So al-Rashīd did so, and some people praised him for it while others found fault with him. As for al-Qāsim, the affair never came together for him; death and destiny snatched him away before he could attain his hopes and aims.
When al-Rashīd had completed the ḥajj he summoned the emirs and viziers who were with him, together with the crown prince Muḥammad al-Amīn and ʿAbd Allāh al-Maʾmūn. He drafted a document embodying the arrangement, and the emirs and viziers wrote their signatures as witnesses. Al-Rashīd wished to hang it inside the Kaʿbah, but it fell to the ground, whereupon people said, “This is a matter whose annulment will be swift.” And so it turned out, as will be mentioned.
On the occasion of this pledge being concluded in the Kaʿbah, Ibrāhīm al-Mawṣilī recited:
The best of matters in their final outcome,
the affair most worthy to be brought to completion,
is that whose ordinances have been decreed
by the All-Merciful in the Sacred Sanctuary.
Abū Jaʿfar Ibn Jarīr spoke at length on this episode, and Ibn al-Jawzī followed him in al-Muntaẓam⦗1⦘.
In the same year the following notables passed away:
• Aṣbagh ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Marwān ibn al-Ḥakam, Abū Zayyān,⦗2⦘ in the month of Ramaḍān;
• Ḥassān ibn Ibrāhīm, the judge of Kirmān, at the age of one hundred;
• the poet Salm al-Khāsir⦗3⦘—Salm ibn ʿAmr ibn Ḥammād ibn ʿAṭāʾ. He was called al-Khāsir (“the Loser”) because he sold a copy of the Quran and with the proceeds bought the dīwān (collected poems) of Imruʾ al-Qays,⦗4⦘ though it was also said that he spent two hundred thousand on literary pursuits.
He was an eloquent poet, able to compose entire pieces on a single rhyme letter, as in what he said about Mūsā al-Hādī:
Mūsā the rain, a first shower, then it pours;
how many took heed, then relapsed;
how many decreed, then forgave;
upright in conduct, enduring in legacy,
best of mankind, scion of Muḍar,
a full moon at its zenith to the onlooker;
he is the refuge⦗5⦘ of those present,
the pride of those yet to come.
Al-Khaṭīb reports that he followed an uncommendable path of frivolity and immorality; that he was one of the pupils of Bashshār ibn Burd; and that his verse was finer than Bashshār’s. Among the pieces in which he surpassed Bashshār are his words: