several anecdotes about his frugal way of life, his asceticism, and his scrupulous piety. He died at the age of ninety-five; may Allah Most High have mercy on him.
ʿAbd Allah ibn Muhammad ibn Warqaʾ, the amir Abū Aḥmad al-Shaybānī, belonged to a noble and respected household. He lived to be ninety [years].
(1) He reported from Thaʿlab, who took from Ibn al-Aʿrabi, that the latter recited these verses describing women:
“She is the crooked rib—you will never make her straight;
Indeed, to straighten ribs is only to break them.
They unite weakness with mastery over a man—
Is it not strange, their frailty and their sway?”
I say: The poet borrowed this meaning from the sound hadith: “Woman was created from a rib, and the most crooked part of the rib is its uppermost. If you try to straighten it you will break it; but if you take benefit from her, you benefit while crookedness remains in her.”
Muhammad ibn ʿĪsā (2) ibn ʿAmruwayh, al-Julūdī (3), is the transmitter of Sahih Muslim through Ibrāhīm ibn Muhammad ibn Sufyān the jurist (4) from Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj. He was an ascetic who supported himself by copying manuscripts, and he reached the age of eighty. May Allah, by His favor and generosity, show him mercy.
[Then came the year 369 AH]
In its month of Muḥarram the amir ʿUmar ibn Shāhīn died. For forty years he had ruled the land of al-Baṭīḥa, having seized it by force. Princes, kings, and caliphs were unable to overcome him. Troops, detachments, and full armies were dispatched against him more than once, yet each time he defeated and shattered them, standing firm and powerful, and he remained so for all that period. Despite all this, he died peacefully in his bed [a natural death] (6)—may the eyes of the cowardly never sleep.
His son al-Ḥasan succeeded him. ʿAḍud al-Dawla sought to wrest the realm from his hands and sent against him a force containing a great number of soldiers, but al-Ḥasan ibn ʿUmar ibn Shāhīn routed them, sent them back in defeat, and all but annihilated them. ʿAḍud al-Dawla thereupon opened negotiations, and they agreed that al-Ḥasan would send him a yearly payment, while he in turn received hostages from ʿAḍud al-Dawla. This is indeed one of the astonishing marvels.
In the month of Ṣafar that same year the sharif Abū Aḥmad al-Ḥusayn ibn Mūsā al-Mūsawī, the naqīb of the Talibids, was arrested, and