in 328 AH, and afterward he again served as vizier for al-Muttaqī li-llāh (1).
His career remained sound: he was well-versed in chancery composition and thoroughly acquainted with administration and statecraft.
It is said, however, that a few lapses were recorded against him. Among them is that he once asked ʿAlī ibn ʿĪsā, “My master, why did you name the dish ‘daykbarāk’ so?”
He replied, “Because it puffs you up before the people!”
He died in Rajab of 332 AH, leaving several sons and daughters, and he lived sixty-one years.

164 – al-Nawbakhtī, Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAlī ibn Nawbakht *
The erudite scholar Abū Sahl Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAlī ibn Nawbakht, a Baghdadi and one of the extremist Shiʿites as well as a leading author among them. Concerning the “Awaited One” he used to say: “He died while in occultation; during that occultation his son assumed the office, then the son died and the grandson rose to the task”—a claim with no proof (2).
The heretic al-Shalmaghānī (3) invited him to follow him, whereupon al-Nawbakhtī said, “I have a bald patch on the front of my head; if he can make hair grow there, I will believe in him,” and he turned away from him (4).
Among Abū Sahl’s writings are: Kitāb al-Imāma (The Imamate); Kitāb al-Radd ʿalā al-Ghulāt (Refutation of the Extremists); Kitāb Naqd Risālat al-Shāfiʿī (Demolition of al-Shāfiʿī’s Epistle); Kitāb al-Radd ʿalā Aṣḥāb al-Ṣifāt (Refutation of the Proponents of Divine Attributes); Kitāb Ibṭāl al-Qiyās (Invalidation of Analogical Reasoning); Kitāb al-Ḥikāya waʾl-Maḥkī (Narration and the Narrated), along with several other works.