In this year: al-Aqsīs, the ruler of Damascus, laid siege to Egypt and tightened the pressure on its sovereign, al-Mustanṣir billah; he then turned back and returned to Damascus. The people’s pilgrimage that year was led by Khutlug the Turk, the iqṭāʿ-holder of Kūfah.

Among the notable persons who died during the year were:

1. Isbahdust ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan (1), Abū Manṣūr al-Daylamī, the poet. He had met Abū ʿAbd Allāh Ibn al-Ḥajjāj, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Nubāta, and other poets. Formerly a Shīʿī, he repented and composed a poem to announce it, including the following lines:

   Whenever I am asked about my creed, I say:
   It is the path on which the righteous stood.
   I affirm: the best of mankind after Muḥammad
   is his truthful friend, his companion in the cave;
   Then the three who followed him are the finest of creation—
   how noble are those pure, exalted leaders!
   This is the creed through which I hope to gain
   success and freedom from the torment of the Fire.

2. Ṭāhir ibn Aḥmad ibn Bābshādh (2), Abū al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, the grammarian. He fell from the roof of the Mosque of ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ in Egypt and died instantly; this occurred in Rajab of the present year.

   Judge Ibn Khallikān said: “No one like him was ever found. In Egypt he was the foremost grammarian of his age, and he produced valuable works such as his Muqaddima and its commentary, and his Commentary on al-Jumal of al-Zajjājī.

   “His official duty in Egypt was that no letter left the Dīwān al-Inshāʾ until it had been presented to him; he would correct whatever defects it contained, after which it was dispatched to its designated destination. For this he received a fixed and generous stipend.

   “It happened that one day he was eating with some friends when a cat appeared. They tossed it a morsel, which it grabbed and hurried away with; it soon returned, so they tossed it another piece, and again it sped off. When it came back a third time and they threw it yet more food, they realized it could not be eating all of it. They followed the cat and discovered that it was carrying the food to another blind cat on a nearby roof. They were amazed.

   “The shaykh then said, ‘Glory be to Allah! Here is a dumb beast whose provision Allah has conveyed to it through another creature. Will He not provide for me while I am His servant and worship Him?’ He thereupon renounced the stipend allotted to him, gathered his papers, and devoted himself to worship and study.”