My two companions, by Allah, whenever dusk descends and darkness thickens, some yearning soul must sigh or some love-maddened heart go wild.
More of his poetry (1):
My body—kept far from you, O stirrer of my sorrows—languishes with love; no remedy has yet eased the wasting of my affliction.
O you for whom, whenever reproachers blame me, I lay bare my excuse with tears that stream unbidden.
Shall I allow my slayer to shed my blood with sanction from The Concise (al-Wajīz), or is the verdict of licence found in The Refinement (al-Tahdhīb) or in The Comprehensive (al-Shāmil)?
Or has your murderous glance itself issued you a legal opinion, permitting the destruction of lives by the sorcery of a Babylonian eye?
This Abū al-Durr left a small dīwān, and in those days his poetry was widely recited in Iraq and Syria.
They found him dead in his house in Jumada I, 622 AH.
As for Yāqūt al-Malikī, he has already been mentioned in this volume, and Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī the historian will appear later.
186 – The Mangoneller, Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb ibn Ṣābir ibn Barakāt *
The eminent man of letters, Najm al-Dīn, Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb ibn Ṣābir ibn Barakāt al-Ḥarrānī, later al-Baghdādī, the poet.
Born: in the year 554 (2) AH.
He transmitted hadith from Abū Manṣūr ibn al-Shiṭranjī and Abū al-Muẓaffar ibn al-Samarqandī.