It descended to you from the loftiest station (1)—
a ring-dove, proud and hard to win;
Hidden from every discerning eye,
yet she unveiled herself, never to veil again;
She reached you against her will—
yet perhaps she hates to leave you, aching with grief.

(It is a long ode.)

He also said:
Make your nourishment each day but once,
and beware of food before the first is digested;
Guard your seed as best you can,
for it is the water of life poured into the wombs.

It is reported that he died of intestinal colic (qawlanj) in Hamadhan; others say in Isfahan—yet the first view is sounder—on Friday in the month of Ramadan, in the year 428 AH, at the age of fifty-eight. al-Ghazali (2) devoted a special study to his doctrines in Maqāṣid al-Falāsifa, then refuted him in Tahāfut al-Falāsifa on twenty questions (3), pronouncing him an unbeliever on three of them: his claim that the world is eternal, his denial of bodily resurrection, and his assertion that Allah does not know particulars; he deemed him an innovator in the rest. It is also said that he repented at the time of death; Allah, Glorified and Exalted, knows best.

[Then came the year 429 AH]

In this year began the rule of the Seljuqs (4).

In it, Rukn al-Dawla Abū Ṭālib Ṭughrul Beg Muḥammad ibn Mikāʾīl ibn Saljūq seized Nishapur, sat upon its throne, and dispatched his brother Dāwūd to the rest of Khurāsān; he conquered it and wrested it from the deputies of King Masʿūd ibn Maḥmūd ibn Subuktigīn.

In the same year the Egyptian army killed the lord of Aleppo—Shibl al-Dawla Naṣr ibn Ṣāliḥ ibn Mirdās—and took possession of Aleppo and its districts.

That year also, Jalāl al-Dawla asked the Caliph to be granted the title Malik al-Dawla (5); after some hesitation, the Caliph agreed.

Likewise in that year the Caliph al-Qāʾim bi-Amr Allah summoned the judges and jurists, and brought in the Catholicos of the Christians,