Do not lay bare, to a fault-finder or an apologist, your state—whether in ease or hardship;
for the compassion of the sympathizers can sting the heart like the gloating of enemies.

He also said:
The miser wastes his lifetime hoarding wealth,
while sudden turns of fate and passing days lay claim to what he leaves behind.
Like the silkworm—everything it spins it later destroys,(1)
while others profit from what it has produced.

Yūsuf ibn al-Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan(2), Abū al-Qāsim al-Tafakkurī,(3) was from Zanjān. He was born in 395 AH, followed the Shāfiʿī school, and studied jurisprudence under Shaykh Abū Isḥāq al-Shīrāzī, ranking among his foremost pupils. Devout, scrupulous, humble, and often moved to tears at moments of remembrance, he devoted himself to worship. He died in this year, having nearly reached eighty.

[Then the year 474 AH began]

In it:
Abū Kāmil Manṣūr ibn Nūr al-Dawla Dubays assumed the offices his father had held, and the Sultan and the Caliph bestowed robes of honor upon him.

In it:
Sharaf al-Dawla Muslim ibn Quraysh captured Ḥarrān and made peace with the lord of al-Ruha (Edessa).

In it:
Tutu sh ibn Alp Arslān, ruler of Damascus, took the city of Anṭarṭūs (Tartus).

[In the same year the Caliph dispatched Ibn Jahīr to Sultan Malik Shāh, proposing that he marry the Caliph’s daughter. Her mother consented on condition that he have neither wife nor concubine besides her and that he spend seven days with her, and the Sultan accepted those terms.](4)

[Among the notable deaths of that year] Dāwud, son of Sultan Malik Shāh.(5)

His father grieved so deeply that he almost—indeed, was on the verge of—taking his own life, but the emirs restrained him. He then moved to another locality and ordered the women to wail for his son. [When the news reached Baghdad, the Caliph’s vizier held a condolence session.]