He also served as vizier to the ruler of Mayyāfāriqīn, Aḥmad ibn Marwān (1).

His verse stands at the very summit of excellence (2); he was celebrated for clear judgment, shrewdness, widespread fame, and an imposing dignity. The family’s grandfather was nicknamed al-Maghribī because he had worked as a clerk in the Bureau of the West, although their roots lay in Basra (3).

Abū al-Qāsim then sought out the vizier Fakhr al-Mulk and, by his own efforts, secured the vizierate in 414 AH (4).

His correspondence is of surpassing elegance (5), and his intellect keen and incandescent.

The poet Mihyār (6) relates: “When Ibn al-Maghribī became vizier in Baghdad, he grew proud and overbearing, and the people feared him. I therefore kept my distance. Later I composed my ode rhyming in the letter bāʾ and went in to recite it before him. He raised his gaze toward me and said, ‘Sit down, old man!’ When I reached the lines:

God brought you forth in a time of decline,
a sign that leaves every onlooker amazed;
Never had eyes before beheld the sight
of the sun’s rising out of the West,

he said, ‘Well done, my master,’ and he presented me with two hundred dinars.”

Among the vizier’s own poetry:

Every man knows full well where right guidance lies,
yet he remains blind, a prisoner of his desires.