I (the author) say: He died in Rajab of the year 468 AH.
209 – Ibn Ḥayyūs Muḥammad ibn Sulṭān ibn Muḥammad al-Ghanawī *
The eminent amir (1), the poet of Syria, Muṣṭafā al-Dawlah, Abū al-Fityān Muḥammad ibn Sulṭān ibn Muḥammad ibn Ḥayyūs al-Ghanawī, of Damascus, compiler of the Dīwān (2).
He heard hadith from his maternal uncle, Abū Naṣr ibn al-Jundī.
Among those who transmitted from him were al-Khaṭīb, Abū Muḥammad ibn al-Samarqandī, al-Nasīb, and the judge Yaḥyā ibn ʿAlī al-Qurashī.
Ibn Mākūlā (3) said: “In Syria I never met anyone whose poetry surpassed his.”
I say: He was born in 394 AH (4).
He died in Aleppo in Shaʿbān of the year 473 AH (5), and he is the one who said:
“Many a time I have told the one who asked about them …
and my reliance is upon guiding those who have gone astray.”
(*) Al-Ikmal 2/370; al-Kamil fi al-Tarikh 10/117; al-Muhammadun min al-Shuara, pp. 129-130; Wafayat al-Ayan 4/438-444; al-Mukhtasar fi Akhbar al-Bashar 2/194 (where the name is corrupted to Ibn Jiyush); al-Mushtabih 1/211; al-Ibar 3/279; Tammat al-Mukhtasar 1/572; al-Wafi 3/118-121; Mirat al-Janan 3/101-103; Tabsir al-Muntabih 1/400; Maahid al-Tanassis 2/278-282; Kashf al-Zunun, pp. 765, 773; Shadharat al-Dhahab 3/343-344; Zubdat al-Halab 2/40-41; Introduction to the Diwan edited by Khalil Mardam, Damascus 1951; cf. Brockelmann, History of Arabic Literature (Arabic ed.), 5/48-49.
(1) Ibn Khallikan states that he was called “the Amir” because his father had been one of the Arab amirs (Wafayat al-Ayan 4/438).
(2) The Diwan was printed in Damascus in 1951 in two volumes with a preface by Khalil Mardam; it consists of odes praising Syrian leaders and princes, especially the Hamdanids and Banu Mirdas.
(3) Al-Ikmal 2/370.
(4) Shadharat al-Dhahab misreads the date as “seventy-four.”
(5) Al-Kamil, al-Mukhtasar, and its Supplement all record the year 472 as the date of death.