(1) Ibn Khallikan (3 / 93) writes that his share of good fortune was little save deprivation: no place could contain him, nor did any ruler extend patronage to him. Ibn Bassam, in Al-Dhakhira (2 / 2 / 835), adds that he eked out a living as a warraq (copyist–bookseller); he had real skill and a sharp eye for the trade, yet he embraced it even though its market was depressed and its path deserted. On that craft he composed: “As for book-copying, it is a grove of a craft whose leaves and fruits are naught but deprivation. I likened its practitioner to a man with a needle: he clothes the naked while his own body is bare.” (2) Selections of his poetry appear in Al-Dhakhira, Nafh al-Tib, Qalaid al-Iqyan, Al-Kharida and other biographical sources. Al-Maqri, in Nafh al-Tib (4 / 345), cites inter alia: “The people of this world, in ignorance, have magnified it; it looms large to them, though in truth it is paltry. They pounce on one another for its sake like dogs snarling over a carcass. What excuse—indeed, no excuse—can there be for Ibn Sabin, so smitten with desire? He is water of which the nights have left in the vessel of life only a single sip. Long have I striven to win mankind’s favour, but their satisfaction is an unattainable goal. Contentment is, to a youth, a hidden treasure, and piety the best possession to hold fast. O you whom vast distances withhold, for whose news my ears stand on tiptoe: I envy whoever enjoys your nearness, my very eyelids envy my ribs for you. The days have not folded you away from me— they have merely moved you from my eyes to my breast.” Further bibliographic notices: Al-Ansab 4 / 95 & 121; Nuzhat al-Albā’ 379–381; Al-Muntazam 9 / 241; Sharh al-Sharishi 1 / 3; Muʿjam al-Buldan 2 / 235; Muʿjam al-Udabā’ 16 / 261–293.