but the attendants did not come with the cushions, so he grew angry with them and said, “Did Allah raise me up only for me to put my companions down? By Allah, no one shall sit with me unless he is given two cushions!”

We remained like that for several nights until we asked to be excused. He then said, “By Allah, I want nothing of this world except some good I can send ahead, or a friend I can benefit. Were it not that stepping down from the seat of precedence is a folly unfitting for someone in my position, I would sit on the same level with you.”

Al-Suli said: I never once heard him address any of his secretaries except by his kunya. When he fell ill on one occasion, he remarked, “Nothing about my illness distresses me more than the delay of people’s needs—among them are those in dire straits.”

He would not allow people to walk in front of him.

Among his poetry—and it is said he composed nothing else—are these two verses:
O my tormentress, is there any stratagem that leads to union,
any way to soften your heart by the sight of my face?
No good is there in life while you remain so grudging,
nor in a reunion that is won against your will.

We have been informed that Ibn al-Furat derived from his properties—up to the time he was reinstated to the vizierate—an income of seven million dinars, for it is said that his estates yielded two million dinars each year.

It was also reported that he wrote to the Bedouins, urging them to raid Baghdad—Allah knows best.

When he became vizier in 304 AH, seven robes of honor were conferred upon him, and that day forty thousand pounds of ice were served in his residence.

Al-Suli said: I composed a eulogy for him, and he rewarded me with six hundred dinars.

ʿAli b. Hisham the scribe related: I visited Ibn al-Furat during his third vizierate. His son al-Muḥassin had by then taken control of most of his affairs, and it was said to him, “There he is, squandering …”