Among the distinguished people who died in that year was Nifṭawayh the grammarian (1): he was Abū ʿAbd Allāh Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿArafa ibn Sulaymān ibn al-Mughīra ibn Ḥabīb ibn al-Muhallab ibn Abī Ṣufrah al-Azdī, al-ʿAtakī—better known as Nifṭawayh the grammarian.

He authored a number of works on the subject, studied hadith, transmitted from various shaykhs, and trustworthy scholars in turn transmitted from him. He was reliable and composed fine poetry.

Al-Khaṭīb relates that Nifṭawayh once passed by a grocer and said to him, “Good man, how do I get to the Alley of the Two Heads”—meaning the Alley of the Rope-makers. The grocer turned to his neighbour and said, “May Allah disgrace my boy! He has been slow in bringing me the chard; if I had some here I would slap this fellow with a bunch of it.” Nifṭawayh walked away without answering him (2).

Nifṭawayh died at the age of eighty-three in Ṣafar of this very year. Al-Barbahārī, the head of the Ḥanbalīs, led the funeral prayer over him, and he was buried in the cemetery of Bāb al-Kūfah.

Abū ʿAlī al-Qālī cites in Al-Amālī some of his verses:

My heart for your sake is softer (3) than are your cheeks,
And my strength (4) is frailer than the strength of your eyelids.
Why will you not pity the one who (5) torments his own soul unjustly,
While his passion still inclines him toward you? (6)

Ibn Khallikān states that Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad (7) ibn Zayd ibn ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Wāsiṭī, the well-known theologian, author of Al-Imāmah, Iʿjāz al-Qurʾān, and other works, said of Nifṭawayh:

If a man wishes never to look upon a sinner,
Let him strive never to lay eyes on Nifṭawayh.
May Allah burn him with the first half of his name,
And make the rest of it a cry raised over him. (8)