He had already held the vizierate for Abū al-ʿAbbās before the latter came to the throne. Finding him better than he had imagined, the caliph placed the whole burden of the state in his hands. He rose to a station no vizier before him had attained, and he was without peer in political insight, administrative skill, and loyalty to his friends.

He had once taken refuge with a merchant; when he later became vizier, he repaid the kindness in a single day with one hundred thousand dinars, granting the man a large revenue-bearing estate that he sold to him for a token price, from which the merchant earned a profit of another one hundred thousand dinars. (1)

On one occasion he briefed Qadi Ismāʿīl on sixty case files in the space of an hour.

He was born in 226 AH.

At his burial Ibn al-Muʿtazz said:
“Here lies Abū al-Qāsim in his grave;
Stand and behold how even mountains pass away.” (2)

He also recited about him:
“It is not the musk of embalming that scents his shroud,
but the fragrance of the praise he has left behind.
What you hear is not the creak of the bier,
but the backs of valiant men that have been broken.” (3)