ten of the palace pages. He hurled a dagger into the moat and said, “Whoever wants this, let him leap in after it.” All of them sprang in at once and were cut to pieces. We therefore withdrew, and Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn concluded a truce with him.

Qutb al-Dīn relates in his Chronicle that Sinān later sent an envoy to Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn. When the sultan found nothing on the man that might arouse suspicion, he cleared the audience hall for him, leaving only a handful of attendants. Even so, the envoy refused to convey his message until the room was completely emptied. Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn dismissed everyone except two mamluks. The envoy said, “I have been ordered to speak only in private.” The sultan replied, “These two will not leave; deliver your message or depart, for they are as my own sons.”

The envoy turned to the pair and asked, “If I were to command you, on behalf of my master, to kill this sultan, would you do it?”

They answered, “Yes,” and drew their swords. The sultan was stunned. One of the two then accompanied the envoy out, whereupon the sultan sought to placate Sinān.

Among Sinān’s poetry:
“How many people there are—yet how few!
And among the few, how rarer still the noble.
Would that, if they were not created refined,
They had at least kept the company of one who is.”

Sinān died—as we have already noted—in 589 AH.

94 – al-Talqānī, Abū al-Khayr Aḥmad ibn Ismāʿīl ibn Yūsuf
The shaykh, the imam, the erudite scholar, preacher, and polymath, Radiyy al-Dīn, Abū al-Khayr Aḥmad ibn Ismāʿīl ibn Yūsuf al-Talqānī al-Qazwīnī, the Shāfiʿī.