we used to think that the passing traces of despair would comfort us,
but now that we have truly despaired, what lure can despair still hold?

Whenever our hearts confide in you in secret,
grief would finish us off were it not for the solace we muster.

Your loss has turned our days; they have become black
when, with you, our nights were gleaming white.

May the time you spent with us—the season of joy—be watered,
for to our spirits you were nothing but sweet basil. (1)

He died in Rajab of the year 463 AH.

His son Abū Bakr (2) later served as vizier to al-Muʿtamid (3) ibn ʿAbbād.

117 – Ibn al-Muhtadī Billāh, Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad al-Hāshimī

The Imām, scholar, preacher, authoritative hadith master, and senior transmitter of Iraq: Abū al-Ḥusayn Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿUbayd Allah ibn ʿAbd al-Ṣamad ibn Muḥammad, descendant of al-Muhtadī Billāh, Commander of the Believers Muḥammad son of al-Wāthiq Hārūn ibn al-Muʿtaṣim. A Hāshimī, ʿAbbāsid, and Baghdadi, he was widely known as Ibn al-Gharīq (4) and was the foremost of Banū Hāshim in his age.

He was born in Dhu al-Qaʿdah, 370 AH.

He heard hadith from al-Dāraquṭnī and ʿUmar ibn Shāhīn—indeed he was the last to narrate from either of them—as well as from ʿAlī ibn ʿUmar al-Sukkarī, Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf ibn Dūst, Abū al-Fatḥ Yūsuf al-Qawwās, Abū al-Qāsim ibn Ḥabābah, Abū al-Ṭayyib ʿUthmān ibn Muntāb, and Abū Ḥafṣ