Al-ʿAskari wrote his answer on the back of the sheet:
I strive to rise, yet my resolve is bent—
my limbs have long been schooled in trembling.
So I wove in Ibn al-Tharīd’s verse (1) as though—
he had deliberately likened me to it (2) and alluded to me.
I attempt a course of firm resolve, yet I cannot attain it;
for the camel has been kept from frisking and leaping.

He then pulled himself together, mounted his mule, and set off to al-Ṣāḥib. Finding him in his pavilion absorbed in the business of the vizierate, he climbed a knoll and called out at the top of his voice, quoting Abū Tammām:
Why do I find the spacious domed pavilion barred against me,
though many a time I have opened what was barred?
It is as though it were the Garden of Paradise held aloof,
and I have no righteous deed whereby I might enter it. (3)

When al-Ṣāḥib heard his voice he called, “Enter, Abū Aḥmad, for you have the foremost claim!” When he reached him and appeared before him, al-Ṣāḥib honoured, exalted, and treated him generously.

Al-ʿAskari died on the Day of Tarwiyah of this very year (4).

Ibn Khallikān said: He was born in 292 AH and died in 82 [and three hundred] AH (5).

ʿAbd Allah ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allah (6) ibn Ibrāhīm ibn ʿUbayd Allah ibn Ziyād ibn Mihrān—Abū al-Qāsim al-Shāhid (7), better known as Ibn al-Thallāj. He received this sobriquet because his grandfather once presented ice to a caliph, who was greatly pleased by it; thereafter the caliph referred to him as al-Thallāj (the Ice-Man).

Abū al-Qāsim heard ḥadīth from al-Baghawī, Ibn Ṣāʿid, and Ibn Abī Dāwūd (8); reporting from him were al-Tanūkhī, al-Azharī, al-ʿAtīqī (9), and other ḥuffāẓ (hadith masters).