to reach you he folded up the width of the plain, making (1) … the furthest that death could threaten him no more than catching sight of the palace. (2)
ʿAḍud al-Dawlah used to say:
“Whenever I see al-Salāmī in my audience, I imagine that Mercury has descended from the heavens to me.”
And al-Salāmī said of him:
“Panegyrists liken him, for valor and bounty, …
to one who, if he beheld him, would rank as the humblest page.
Within his host are fifty thousand men like ʿAntarah—
and fiercer still—and in his treasuries a thousand Hatims.” (3)
He is also the one who said:
“When your cheek was touched by the first downy growth,
it became fettered by the chain of the side-lock.” (4)
He passed away in the year 393 AH, at a little over fifty years of age.
I have linked his nisba to Madīnat al-Salām (Baghdad).
40 – Ibn al-Bāji, Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad al-Lakhmī *
The Imām, ḥāfiẓ, and critical scholar, Abū ʿUmar Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn
(1) Al-Wafi reads: ‘ajil (hasty).
(2) After that line the following two verses are quoted:
Fa kuntu wa-‘azmi fi al-zulami wa-sarimi * thalathatu ashya’a kama ijtama‘a al-nisr,
Wa-bashsharat amali bi-mulkin huwa al-wara * wa-darun hiya al-dunya wa-yawm un huwa al-dahr,
(roughly: “So I, my resolve amid the darkness, and my sword were three things joined as the vulture gathers; my hopes foretold a realm that is all mankind, a dwelling that is the whole world, and a day that equals eternity”).
See Wafayat al-A‘yan 4/407; al-Yatima 2/401; al-Muntazam 7/229; al-Wafi 3/318.
(3) These two lines are also found in Tarikh al-Islam 4/94/2; Yatimat al-Dahr 2/421; Wafayat al-A‘yan 4/409.
(4) Cf. Wafayat al-A‘yan 4/409.
(*) Additional biographical sources: Jadhurat al-Muqtabas 128-129; Tartib al-Madarik 4/684; al-Ansab 2/18-19; al-Sila 1/11-12; Bughyat al-Multamis 172-174; al-Lubab 1/103; al-Mushtabih 2/628; Tarikh al-Islam 4/100/2; Tadhkirat al-Huffaz 3/1058-1059; al-Ibar 3/60; al-Dibaj al-Mudhahhab 1/234-235; Tabaqat al-Huffaz 414; Shadharat al-Dhahab 3/147.