Al-Sulī said: ‘Alī ibn al-ʿAbbās al-Nawbakhtī informed us, saying: “The poet Ibn al-Rūmī had just come out from an audience with al-Qāsim ibn ʿUbayd Allāh and said to me, ‘Never have I seen an argument like the one the vizier advanced today for the eternity of the universe.’ He then recited some lines of verse.”

I (the author) remark: These are signs that this hapless man was destined for misery. We ask Allah for a good conclusion.

He died in Dhū al-Qaʿdah of the year 291 AH. After him the vizierate passed to al-ʿAbbās ibn al-Ḥasan, who was later killed alongside Ibn al-Muʿtazz.

A poet said:
“We drank, the night the vizier died, in jubilation,
and on his third day we shall drink once more;
may Allah show no mercy to those bones,
nor bless the one who inherits after him.”⦗1⦘

10 – “The Slayer of Qutaybah,” Abū Bakr ʿAbd al-Ṣamad ibn Hārūn al-Qaysī *

He was an eminent, widely-travelled imam: Abū Bakr ʿAbd al-Ṣamad ibn Hārūn al-Qaysī, from Nīshāpūr, famously nicknamed “the killer of Qutaybah.”

He heard hadith from Qutaybah, Abū Muṣʿab, Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, Ibn Rāhwayh, Hishām ibn ʿAmmār, and al-ʿAdanī.

Among those who transmitted from him were Abū Ḥāmid ibn al-Sharqī, Muʾammal ibn al-Ḥusayn, Muḥammad ibn Ṣāliḥ ibn Hāniʾ, Aḥmad ibn Isḥāq al-Saydalanī, and others.

Al-Ḥākim said: He died in Shawwāl of the year 284 AH.