then oppose the soul in what it craves, for passion is the very sum of corruption. (1)

Abū al-Qāsim al-Nasīb said: Abū Bakr al-Khaṭīb recited to us—verses he had composed himself—: (2)
Do not envy (3) the man of this world for its gaudy display, (4)
nor for a fleeting pleasure that brings an early thrill.
Time is swifter than anything in the way it turns,
and its action is plain before creation, clear to see.
How many a drinker found his death in the honey he sipped,
and how many wore a sword that became the blade of his own slaughter. (5)

Those who died in the same year as al-Khaṭīb include: Ḥassān ibn Saʿīd al-Manīʿī (6); Abū al-Walīd Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Aḥmad ibn Zaydūn, the poet of al-Andalus (7); Abū Sahl Ḥamd ibn Walakīz in Isfahān; ʿAbd al-Wāḥid ibn Aḥmad al-Malīḥī (8); Abū al-Ghanāʾim Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī al-Dajjājī (9); Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Abī al-Haytham al-Turābī (10) in Marw; Abū ʿAlī Muḥammad ibn Wishāḥ al-Zaynabī; the ḥadith master (ḥāfiẓ) Abū ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-Barr (11); and Abū Ṭāhir Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-ʿUkbarī, who died at the age of seventy-three—he was the brother of Abū Manṣūr al-Nadīm (12).