“O trees along the Khabur, why are you still in full leaf,
as though you never sorrowed for Ibn Ṭarīf?
A youth who sought no provision save piety,
and no riches save lances and swords.”

In that same year al-Rashīd set out from Baghdad to perform ʿumrah in gratitude to Allah—exalted is He. When he had completed the lesser pilgrimage he remained in Madinah, and in that year he led the people in the ḥajj. He walked from Mecca to Minā, then on to ʿArafāt, attending every rite and station on foot; afterwards he returned to Baghdad by way of Basra.

[Also in this year there died]
Ismāʿīl ibn Muḥammad ibn Yazīd ibn Rabīʿah (1),
Abū Hāshim al-Ḥimyarī, surnamed “al-Sayyid.” He was one of the renowned, foremost, and eloquent poets of his craft, yet he was a vile Rāfiḍī and an obnoxious Shīʿī (2). He drank wine and professed belief in al-rajʿah—that is, the return after death. One day he said to a man, “Lend me a dinar, and you shall have one hundred dinars from me when we come back to this world.” The man replied, “I fear you may return as a dog or a pig and my dinar will be lost!”

May Allah disfigure him—he used to revile the Companions in his verse. Al-Aṣmaʿī said, “Were it not for that, I would rank no one above him in his class, especially with regard to the Two Shaykhs and their two sons (may Allah be pleased with them) (3).” Ibn al-Jawzī quoted some of his poems on the matter (4), but I have refrained from reproducing them because of their ugliness and repulsiveness. When death approached, his face turned black and he was seized by extreme anguish; and when he died, people refused to bury him because he had cursed the Companions (may Allah be pleased with them).

[And in it there died]
Ḥammād ibn Zayd (5), one of the imams of ḥadith; and Khālid ibn ʿAbd Allāh, one of the righteous. He was among the chiefs of the Muslims and had ransomed himself to Allah four times.