authorized you to shed tears on his behalf?” The onlookers burst out laughing, and the attorney rose, mortified. May Allah have mercy upon the judge.
ʿIsā ibn al-Wazīr ʿAlī ibn ʿIsā ibn Dāwūd ibn al-Jarrāḥ, Abū al-Qāsim al-Baghdādī ⦗1⦘
His father was among the most eminent viziers ⦗2⦘, and he himself served as secretary to the caliph al-Ṭāʾiʿ. He heard a vast quantity of hadith, his transmission was reliable, and he possessed wide learning. Well-versed in logic and the sciences of the ancients, he was consequently accused of a touch of philosophical doctrine.
Among his choice poetry are these lines:
Many a corpse has been revived by knowledge,
While one still alive has perished through ignorance and error.
So seek out knowledge that you may win immortality;
Do not count life lived in ignorance as life at all.
He was born in 302 AH and died this year at the age of eighty-nine, and was buried in his home in Baghdad.
[Then came the year 392 AH]
In Muḥarram of that year, Yamin al-Dawlah Maḥmūd ibn Subuktikin campaigned against the lands of India. Their king, Jaypal, advanced to meet him with a huge army. A fierce engagement ensued; Allah granted victory to the Muslims, the Indians were routed, and their king Jaypal was captured. From his neck they removed a necklace valued at eighty thousand dinars ⦗3⦘. The Muslims seized great wealth and opened many territories. Maḥmūd then released the Indian king out of contempt and disdain, so that his own people might see him garbed in humiliation. When Jaypal—may Allah curse him—reached his country, he threw himself into the fire they worship besides Allah and was burned, may Allah curse him.
In Rabīʿ al-Ākhir ⦗4⦘ the common people of Baghdad rose against the Christians; they plundered the church in the Qatīʿat al-Daqīq quarter, set it ablaze, and it collapsed upon a crowd, killing them, among them a number of Muslims—men, women, and children.
In Ramaḍān the power of the ʿayyārūn (urban brigands) increased; assaults and looting multiplied in Baghdad and the turmoil spread.
Ibn al-Jawzī relates: On the night of Monday, the third of Dhū al-Qaʿdah, a meteor blazed across the sky, shining like the full moon. The brilliance faded, but its body remained wavering to the naked eye, about two cubits by one cubit in size, and after roughly an hour it split apart ⦗5⦘.