—no praise can adore but them: phrases that rumble like an earthquake, themes that soar beyond the crescent moon; his verse limpid, its light keen, his meanings firmly built, their depths towering.

He compiled a substantial work on belles-lettres, modeled after Ibn Qutaybah’s Uyūn al-Akhbār, running to ten volumes.

Among his celebrated prose is the letter he dispatched after conquering Salamanca, a city adjoining his realm. In it he boasted to al-Muʿtamid billāh and jabbed at the latter’s conciliatory stance toward the Romans. People said that from this expedition he came away with a thousand lovely slave-girls from among the fair-skinned folk, and he wrote:

Whoever would hunt, let him hunt as I have;
my quarry was the gazelle seized from the lions’ lairs.

“O King, the Romans—if they are not attacked, they attack. Were we to covenant with one another as sincere, devoted allies, we would dull their blade and humble their pride (1). The judgment of the lord al-Muʿtamid ʿalā Allāh is a lamp that illuminates the darkness of aspiration.”

Al-Muẓaffar also produced a tafsīr (Quranic commentary) (2).

Despite his total absorption in jihad, he never slackened in the pursuit of knowledge or neglected justice. He built a college where he sat every Friday, surrounded by scholars. At night he kept vigil in a watch-tower; if he heard a sound, he sent aides to investigate, and he slept only a little.

Abū al-Aṣbagh al-Qalamandar the scribe composed these lines in his praise:

His bounty outstrips the rainfall of the clouds;
a king from whose lofty ark refreshment is sought.
A sword whose scabbards are the necks of his foes—
their blood, like rescuing showers, gives it drink.

His secretary was the vizier Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Naḥwī, a paragon of eloquence.