The passion within him blinds him to the ugliness of his own defect, yet with practiced skill he scrutinizes the shortcomings of others.

The judge Ibn Khallikan (1) traces the vizier’s ancestry back to Bahrām Gūr and notes that he authored a Dīwān of poetry, the Mukhtaṣar Iṣlāḥ al-Manṭiq (Abridgment of the Correction of Speech), and the book al-Iʾnās (Companionship). He was born in 370 AH, committed to memory works on language and grammar, memorized roughly fifteen thousand verses of poetry, and excelled in arithmetic by the age of fourteen. He is the one who said:

I see people in this world like a shepherd
whose pastures have grown strange—
there is no grazing ground left among them.
Water without meadow, and meadow without water;
and where both water and meadow are found—there lurks a beast of prey. (2)

He ranked among the shrewdest men of his age. After fleeing from al-Ḥākim, he unsettled the intentions of the ruler of Ramla, one of his kinsmen, then made for the Ḥijāz and enticed the Emir of Mecca with hopes of the caliphate and the seizure of Egypt. This alarmed al-Ḥākim and threw him into disquiet.

He also wrote to al-Ḥākim:

You—and only you—know full well
that I wield a tongue that, in the cause of glory, both builds and demolishes.
A man is not called forbearing because his palm is kissed and so he is pleased;
rather, the forbearing one is he whose hand is bitten, yet he remains patient. (4)

He died in Mayyāfāriqīn in 418 AH. In accordance with his will, his coffin was taken to Kūfah, where he was buried near the sanctuary (5). He was a Shiʿite.