(*) Principal sources: Ibn Khallikan, Wafayat al-Ayan 4:453-457; al-Dhahabi, Tarikh al-Islam 4:171/2; al-Safadi, al-Wafi bi-l-wafayat 1:130; al-Kutbi, Uyoun al-Tawarikh 13:315; Sibt Ibn al-Jawzi, Mirat al-zaman 8:58; Ibn Hajar, Lisan al-mizan 5:367; Ibn Taghribirdi, al-Nujum al-zahira 5:210; Ibn al-Imad, Shadharat al-dhahab 4:24-26, which places his death in 509/1115. (1) Al-Kutbi reproduces several of his verses in Uyoun al-Tawarikh: “How many a night I have spent, shrivelled by blazing grief, complaining to the stars until they almost complained of me. Dawn tarried, yet when it rose it opened the East’s eyes as though meeting the need of a destitute soul.” And also: “The same sorrow is mine, O dove among the ban-trees: I for the slender forms, you for the branches. Sing your refrain as you will, for in passion we are alike; I possess the verses of longing, while to you belong the trills and melodies.” (2) Wafayat al-Ayan 4:456 mentions among the curiosities of his poetry a work entitled al-Sadih wa-l-Baghim, composed in the manner of Kalila wa Dimna, entirely in rajaz metre and comprising a thousand lines. He presented it to the amir Abu al-Hasan Sadaqa b. Mansur, lord of al-Hilla, introducing it with these verses: “This is a handsome book that bewilders the brightest minds. I devoted to it a full ten years. From the moment I heard your name I wrote it for you. Its lines are two thousand, all of them songs. Were every poet, versifier and prose-writer to live the primeval span of Noah in fashioning a single line, none could equal it; not everyone who rhymes is a poet.”