477 — Abū Zayd al-Numayrī informed me: Abū Ghassān Muhammad ibn Yahyā al-Kinānī related to me: al-Hārith ibn Ishāq informed me, saying: One of the governors of Medina appointed al-Hakam ibn al-Muttalib ibn Hantab to collect alms in one of the districts, but he remitted nothing. The governor asked him, “Where are the camels and sheep?” He replied, “We ate their meat with bread.” He asked, “Then where are the dinars and dirhams?” He replied, “We used them to bind men to us through acts of kindness.” The governor therefore imprisoned him.

While he was in prison, one of the descendants of Nuhayk ibn Yasāf al-Ansārī came to him and praised him, saying:

[al-Tawīl meter]

“My two companions, generosity is in prison—so weep
For generosity, now that its channels to us have been barred.

Each evening you see beneficence’s cloudbank,
And each morning its lightning races through the prison.

When his two fetters cry aloud, the flood tide of his sea swells
For his visitors, until cranes wheel above its waters.”

Al-Hakam then ordered that the man be given 3,000 dirhams, though he himself was still imprisoned.