Al-Khaṭīb (1) relates from him that he once said: “I have drunk my own urine on five occasions in pursuit of this discipline,” meaning that the hardships of travel undertaken for hadith-study compelled him to do so.

ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn Abī al-Shawārib (2): ʿAbd al-Malik al-Umawī al-Baṣrī, the judge of Sāmarrāʾ. At times he even served as Chief Judge. He was deemed trustworthy. He heard hadith from Abū al-Walīd and Abū ʿAmr al-Ḥawḍī, while al-Najjād, Ibn Ṣāʿid, and Ibn Qāniʿ narrated from him. Many people acquired a great deal of knowledge through him.

Ibn al-Rūmī the poet (3)—the “man of the two buckets” in verse—ʿAlī ibn al-ʿAbbās ibn Jurayj, Abū al-Ḥasan, better known as Ibn al-Rūmī, was the client of ʿUbayd Allah ibn Jaʿfar and a celebrated, versatile poet. Among his lines are the following (4):

When you praise the tight-fisted, all you do
Is remind them that others possess the virtue;
You gift them a grief that is bitter and long,
So if they withhold their largesse, it is only due.

And he also said (5):

Should Time attire you in a robe of health
And grant you food both pleasant and sweet,
Do not envy the pampered; for indeed (6)
As freely as Time bestows, it strips complete.

He further said (7):

Your enemy is often drawn from a friend,
So do not amass companions without end;
For sickness, more than anywhere you trace,
Comes from what you drink or what you taste.
When tomorrow a comrade turns foe outright—
Affairs, after all, are prone to change—
If sheer abundance were truly wise,
Keeping a multitude would win the prize;
But seldom do you multiply without dismay—
You find wolves in clothing along the way.