My youth has slipped away as though it had never been,
and my grey hairs have arrived as though they had always been there.
It is as if, unawares, my very soul now stands
while the calamity of death has already descended upon it.
Ah, could I but know with whose company I shall be (1)
and what God decreed for me in pre-eternity (2).
Ibn ʿAsākir also composed pleasing poetry that he would dictate after many of his sessions. He was inclined to keep apart from people, devoted to goodness, and he avoided giving testimony before judges and other such vanities.
He passed away in Rajab of 571 AH, on the night of Monday, the eleventh of the month. Al-Qutb al-Naysābūrī (3) led the funeral prayer; Sultan Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn was present, and he was buried beside his father in the Bāb al-Ṣaghīr cemetery.
Imām Abū al-Ḥusayn (4) ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Yūnīnī narrated to us at Baalbek in 593 AH; Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Wāḥid ibn Aḥmad ibn Abī al-Maḍāʾ narrated to us in 626 AH, through the recitation of the ḥāfiẓ Abū Mūsā al-Maqdisī. He said:
ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥasan al-Shāfiʿī dictated to us at Baalbek in 551 AH; al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd al-Malik informed us in Isfahan; Abū Ṭāhir Aḥmad ibn Maḥmūd al-Thaqafī informed us; Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm narrated to us; Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan ibn Qutaybah, Muḥammad ibn al-Fayḍ, and al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Raqqī said:
Ibrāhīm ibn Hishām ibn Yaḥyā al-Ghassānī narrated to us; my father narrated to me, from ʿUrwah ibn Ruwaym