the nobles welcomed him for the kindness he had shown them. They carried him on their shoulders, performed the Hajj with his body, halted with him at ʿArafāt, then brought him back to the Noble City and laid him to rest in the tomb he had prepared ⦗1⦘.
Ibn al-Ḥajjāj the Poet ⦗2⦘
Al-Ḥusayn ibn Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥajjāj, Abū ʿAbd Allāh, was a libertine poet whose verse is laced with expressions from which the tongue recoils and the ear shrinks. His father had been among the leading state officials, and he himself was appointed to the office of ḥisbah (market inspectorate) in Baghdad during the days of ʿIzz al-Dawlah ibn Muʿizz al-Dawlah ibn Būyah. He left six deputies to manage the post while he devoted himself to frivolous poetry and feeble opinion. Yet, judged purely on diction, his poetry is polished; it possesses a notable vigor that reveals mastery and aptitude in casting indecent, scandalous meanings into eloquent phraseology. Besides these bawdy pieces, he composed other poems of genuine merit. On one occasion he praised the ruler of Egypt, who responded by sending him one thousand dinars ⦗3⦘.
Judge Ibn Khallikān’s statement—“It is said he was removed from the Baghdad ḥisbah because of Abū Saʿīd al-Isṭakhri” ⦗4⦘—is weak and should not have escaped the judge’s scrutiny. Abū Saʿīd died in 328 AH, so how could Ibn al-Ḥajjāj have been dismissed in his favor? In the ordinary course of affairs, he could not possibly have assumed the ḥisbah after Abū Saʿīd al-Isṭakhri. Because of Ibn Khallikān’s standing in this craft we have taken him to task, for he dated the poet’s death to this very year while placing al-Isṭakhri in the period already mentioned ⦗5⦘.
Al-Sharīf al-Raḍī gathered Ibn al-Ḥajjāj’s finer poems into a separate dīwān and, together with other poets, composed elegies for him when he died.
ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Aḥmad ⦗6⦘ ibn al-Ḥasan al-Kharazī ⦗7⦘ was the qadi of al-Mukharrim ⦗8⦘, of the precincts surrounding the Caliphal palaces, and of other jurisdictions besides. A ẓāhirī adhering to the school of Dāwūd, he was refined and witty. Two legal agents pleaded a case before him; in the midst of the dispute one of them began to weep. The judge said to him, “Show me your power of attorney.” The man handed it over, the judge read it, and then said to him, “Why—”