Indeed, loving al-Ṣiddīq on the Day of the Grand Gathering is a refuge for the summoned and fearful.

Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Manṣūr (1), Abū Jaʿfar al-Bayyiʿ, known as al-ʿAtīqī, was born in 331 AH. He stayed for a time in Ṭarsūs, where he heard ḥadīth, as he did elsewhere, and transmitted only a few reports. May Allah have mercy upon him.

Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Nuʿmān (2), Abū ʿAbd Allah, widely called Ibn al-Muʿallim, was the shaykh of the Imāmiyyah Rāfiḍah, their author and champion. He studied ḥadīth and enjoyed influence with the frontier rulers, for many people of that age were inclined to Shīʿism. Scholars of every school crowded into his sessions, and among his pupils were al-Sharīf al-Raḍī and al-Murtadā. Al-Sharīf al-Raḍī elegized him with a poem after his death in Ramaḍān of this year (3), of which these lines are a part:

Who now will draw from virtue a keen blade (4) …
and lift the seals from priceless meanings?
Who will awaken minds after they lay dormant
and open up their understanding?
Who will lend a comrade counsel when—
in the press of trials—he has unsheathed (5)…
a sword (6)?

[Then came the year 414 AH]

Among its events:

The king Sharaf al-Dawlah arrived in Baghdad. The Caliph rode out in the royal barge, al-Ṭayyār (7), to receive him, accompanied by the amirs, judges, jurists, viziers, and notables. When Sharaf al-Dawlah faced the Caliph, he kissed the ground before him several times while the entire army stood at attention and the populace lined both sides of the way. The Caliph repeatedly sent envoys to greet him. It was a memorable day.

That same year a letter reached the Caliph from Yamin al-Dawlah Maḥmūd ibn Subuktikīn, saying that he had marched into the lands of India, conquered several regions, slain great numbers of its people, and that some of their kings had made peace with him and sent magnificent gifts and rarities.