“Retribution—then blood-money!”

The vizier said, “He is entitled to the legal ruling.”

The jurist replied, “Your favors to me are countless; what ruling could still apply to me?”

“It must be carried out,” the vizier insisted.

The jurist said, “I owe a debt of one hundred dinars.”

So the vizier gave him two hundred dinars, saying, “One hundred to clear your liability and one hundred to clear mine.” ⦗1⦘

How exquisite are the lines that Ḥayṣ Bayṣ composed about him:

The mere talk of his largesse sets his tranquil shoulder quivering,
As the deep-red wine sets the drinkers of the clan astir.

Whenever the name ‘ʿAwn al-Dīn Yaḥyā’ is pronounced,
The clouds flash with brilliance and the tempered spear sways. ⦗2⦘

Ibn al-Jawzī ⦗3⦘ said: The vizier would grieve over what had passed and repent of what he had gotten himself into. He once told me, “In our village there was a mosque with a date-palm that yielded a thousand ratls of fruit. I resolved to stay in that mosque and said to my brother Majd al-Dīn, ‘Let you and I sit there; its yield will suffice us.’ Then look at where I have ended up!”

After that he began beseeching Allah for martyrdom and deliberately exposing himself to its causes. On the night of the thirteenth of Jumādā al-Ūlā in the year 560 AH he awoke during the saḥar (pre-dawn) hours and vomited. His physician Ibn Rashada was summoned; he gave him a potion, and it was said that he had poisoned him, whereupon he died.

Half a year later the physician himself was given poison; he would say, “I administered poison, so poison was administered to me,” and he died.

At dawn I dreamed that I was in the vizier’s house while he was seated. A man entered, spear in hand, and struck him with it; blood spurted forth like a fountain. The vizier turned, and there lay a gold ring. I picked it up and said, “To whom shall I give it? I will wait for a servant to come out so I may hand it over.” I then awoke and told those with me; I had scarcely finished my account when a man arrived and said, “The vizier has died.”

Someone objected, “That is impossible; I left him yesterday afternoon in perfect health.” They sent for me, and his son said to me, “You must wash his body.”