that they had nothing to eat except dry bread with a little salt, and that at times even the salt ran out.
Ibrāhīm said to her, “My daughter, are you afraid of poverty? Look at that corner—there are twelve thousand fascicles I have written on the sciences. Sell one fascicle each day for a single dirham; whoever has twelve thousand dirhams is no pauper.”
He passed away with seven days remaining in Dhu al-Ḥijjah. Qāḍī Yūsuf ibn Yaʿqūb led the funeral prayer for him at the Gate of Anbār, and the gathering was extraordinarily large.
Al-Mubarrad the Grammarian (1)
He is Muḥammad ibn Yazīd ibn ʿAbd al-Akbar, Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Azdī al-Thumālī, better known as al-Mubarrad, the Basran grammarian—an imam in language and Arabic philology. He studied under al-Māzinī and Abū Ḥātim al-Sijistānī, was trustworthy and precise in what he transmitted, and was a rival of Thaʿlab. Among his works is al-Kāmil on adab. He was nicknamed “al-Mubarrad” because he once hid from the governor with Abū Ḥātim beneath a bed-cover (2).
Al-Mubarrad (3) said: “One day in al-Raqqah some companions and I went to visit those confined for madness. Among them was a young man, newly arrived, wearing fine clothes. When he saw us he said, ‘May Allah greet you! Where are you from?’ We answered, ‘From Iraq.’ He replied, ‘May my father be ransomed for Iraq and its people! Shall I recite to you, or will you recite to me?’
“I said, ‘Rather, you recite to us,’ so he began:
God knows how grievously I ache,
unable to voice the pain I feel;
I own two souls: one a land has kept,
while another land has seized the other.
The soul that stayed finds patience useless,
her stamina too frail to cope;
And I suppose my absent one, like my present one, (4)
wherever she is, feels what I feel.
“I said, ‘By Allah, that is delightful; give us more,’ so he recited:
When, just before dawn, they made their camels kneel
and loaded them up, (5) passion sent the beasts awhirl; (6)
From behind the curtain’s folds she cast me a glance,
gazing at me while tears from her eyes would spill;
With fingers whose knuckles were like strings of pearls she waved farewell.
I cried, ‘May your legs never carry you again, O camel-driver!’