there, at the age of fifty-three. After him the sovereignty of Aleppo passed to his son Saʿd al-Dawla Abū al-Maʿālī Sharīf, but his father’s retainer Qarghawayh soon overpowered him, driving him from Aleppo to his mother ⦗1⦘ in Mayyāfāriqīn. He later returned, as will be related ⦗2⦘.
Judge Ibn Khallikān recorded at length both what Saif al-Dawla himself composed and what was said about him. He wrote: “Since the age of the caliphs no monarch had at his gate the like of the poets who gathered at Saif al-Dawla’s door. He lavished stipends on many of the greats, such as al-Mutanabbī, the two Khalīdīs, al-Sariyy al-Raffāʾ, al-Nāmī, al-Babbaghāʾ, and others.” Ibn Khallikān ⦗3⦘ further states that Saif al-Dawla was born in 303—some say 301—AH, that he took Aleppo after 330 AH, and that before that he had ruled Wāsiṭ. Fortune then shifted until he seized Aleppo, wresting it from Aḥmad ibn Saʿīd al-Kilābī, the Ikhshīdid governor ⦗4⦘; he also held Damascus for a time.
On one occasion he said to his companions, “Which of you will approve my verse? I doubt anyone will dare:
‘You possess my body and make it waste—
why, then, would you shed my blood?’
His cousin ⦗5⦘ Abū Firās answered on the spot:
‘If indeed I am your master,
then all decision is mine.’ ⦗6⦘
In the same year there died ⦗7⦘ Kāfūr the Ikhshīdid ⦗8⦘, freedman of Muḥammad ibn Ṭughj al-Ikhshīd. Because his master’s sons were minors, he assumed control, ruling Egypt and Damascus and opposing ⦗9⦘ Saif al-Dawla and others. Inscribed upon his grave is the couplet:
“Behold what changes the passing days have wrought:
they erased those who dwelt here, yet the days endure.”