“So long as you live, be accommodating to all people, for you are dwelling in a world that runs on tact and conciliation.
Who masters the art of tact will practice it; but whoever fails to learn will one day find that his only table-companion is bitter regret upon regret.”

He died in the city of Bust in Rabīʿ al-Awwal of this very year, according to Ibn Khallikān. (1)

al-Ḥusayn ibn Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd Allah (2) ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Bukayr (3), Abū ʿAbd Allah al-Ṣayrafī, was a consummate ḥāfiẓ (master ḥadith memorizer). He heard ḥadith from Ismāʿīl al-Ṣaffār, Ibn al-Sammāk, al-Najjād, al-Khuldī, and Abū Bakr al-Shāfiʿī. (4) Among those who narrated from him were Ibn Shāhīn, al-Azhari, and al-Tanūkhī.

Al-Azhari relates that he once entered and found several large volumes lying before him. Whenever al-Ṣayrafī recited a chain of transmission (isnād), he would supply its wording from memory; and whenever he recited the wording (matn), he would produce its chain [from memory] (5). Al-Azhari continues: “I repeated this with him many times, and on every occasion he cited the ḥadith—chain and text—exactly as it appeared in his book. He was reliable, but people envied him and spoke ill of him.”

Al-Khaṭīb reports that Ibn Abī al-Fawāris accused him of adding to the list of shaykhs he had heard from, inserting men into the isnāds, and joining together reports that were originally disconnected.

He died in Rabīʿ al-Awwal of this year at the age of sixty-one. (6)

Ṣamṣām al-Dawlah ibn ʿAḍud al-Dawlah, ruler of the lands of Fars: his cousin Abū Naṣr ibn Bakhtiyār rose against him, so he fled and sought refuge with a band of Kurds. Once they had drawn him deep into their territory they plundered the contents of his treasuries and stores. Ibn Bakhtiyār’s men then overtook him and killed him, carrying his head in a basin. When it was set before Ibn Bakhtiyār he said, “This is a precedent your father set.” (7) That occurred in Dhū al-Ḥijjah of the present year. He was thirty-five years old when slain, and had ruled for nine years and some months.

ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Yūsuf al-Ḥakkār (8), Abū al-Qāsim, served as secretary of correspondence (kātib al-inshāʾ) to ʿAḍud al-Dawlah and later became vizier to his son.