al-Barqānī said, “He was perfect in every respect save for one impulsive flaw. He studied with a host of scholars, and among his fine poetry are these lines:

If the hands of base men leave you parched with thirst,
Contentment will suffice you with fullness and drink.
Be a man whose foot is planted in the earth
While the pinnacle of his aspiration reaches the Pleiades, (1)
Too proud to pin his hopes on a man of wealth (2)
Whom you find clinging miserly to what is in his own hands; (3)
For the spilling of the water of life is lighter
Than the spilling of the water of one’s face—one’s honor. (4)

• Muḥammad ibn al-Ṭayyib ibn Saʿd ibn Mūsā, Abū Bakr al-Sabbāʿ (5).
He narrated hadith from al-Najjād and Abū Bakr al-Shāfiʿī and was considered trustworthy. Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī (6) reports that he married nine hundred (7) women and that he died at the age of ninety-five. May Allah have mercy on him.

• ʿAlī ibn Hilāl, the celebrated scribe (8).
Ibn Khallikān (9) states that he died in this year, though some say his death occurred in 413 AH, as mentioned earlier.

[Then the year 424 AH began]

In it the affair of the ʿayyārūn worsened: their power swelled and they seized large sums of money. The authority of their leader, al-Burjumī, grew strong. The chief of police was assassinated, and looting became incessant, night and day. People guarded their houses—even the Caliph’s residence and the city wall—until the crisis they caused became truly grave. Yet al-Burjumī was known for one trait: he did not harm women nor take anything from them; this was a kind of chivalry amid oppression. To him it was said (10): “Easy now—some evil is lighter than other evil.”