Abu Shāmah (1) said: “He was truly fit for the vizierate; no one of his like has held it since. He was humble, greeting people even while mounted, and he honored the scholars.”

Al-Qūṣī remarked: “He was the reason for every office I assumed or conferred. He raised me and made me forget my homeland. He restored the Mizzah Mosque and the Ḥarastā Mosque, paved the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus, built the Fawwārah fountain, and constructed the prayer-ground (muṣallā).”

ʿAbd al-Laṭīf said: “He had a pearly complexion and a cheerful countenance, was tall and sweet-tongued, crafty in his outbursts and malicious in his rashness. Along with excessive arrogance and rancor, he would avenge himself and accept no apology. He gained complete ascendancy over al-ʿĀdil and drew to him base companions such as al-Jamāl al-Miṣrī and al-Majd al-Bahnasi. They convinced him that he wrote better than al-Qāḍī al-Fāḍil and Ibn al-ʿAmīd, that in fiqh (jurisprudence) he equaled Mālik, and that in poetry he surpassed al-Mutanabbī—and they would swear to it. Outwardly he displayed extreme probity, yet whenever a large sum of money appeared he pocketed it, until it was said that the villages he owned produced more than one hundred thousand dinars in revenue. After his exile, al-Kāmil appointed him vizier again—by then he was blind—and he proceeded to confiscate people’s wealth. He used to say, ‘I regret that Ibn al-Baysānī never rolled at my doorstep’—meaning al-Qāḍī al-Fāḍil—and he would sometimes pass before his own son’s gathering, strutting in conceited admiration of himself.”

He died in Shaʿbān (2), 622 AH—may Allah pardon him.

173 – Ibn Ḥarīq, ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Makhzūmī *
The foremost of the poets, the erudite scholar, linguist, and grammarian, Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn