Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī relates:

Shaykh Abū al-Ṭayyib al-Ṭabarī recited to us, saying: al-Muʿafā ibn Zakariyyā composed and recited the following lines on his own behalf:

Say to the one who envies me:
Do you know against Whom you have shown discourtesy?
You have affronted Allah in His decree⦗1⦘,
For you were not content⦗2⦘ with what He granted me.
So He requited you for my sake by increasing my share
And closing before you every avenue of pursuit⦗3⦘.

He—may Allah Most High have mercy on him—died in Dhū al-Ḥijjah [of this very year]⦗4⦘ at the age of eighty-five.

Ibn Fāris, the author of al-Mujmal, is also said to have died in 395 AH, as will be mentioned below⦗5⦘.

Amat al-Salām⦗6⦘, daughter of the judge Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn Kāmil ibn Khalaf ibn Shajarah⦗7⦘, known as Umm al-Fatḥ, heard ḥadith from Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl al-Baṣlānī and others. In turn, al-Azharī, al-Tanūkhī, Abū Yaʿlā ibn al-Farrāʾ, and many others transmitted from her. More than one scholar praised her for her piety, excellence, and nobility. She was born in Rajab of the year 298 AH and passed away in Rajab of the present year at ninety-two years of age. May Allah, in His generosity, have mercy on her and on us.

[Then the year 391 AH began.]

In this year the caliph al-Qādir bi-’llāh took the oath of allegiance for his son Abū al-Faḍl as heir apparent after him. His name was proclaimed from the pulpits after his father⦗8⦘, and he was granted the honorific al-Ghālib bi-’llāh. At that time he was eight years old and some months. The arrangement, however, did not come to fruition. The reason for such haste was that a man named ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUthmān al-Wāthiqī⦗9⦘ had gone to a remote frontier in the Turkish lands and claimed that al-Qādir bi-’llāh had appointed him heir. The people there accordingly mentioned his name in the Friday sermon. When word reached al-Qādir, he dispatched agents to seize him, whereupon he fled