During this same month, a caravan of pilgrims from Khurasan reached Baghdad intending to proceed to the Hajj. News, however, reached them that Bedouin marauders were laying waste to the land ⦗1⦘, that no power ⦗2⦘ could restrain them, and that no official was attending to the pilgrims’ safety. They therefore turned back to their own regions, and no one from the eastern lands performed the pilgrimage that year.

On the Day of ʿArafah, Bahāʾ al-Dawlah was blessed with twin sons. One of them died seven years later, while the other survived, succeeded his father, and was given the honorific Sharaf al-Dawlah.

That same year the Egyptians likewise led the people in the pilgrimage.

Among the notables who died in this year was Ibn Jinnī ⦗3⦘—Abū al-Fatḥ ʿUthmān ibn Jinnī al-Mawṣilī—the eminent grammarian and philologist whose masterful works on grammar and language circulate widely. His father, Jinnī, was a Byzantine slave owned by Sulaymān ibn Fahd ibn Aḥmad al-Azdī al-Mawṣilī. Ibn Jinnī wrote:

If I should wake to find myself without lineage,
my learning among mankind is lineage enough.
Though I return, in truth, to noble chiefs—
illustrious lords of unblemished stock—
Caesars who, whenever they spoke,
repaired the rents of time with their eloquence ⦗4⦘;
For them the Prophet prayed—
the prayer of a Prophet suffices for honor.

He resided in Baghdad, teaching there until he died on the night of Friday, the second night of Ṣafar of this year.

Qāḍī Ibn Khallikān said: It is reported that he was one-eyed, and he composed on that subject:

Your turning from me—while I am blameless—
betrays a purpose that is corrupt.
By your life! From the tears I have shed
I feared for my single remaining eye;
And were it not that I dread never seeing you again,
keeping it would have held no benefit.

It is also said that these verses belong to someone other than him.