and I said to the days of budding youth,
“Come to me—for now is the season of joy!
When a man has reached the limit of his hopes,
thereafter he has nowhere left to roam.”

He then said to his boon-companions, “Join me early tomorrow for the morning draught,” rose, and retired to his sleeping-quarters. Dawn had not yet broken before Muʾayyad al-Dawlah had him arrested, seized everything in his house—stores and treasures alike—made him a public warning, and restored Ibn ʿAbbād to the vizierate.

Ibn al-Jawzī relates that when Ibn ʿAbbād (1) was at the point of death, the ruler Fakhr al-Dawlah b. Muʾayyad al-Dawlah came to visit him, seeking his counsel. Ibn ʿAbbād said to him:

“I counsel you to maintain affairs exactly as I have left them and not to alter anything. If you keep to them, they will be credited to you from first to last; but if you change them and take another course, both they and the earlier good will be credited to me, not to you. I would rather that the credit for good be yours, even though it is I who have advised you.”

The king was pleased with these words and continued in the good path he had recommended. Ibn ʿAbbād died on the evening of Friday, six days before the end of Ṣafar (2).

Ibn Khallikān says: He was the first of the viziers to be called al-Ṣāḥib; after him the title became current among them. He received it because of his close companionship with the minister Abū al-Faḍl ibn al-ʿAmīd: people used to say “the Companion of Ibn al-ʿAmīd,” and during his own vizierate the epithet was shortened to al-Ṣāḥib. Al-Ṣābiʾ, in his book al-Tājī, reports that Muʾayyad al-Dawlah b. Būyah named him al-Ṣāḥib because he had been his companion since childhood; when he took power and appointed him vizier he retained the title, and viziers after him adopted it as well (3).

Ibn Khallikān then quoted at length from the man’s generosity and virtues, recorded the people’s praise of him, and enumerated many of his works—among them his lexicon al-Muḥīṭ (“The Comprehensive”) in seven volumes, encompassing most of the language. He cited some of his poetry, including this graceful conceit:

The glass grew delicate, the wine grew delicate,
so alike that the matter became confused:
As though there were wine yet no goblet,
and a goblet, yet no wine to be used.