in one volume; and Khumāṣiyyat al-Rāḥ (1), a five-part poem censuring wine, ten booklets—I said: I think by “booklet” he means three leaves—and the work Saqṭ al-Zand, and the book al-Qawāfī wa-l-Awzān (2), sixty booklets. He mentioned many other literary pieces as well, and his treatise on asceticism known as Istaghfir wa-Istaghfirī—versified, about ten thousand lines. The total comes to fifty-five separate works (3).
He said: altogether they amount to roughly four thousand one hundred and twenty (4) booklets. I replied: I have already calculated for you what a booklet is.
Al-Qifṭī (5) said: Most of his books have perished; only those that left Maʿarrat before the infidels overran it were spared.
I say: His grave lies inside Maʿarrat, in a neglected place. Among those who narrated from him were Abū Ṭāhir ibn Abī al-Ṣaqr al-Anbārī and a number of others. The discussion has grown long, and the man was scarcely on familiar terms with ascetics.
… to a group; the fourth concerns addressing a single woman, the fifth addressing two women, and the sixth addressing several women (al-Inbah 1/60).
(1) The manuscript reads Ḥamāsat al-Rāḥ, but the correct title is the one adopted here. Al-Qifṭī explains that this classification is built on the letters of the alphabet: for each letter that can take a vowel he sets down five sajʿāt with ḍamma, five with fatḥa, five with kasra, and five left unvowelled.
(2) Al-Qifṭī names the work Jāmiʿ al-Awzān al-Khamsa allati dhakarahā al-Khalīl bijamīʿ ḍurūbihā (Compendium of the Five Metres mentioned by al-Khalīl in all their varieties), in which he lists the rhyme schemes of every metre. In Yāqūt’s Muʿjam and in Kashf al-Ẓunūn the title appears simply as Jāmiʿ al-Awzān. Al-Qifṭī himself cites it again under this shorter title when reviewing the books of Abū al-ʿAlāʾ that he had seen.
(3) The present biographer has not included all the works recorded by al-Qifṭī; see al-Inbah 1/56 ff. and Muʿjam al-Udabāʾ 3/145 ff. Additional works by the author that have been published are ʿAbath al-Walīd, a study of the poetry of Abū ʿUbāda al-Walīd ibn ʿUbayd al-Buḥturī (Beirut, United Company, ed. Nādiyā ʿAlī al-Dawla), and Risālat al-Hanāʾ, issued by the Commercial Press in Beirut with commentary and editing by Kāmil Kilānī.
(4) The words placed between brackets are taken from al-Inbah.
(5) Al-Inbah, 1/66.