Al-Ḥāfiẓ al-Khaṭīb transmitted from him, and Ibn al-Najjār devoted an extended biography to him in several excerpts. He died in Muḥarram of the year three (1) and seventy and four hundred, i.e. 473 AH, at the age of seventy-two. He had studied “Gharīb al-Ḥadīth” with Ibn al-Bādī.
218
– Atsiz* ibn Awaq (2) al-Khwarizmī
Lord of Damascus, counted among the greatest of tyrant kings.
Hibat Allah ibn al-Akfānī said: “Prices soared in the year King Atsiz besieged Damascus; a single gharārah-measure sold for more than twenty dinars. He subsequently took the city by treaty, settled in the Emir’s Palace inside Bab al-Farādis (3), had the khuṭbah delivered in the name of al-Muqtadī bi-Allah of the Abbasids, and the Egyptian ruler’s name was removed from the public prayer. That was in the year sixty-eight (4), i.e. 468 AH.”
…as evidence of the unsoundness of his creed. The first of these verses says:
By your Lord, O revolving sphere,
do you move by choice or under compulsion?
See Muʿjam al-udabaʾ 10/24-30; Fawāt al-wafayāt 3/341; al-Wāfī 3/11-12; Ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbāʾ, pp. 333-335.
(1) Al-Ansāb and al-Lubāb date his death to “some year in the seventies”, whereas Muʿjam al-udabaʾ and Ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbāʾ give the year seventy-four.
(*) For the narrative see: al-Kāmil fī al-tārīkh 10/68, 99-100, 103-104, 111; al-Mukhtaṣar 2/187 (under Yusūf b. Abq), 192, 193-194; Duwal al-Islām 1/273, 3-4-5; al-ʿIbar 3/252, 266, 269, 274-275; Tammat al-Mukhtaṣar 1/63, 69, 571; al-Wāfī bi-l-wafayāt 6/195; al-Bidāya wa-l-nihāya 12/112-113, 119; al-Nujūm al-zāhira 5/87, 101-102; Tadhhīb Ibn ʿAsākir 2/334; Muʿjam al-ansāb wa-l-usarat al-ḥākima, p. 46.
(2) The name is corrupted in Tadhhīb Ibn ʿAsākir to “Āf” and in al-Bidāya to “Awf”.
(3) One of Damascus’s eight gates, located on the northern side; today it is called Bāb al-ʿAmāra.
(4) See Tadhhīb Ibn ʿAsākir 2/334; al-Kāmil 10/99; al-Mukhtaṣar 2/192.