He said, “So I went to Abū al-Ḥasan ibn al-Qazwīnī and told him, ‘Whatever Allah causes you to say, I shall do.’ When I entered, he said, ‘O Abū al-Ḥasan, speak truthfully and then visit whomever you wish.’

I returned home, and there at my door were the vizier’s envoys. I went with them, and when I came into his presence he asked, ‘What kept you from us?’ I offered an excuse, whereupon he said, ‘I have seen a dream.’

I replied, ‘My method is to interpret dreams by means of the Quran.’

‘That pleases me,’ he said.

He related, ‘I saw the sun and the moon come together and fall into my lap.’ Delighted, he added, ‘How could both kingship and the vizierate be united for him?’

I said, ‘Allah, Exalted is He, says: “And the sun and the moon are brought together. On that Day man will say, ‘Where is the escape?’ No indeed! There is no refuge.”’ (Q 75:9–11). I repeated these verses to him three times.

He withdrew to the women’s quarters, and I left. Three days later he set out for Wāsiṭ in the most wretched condition, and it was there that he was killed.

Al-Khaṭīb said: ‘As for Ibn al-Bawwāb, the master calligrapher, I do not know that he transmitted anything at all.’ (1)

Abū Ghālib ibn al-Khālah reported: Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Naṣr the scribe informed us, ‘Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Hilāl, known as Ibn al-Bawwāb, related to me’—and he recounted an incident whose gist is this: Ibn al-Bawwāb discovered a Qur’an codex of thirty fascicles in the treasury of Bahāʾ al-Dawla, penned by Abū ʿAlī ibn Muqla, lacking one fascicle. He copied the missing section and gave it an antique look, removed a cover from one of the other fascicles and bound his own section with it, then commissioned a new cover for the fascicle whose binding he had taken. The portion he had written escaped detection even by the most accomplished scribes. (2)