You would see him—so keen-witted that his body was slight,
yet the brilliance within him was plain for all to sight.
If a young man’s ideas are vast and grand,
a meagre frame will never hinder his stand. (1)
And Abu al-Qasim ibn Naqiyaa (2) composed an elegy for him (3):
He made the tears (4) flow like scarlet blood,
a blow that raised a Judgment Day for every eyelid’s flood.
A grief that pierced our hearts with burning pain—
between the collarbones no healer can restrain.
Why do the nights not gather their scattered array
after the loss of their native son, Abu Ishaq? (5) they stray.
If someone says, “He is dead,”—no, he has not died:
his memory lives, through the passing nights it will abide. (6)
Abu Ishaq himself said, “I set out for Khurasan, and there was not a single town I entered but that its judge, its preacher, or its mufti was one of my students.” (7)
Anushtekin al-Radwani relates: “Abu Ishaq al-Shirazi recited to me, about himself:”
(1) These two verses are cited in Wafayat al-Ayan, 1/30, and al-Wafi, 6/64, where the wording reads “yadurrahu” (harm him) instead of “yudayruhu.”
(2) He is Abu al-Qasim Abd Allah—some sources say Abd al-Baqi—ibn Muhammad ibn al-Husayn ibn Dawud ibn Naqiya, the littérateur and poet who died in 485 AH/1092 CE.
(3) All the verses except the second appear in Wafayat al-Ayan, 1/30, while the first and third are also found in al-Wafi, 6/64.
(4) The base manuscript reads: al-damiʿ.
(5) al-bajdah denotes the inner core of a matter; hence the saying about someone thoroughly versed in a subject: “He is the son of its bajdah,” i.e. fully acquainted with its secrets.
(6) Additional lines of his poetry, recorded in al-Mustafad, p. 44:
“I donned the cloak of hope while all men slept, / And rose to complain to my Lord of what I feel. / I said: ‘O my reliance in every affliction, / On whom alone I depend to remove distress! / I lay before You concerns You already know; / I have no patience nor strength to bear their weight. / I have stretched out imploring hands in utter need / To You, the best to whom hands have ever been raised. / So do not return them, Lord, in disappointment, / For the ocean of Your generosity slakes all who come.’”
(7) See: al-Subki, Tabaqat, 4/216; and al-Mukhtasar, 2/195.