, numerous indeed: among them were several elephants; a bird shaped like a qumri (turtledove) which, when placed near the dining-cloth and poison was present, its eyes would fill with tears and water would run from them; and a stone that, when rubbed and its powder applied to large gaping wounds, would cause them to close—along with other such marvels.
The Iraqis performed the pilgrimage that year, but on their return they had to take the Syrian route out of necessity.
[Among the notable deaths of the year]
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al-Ḥasan ibn al-Faḍl ibn Sahlān, Abū Muḥammad al-Rāmhormuzī, vizier of Sulṭān al-Dawlah. He was the one who built the wall of al-Ḥāʾir by the shrine of al-Ḥusayn. He was killed in Shaʿbān of this year.
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al-Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad [ibn ʿAbd Allah], Abū ʿAbd Allah al-Kashfalī al-Ṭabarī, the Shāfiʿī jurist. He studied jurisprudence under Abū al-Qāsim al-Dārakī and was intelligent, upright, devout, and ascetic. After Shaykh Abū Ḥāmid al-Isfarāyinī, he assumed teaching in his mosque—the Mosque of ʿAbd Allah ibn al-Mubārak in Qaṭīʿat al-Rabīʿ—where the students were treated with honor.
One of those students once complained to him of hardship: the allowance his father normally sent had been delayed. The shaykh took him by the hand, went to a merchant in Qaṭīʿat al-Rabīʿ, and borrowed fifty dinars for him. The merchant said, “First have something to eat,” spread a tablecloth, and they ate. Then he called, “Girl, bring the money.” She brought a sum of money, from which he weighed out fifty dinars and handed them to the shaykh.
When they rose, the jurist’s face had changed color. Al-Kashfalī asked, “What ails you?” He replied, “Master, love for that girl has taken hold of my heart.” The merchant went back with him and said, “Now we have fallen into a new trial.” “What is it?” asked al-Kashfalī. He answered, “The jurist has become enamored of the girl.” The merchant ordered the girl to come out, handed her over to him, and said, “Perhaps her heart feels toward him what his feels toward her.” Not long afterward, the jurist received from his father an allowance of six hundred dinars, with which—through the mediation of Shaykh Abū Muḥammad al-Kashfalī—he repaid the merchant both the price of the girl and the loan.
Al-Kashfalī died in Rabīʿ al-Ākhir of this year and was buried in the Bāb Ḥarb cemetery. May Allah have mercy on him. -
ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd Allah ibn al-Ḥasan ibn Jahḍam, Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ṣūfī al-Makkī, author of “Bahjat al-Asrār.” He was the shaykh of the Ṣūfīs in Mecca, and there he died in this same year.
Ibn al-Jawzī said: