And in this same year there died: Ibn Bassam the poet (1) — Abu al-Hasan (2), ʿAli ibn Ahmad (3) ibn Mansur ibn Nasr (4) ibn Bassam, al-Bassami, a consummate satirist who spared no one from his invective, not even his own father. His mother was Ummama bint Hamdun al-Nadim (5).

Ibn Khallikan records many samples of his verse. Among them are the lines he composed when the Caliph al-Mutawakkil demolished the grave of al-Husayn ibn ʿAli, ordered that it be ploughed over, and that every trace of it be erased. Ibn Bassam nurtured fierce hostility toward ʿAli and his descendants, so when that deed occurred — in 236 AH (6) — he said:

By Allah, if the house of Umayyah once committed
the murder of the Prophet’s grandson, oppressed;
then his own kin have matched that crime today—
behold, by your life, his tomb laid low!
They mourned that they had not shared in his killing,
so they pursued him still, reducing him to dust. (7)

[Then the year 304 AH began]

In that year the Caliph al-Muqtadir Billah dismissed his vizier, Abu al-Hasan ʿAli ibn ʿIsa ibn al-Jarrah. A severe rift had arisen between him and Umm Musa the qahramāna, so the vizier asked to be relieved of office; he was therefore removed, and none of his property was confiscated.

Abu al-Hasan ʿAli ibn Muhammad ibn al-Furat (8) was summoned and restored to the vizierate after five years of dismissal. On the Day of Tarwiyah the Caliph invested him with seven robes of honour, granted him three hundred thousand dirhams, ten trunks of garments, and horses.