a consummate poet, open-handed, magnanimous, and God-fearing. Someone remarked: “Al-Sharīf al-Raḍī was the finest poet of Quraysh,” and among his most admired verses are these:

Acquire honor for whatever price you will, for honor is never too dear;
with small yellow coins, if you wish, or with tall dark lances. (1)
No man of sound mind is ever cheated who purchases honor with his wealth. (2)
Wealth is stored up only for the needs of men,
and the true youth is he who makes his riches the price of lofty deeds.

Among his poetry—may Allah have mercy on him—are also the following lines:

O warbling bough-bird perched upon the branch, why has your lament stirred my grief, O bough-bird?
Will you convey to the one who has captured my heart that the free man fulfils the captive’s plea?
A crime none but his two eyes committed on the day we parted—oh, how I yearn for the culprit! (3)
Had it not been for memories of our days at Dhī Salam and at Rāma where my hopes and homeland lie,
I would not have struck the fire of longing within my breast, nor drenched my eyelids with the water of tears. (4)

A further poem is ascribed to al-Raḍī in which he courts the Fatimid ruler, wishing he were in that ruler’s land and under his protection. He yearned for this so that he might see what rank he would hold there. Had the Abbasid caliph possessed keener political sense, he would have sent him to that ruler to satisfy his wish, and the people would have learned his true state; yet the forbearance of the Abbasids is ample. (5)

In that poem he says:

I must wear humiliation in the lands of my foes, while in Egypt sits the Alid caliph;
whose father is my father and whose patron my patron whenever a distant enemy oppresses me.
My lineage joins at its root with the two masters of mankind, Muhammad and ʿAli;
through that abode my fear becomes security, and through that fountain my thirst is quenched.

When the caliph [al-Qādir] heard of this poem he was perturbed and sent for his father, the noble Sharīf al-Ṭāhir Abū Ahmad