and he would support himself by plaiting reed mats with his own hands, living on their proceeds. He exemplified the utmost renunciation and was devoted to abundant worship. He never left his mosque except from one Friday to the next: he would perform the congregational prayer in the main mosque and then return to his own. There was nothing in his mosque with which to light the lamps, so one of the emirs offered to give him something—if only a little oil for the lanterns—but the shaykh refused. After his death someone saw one of the deceased who lay in a grave beside his and asked him about his new neighbour. The man replied, “What are you asking about? When he died and was placed in his grave we heard a voice proclaim, ‘To the Highest Paradise, to the Highest Paradise,’ or words to that effect.” He passed away in Rajab of this year, a little over eighty (1) years of age.
• Muḥammad ibn Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad ibn Hārūn ibn Farwah ibn Nājiyah (2), Abū al-Ḥasan the grammarian, known as Ibn al-Najjār, a Tamīmī from Kūfah. He came to Baghdad and narrated from Ibn Durayd, al-Ṣūlī, Niṭfawayh, and others. He died in Jumādā al-Ūlā of this year at the age of ninety-nine (3).
• Abū al-Ṭayyib Sahl ibn Muḥammad al-Ṣuʿlūkī al-Naysābūrī (4). Abū Yaʿlā al-Khalīlī said, “He died in this year, though we have already mentioned him under the year 387 (5).”
Then the year 403 AH began.
On the sixteenth of Muḥarram, al-Sharīf al-Raḍī Abū al-Ḥasan al-Mūsawī was invested with the office of naqīb of the Ṭālibids in all the provinces. His diploma of appointment was read in the residence of the vizier Fakhr al-Mulk in the presence of the judges and dignitaries, and he was robed in black—the first Ṭālibid ever to be so invested.
In the same year:
The emir of Banū Khafājah, Abū Fulaytah (6)—may Allah disgrace him—was brought in, together with a number of the leading men of his clan, as prisoners. The previous year they had attacked the pilgrims on their return journey, filled in the watering places on which the pilgrims relied, and they placed