He kept company with Abū al-Ḥusayn ibn Samʿūn the preacher, received ḥadīth from Abū ʿUbayd Allāh al-Marzubānī, and studied grammar with Abū al-Fatḥ ibn Jinnī.
He excelled at interpreting dreams, preached to the public in the Manṣūr Mosque, and left behind both poetry and elegant prose.
Ibn Khallikān said: “Ibn al-Bawwāb refined the method of Ibn Muqla (1), polished it, and garbed it in sweetness and beauty (2).”
He applied gold with exceptional mastery. In the beginning, it is said, he worked as an illuminator who painted buildings; he then gilded books, after which he turned to calligraphy and in that art surpassed all who came before or after him. He was also a boon companion of the vizier Fakhr al-Mulk Abū Ghālib.
It is further reported that he preached in the Manṣūr Mosque, yet during his lifetime his handwriting did not command the market value that it attained after his death. For they found, in his own script, a single sheet he had written to a high official, asking on behalf of a friend for assistance worth less than two dinars; he had elaborated the request over some seventy lines, and that same sheet was later sold for seventeen Imami dinars (3).
Abū ʿAlī ibn al-Bannāʾ said: Abū Ṭāhir ibn al-Ghubārī told me that al-Ḥasan ibn al-Bawwāb informed him that Ibn Sahlān (4) summoned him, but he declined, even after the request was repeated.