Tanūjī said: Ibrāhīm ibn al-Ḥasan al-Dīnārī told us, “I heard al-Ḥusayn ibn Abī ʿAlī ibn Muqla relate that al-Rāḍī Billāh cut out his father’s tongue some time before the latter’s death and then killed him by starvation.

The cause of this, he said, was that al-Rāḍī had regretted amputating his hand; he therefore summoned him from prison and offered an apology. After that he would consult him, have him ushered into his private chamber during his drinking sessions, and grew attached to him.

But Ibn Raʾiq raised an uproar. Afraid for his own position, he planted among the caliph’s confidants someone who kept advising that Ibn Muqla should not be allowed near, until the caliph finally declared:

‘My father could write with his left hand in a script scarcely distinguishable from that he penned with his right.’

He (al-Ḥusayn) added, ‘They kept working on al-Rāḍī until he took fright of my father and destroyed him.’

Al-Ṣūlī wrote of him:
If they severed his right hand out of fear of him,
it was his pens they dreaded, not the flashing blades;
No opinion he conceived did they ever cut short—
once he sent it forth, you saw death in beards and throats. (1)

He was born in Shawwal 272 AH and died on the eleventh of Shawwal 328 AH.

There is a dispute as to whether the famed exemplar of handwriting is his work or that of his brother al-Ḥasan. Both were brilliant calligraphers, but the prevailing view is that the script belongs to al-Ḥasan. He was the first to transmit this newly evolved style derived from the Kūfic script. (2)

Ibn al-Najjar records that he was a man of letters and a poet. He visited the ruler of Syria, Sayf al-Dawlah, and copied several volumes for him. (3)