during his first vizierate cost five hundred dinars every Friday, and he could not do without an evening draught after the Friday prayer and a morning cup on Saturday. (1)

He also said that he had seen a net stretched over the orchard, woven of silk, (2) and beneath it were all kinds of birds beyond description. (3)

It was further related that he built an enormous mansion, and someone composed these lines:

Say to Ibn Muqla, “Easy now—do not be hasty;
Be patient, for you are lost in tangled dreams.
You toil to raise, from other people’s ruins,
A house that too will be pulled down in a few days (4)
You kept seeking Jupiter’s happy fortune for it,
Yet did not ward it from the baleful star of Mars.
The Conjunction and Ptolemy have never agreed,
Whether to annul a thing or to confirm it.” (5)

Six months later the mansion was burned down, and it has remained a cautionary lesson. (6)

Ishaq ibn Ibrahim al-Harithī said: al-Hasan ibn Ali ibn Muqla told us, “The reason my brother’s hand was cut off was a single remark. His affairs had already been set right with al-Radi and Ibn Raʾiq, and they had ordered that his estates be restored to him. Some people delayed, so my brother wrote them a harsh letter of reproach.

We kept advising him to do the opposite, but he would say, ‘By Allah, I will never abase myself before that lowly fellow.’

A close friend of Ibn Raʾiq—the man who ran his regime—then visited him. My brother did not rise for him, and he delivered a long discourse, the substance of which Ibn al-Najjār records, showing his arrogance and recklessness. A few days later he was arrested and his hand was severed.

Whenever he rode out, a group of astrologers would cast his horoscope for him.