Ibn ʿAsākir transmitted this report (1). Another version relates (2) that when he was found dead there lay by his head a slip of paper in his own hand which read:

O Lord, though my sins have grown immense in number,
I know full well that Your pardon is greater still.
I call upon You, my Lord, just as You have bidden, in humble need;
but if You turn my hands away, who then will show me mercy?
If only the doer of good may hope in You,
what hope is left for the sinner, the criminal transgressor?
I have no means of drawing near save hope itself
and the beauty of Your forgiveness—besides the fact that I am a Muslim. (3)

Yūsuf ibn al-Dāya said: “I entered upon him while he was in the throes of death and asked, ‘How do you feel?’ He lowered his head for a long while, then raised it and recited:

Decay has crept through me, low and high,
and I can see myself dying, limb after limb.
No hour passes over me but that, with its bitterness,
it takes from me yet another part.
My vigor departed together with the sweetness of life,
and I recall obedience to Allah as a worn-out frame. (4)

We have offended in every possible way, so—
O Allah, overlook us, forgive us, and bestow Your pardon. (5)

Thereupon he died on the spot. May Allah forgive us and him—Âmīn.

The inscription on his signet ring read: “Lā ilāha illā Allāh, sincerely (for His sake).” He stipulated that it be placed in his mouth when his body was washed, and they fulfilled his wish. When he died, they found no wealth of his save three hundred dirhams, together with his garments and household effects. He passed away this very year in Baghdad and was buried in the Shunīziy cemetery, on the Jewish Mound. He was fifty years old—some said sixty, others fifty-nine.

One of his companions later saw him in a dream and asked, “What did Allah do with you?” He replied, “He forgave me because of some verses I composed about the narcissus:

Reflect on the vegetation of the earth and behold
the traces of what the Sovereign has wrought:
Eyes of liquid silver gazing upward,
their pupils pure and beaten gold;
Set upon stalks of emerald, bearing witness
that Allah—exalted is He—has no partner.” (6)