whoever still has a thousand dinars in Baghdad—while his standing is undiminished—why should he be distressed?”

He thereupon fell in prostration to God, praised Him, and wept, saying, “God has rescued me through you. No one has consoled me with anything more helpful than your words. I have eaten nothing for three days; stay with me so we may eat and talk.”

I stayed with him for two days.

Al-Tanūkhī (1) says: I met Abū ʿAlī, the son of Ibn al-Jaṣṣāṣ, and asked him about what is related of his father—that when the imam completed the Fātiḥah he recited, “wa-lā al-ḍāllīn” (“nor those who have gone astray”) instead of saying “Āmīn.” He answered, “Yes, by my life, that is true.”

They also report that he once wished to kiss the vizier’s head, but someone objected, “It is oily.” He replied, “I would kiss it even if it were smeared with filth.”

And when an ancient Qurʾān codex was shown to him, he asked, “Is it Kisrāwī?”

(2) Abū ʿAlī said, “Most of that is mere fabrication. There was no naïveté in him that would make him act so. He was one of the shrewdest of men, but he behaved like this in the vizier’s presence and liked to portray himself as simple-minded so that the ministers would feel safe with him, because he so often had private audiences with the caliphs.

Now let me tell you a story. My father related that when Ibn al-Furāt became vizier, he conceived an evil design against me and pursued it relentlessly. At that time I possessed seven million dinars, in cash and in jewels. I thought matters over, and just before dawn an idea came to me. I went to his residence and knocked. The porters said, ‘What brings you to him at this hour?’

I replied, ‘Inform the chamberlains that I have come on an urgent matter.’

They informed them, and a chamberlain came out to me and said, ‘In an hour.’

I said, ‘The matter is more pressing than that.’

So they roused the vizier, and I went in; around his couch stood fifty guards, and he was alarmed. He had me brought forward,