Ibn ʿAsākir compiled his biography and cited, among his verses, the following: (1)
A man may be granted provision without the polish of his own stratagem, (2)
While sustenance is withheld from the shrewd and resourceful.
Never has wealth visited me, nor want assailed me,
Without my saying over it: “Praise be to Allah.”

He also said: (3)
If you answer “Yes” to a matter, then see it through,
For “Yes” is a debt the honorable man must pay.
But if not, then say “No,” and find ease—and give ease by it—
Lest people should say that you are a liar.

And he said as well: (4)
When a man reveals his secret with his own tongue
And then blames another for it, he is a fool.
If a man’s own breast is too narrow to hold his secret,
The breast of the one to whom he entrusts it is still narrower.

Among those who died that year were Ḥusayn (5) ibn Muḥammad al-Marwazī, the teacher of Imām Aḥmad; ʿAbd Allah (6) ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam al-Miṣrī; and Muʿāwiya (7) ibn ʿAmr.

There was also Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allah ibn [ʿAbd al-Ḥakam ibn] Aʿyan ibn Layth ibn Rāfiʿ al-Miṣrī (8)(9), one of those who read the Muwaṭṭaʾ to Imām Mālik and studied his school. Greatly honored in Egypt, he possessed extensive wealth and large estates. When al-Shāfiʿī arrived in Egypt, he gave him one thousand dinars and gathered another two thousand dinars for him from his own companions.