During that same year, Bahāʾ al-Dawlah arrested the judge ʿAbd al-Jabbār and confiscated from him a vast fortune; among the goods sold off in the seizure were one thousand ṭaylasān (hooded cloaks) and one thousand Maghribi garments (1).
That year—as in the year before it and the one after it—the Egyptians led the pilgrimage, and the khuṭbah in the Two Holy Sanctuaries was pronounced in their name.
[Among those of note who died that year] was al-Ṣāḥib ibn ʿAbbād (2): Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAbbād ibn ʿAbbās ibn ʿAbbād ibn Aḥmad ibn Idrīs al-Ṭālaqānī, Abū al-Qāsim, the celebrated vizier known as Kāfī al-Kufāt (“the Sufficiency of the Sufficients”).
He served as vizier to Muʾayyad al-Dawlah ibn Rukn al-Dawlah ibn Būyah. His learning, virtue, brilliance, generosity, and beneficence toward scholars (3) were of the highest order. Each year he would send five thousand dinars to Baghdad to be distributed among the people of knowledge. Pre-eminent in literature, he authored works in various sciences and amassed a library so large that it required four hundred camels to transport. Among the Buyid viziers none equalled him—indeed, none even approached him—in the sum of his merits. The Buyid state lasted one hundred and twenty years, and his vizierate spanned eighteen years and some months. Through his resolve, courage, sound administration, and keen judgment he captured fifty fortresses for his master Muʾayyad al-Dawlah and the latter’s son Fakhr al-Dawlah.
He loved the sacred sciences and loathed philosophy and other (4) heterodox ideas. Once he was stricken with dysentery; every time he rose from the latrine he placed ten dinars beside it so that the attendants would not grow weary of him, and they came to wish his illness might continue. When he recovered, he opened his house to the poor and needy, who carried off its contents, estimated at about fifty thousand dinars.
He heard ḥadith from the [reliable] (5) senior authorities with notably elevated isnāds, and on one [occasion] (5) a dictation session was convened for him. People flocked to attend, and [leading emirs were present] (3). When he emerged [before them] (6) he was dressed in the garb of the jurists,