son of Aḥmad al-Lakhmī, an Egyptian adherent of the Mālikī school.
One of the foremost poets of his time, he also possessed learning in jurisprudence and a hand in the philosophical sciences. He is the author of the verses:
O traveller—fair patience follows in your wake; …
Is there a path that might grant me a meeting with you?
My eyelids have done you no justice, though they are blood-red with tears, …
Nor has my heart proved loyal, even as it burns for you. (1)
He died in 603 AH (2) at Qūṣ.
245 – Ibn Sanāʾ al-Mulk, Hibat Allāh ibn Jaʿfar al-Miṣrī *
The eminent judge, consummate stylist and eloquent writer: Abū al-Qāsim Hibat Allāh ibn Jaʿfar, son of the judge Sanāʾ al-Mulk Muḥammad ibn Hibat Allāh al-Miṣrī, the celebrated poet.
He studied the Qur’an under al-Sharīf Abū al-Futūḥ (3) and grammar with Ibn Barrī (4).
… al-Qutursi is rendered in Ibn al-Futi’s Talkhis as al-Qurtubi; this is an obvious and unfortunate misreading. The scholar Ibn Khallikan explains in his Wafayat: “al-Qutursi— with a damma on the qaf, a sukun on the ta, a damma on the ra, followed by a sin. I investigated this nisba repeatedly but could not discover its precise origin, except that he was from Egypt. Later, Bahaʾ al-Din Zuhayr b. Muhammad, the poet-secretary, informed me that the attribution goes back to his grandfather Qutrus; he had been his companion and transmitted some of his poetry.”
(1) Ibn Khallikan’s Wafayat reads the word as “muhtariq” (burnt).
These two verses are not reproduced by the author in Tarikh al-Islam; consult them to assess the claim that the Siyar is merely an abridgement of the Tarikh, and reflect on what we have stated in this edition’s introduction to the Siyar.
(2) Al-Mundhiri specifies the death date as the twenty-fourth of Rabi al-Awwal of that year.
(*) Khurida al-Qasr, 1/64 ff. (Egyptian section); Takmila li-Wafayat al-Naqala, 2, bio. 1209; Wafayat al-Aʿyan, 6/61; the Mukhtasar of Abu al-Fida, 3/120; Tarikh al-Islam, 18/1/335-337; al-Ibar, 5/29-30; ʿAqd al-Juman by al-ʿAyni, 17, fol. 335-336; al-Nujum al-Zahira, 6/204; Shadharat al-Dhahab, 5/35-36.
(3) Nasir b. al-Hasan al-Ziri.
(4) Abu Muhammad ʿAbd Allah b. Berri, the grammarian.