and he is the one who said:
“O you whose glances slay more surely than any man’s, yet whose mouth is the sweetest—
how is it that wormwood and honey both dwell in you?
In the round of your cheek—itself a rising sun—
a rose whose beauty is deepened by wine-red blush and modesty alike.
The creed of my love for you within my heart is ever renewed (1)
by scriptures traced upon your cheek or messengers sent by your eyes.
Were you to look into my heart you would find there
from the work of your eyes a wound (2) that will never heal (3).”
He died in the year 540 AH.
126 – Ibn al-Shajari, Hibat Allah ibn ʿAli ibn Muhammad al-Hashimi *
The polymath, shaykh of the grammarians, Abū al-Saʿādāt Hibat Allah ibn ʿAli ibn Muhammad ibn Ḥamza ibn ʿAli al-Hashimī, al-ʿAlawī, al-Ḥasanī, al-Baghdādī, a descendant of Jaʿfar ibn al-Ḥasan ibn al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAli ibn Abī Ṭālib.
(1) The manuscript reads mujaddada; the correct form follows Wafayat al-Ayan.
(2) The manuscript has jarh, which is erroneous.
(3) The verses are cited in Qalaid al-Iyan and in Wafayat al-Ayan 6/204, where an additional couplet precedes the last one: “In kunt tajhal anni ʿabdu mamlaka * mur-ni bima shi’ta atihi wa-amtathil” (“If you do not know that I am the kingdom’s servant, command what you wish and I shall carry it out and obey”).
(*) Main biographical sources: Nuzhat al-alba, pp. 404–406; al-Muntazam 10/130; Muʿjam al-udaba 19/282–284; Ibn Nuqtah, al-Istidrak, section on al-Sijzi and al-Shajari; Inbah al-ruwat 3/356–357; Wafayat al-Aʿyan 6/45–50; Isharat al-taʿyin, p. 57; al-Badr al-safir, fol. 219; al-ʿIbar 4/116; Talkhis Ibn Maktum, pp. 407–408; al-Mustafad min dhayl Tarikh Baghdad, pp. 248–249; Masalik al-absar, vol. 4, part 2, pp. 309–311; Mirʾat al-j inan 3/275–277; al-Bidaya wa-l-nihaya 12/223; Tabaqat Ibn Qadi Shahbah 2/280–282; al-Nujum al-zahira 5/281; Bughyat al-wuʿat 2/324; Kashf al-zunun, pp. 162, 174; Shadharat al-dhahab 4/132–134; Rawdat al-janat, p. 231; Hadiyat al-ʿarifin 2/505; Muʿjam al-matbuʿat, p. 134; Brockelmann, Geschichte, vol. 5, p. 165.
Al-Suyuti states in Lub al-Lubab that Ibn al-Shajari’s nisba derives from a lone tree that stood in their house, unique in the town. Yaqut reports in Muʿjam al-Udaba that he was linked to the Shajari household through his mother.