pp. 306–355.
(1) His Rasail were printed in Cairo (1315 AH/1897 CE) with the commentary of Sayyid Mahmud al-Rafiʿi; they were also issued with Shaykh Muhammad ʿAbduh’s commentary at the Jesuit Press in 1889 and again in 1908. Parts of these maqamat were published in Leipzig in 1841, and an English translation appeared in Madras in 1913. See further Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur, vol. 2, p. 115.