They are stamped with base natures; the best of them—if you speak, he merely echoes you, and if you keep silent, he invents words against you.

Ibn ʿAsākir (1) further related, through his chain of transmission, that someone saw him after his death in a dream, enduring dreadful torment and giving off a foul stench. The deceased said, “Do you know what has befallen me because of those poems I used to recite? My tongue has grown long and heavy—stretching as far as the eye can see. Whenever I recite one of those poems, it turns into a hook that latches onto my tongue.”
The dreamer continued: “I then heard a reciter above his head intoning, ‘There will be canopies of Fire above them and canopies (of Fire) beneath them’ (Qur’an 39:16), whereupon I awoke in terror.”

ʿAlī ibn al-Sallār (2), surnamed al-ʿĀdil, vizier to al-Ẓāfir (3), ruler of Egypt, was the builder of the Shāfiʿī madrasa in Alexandria for the ḥāfiẓ Abū Ṭāhir al-Silafī—may Allah have mercy on him. Yet this “al-ʿĀdil” proved the very opposite of his name: he was oppressive, overbearing, and ruinous. Ibn Khallikān (4) has set down his biography.

[Then came the year 549 AH]

In that year the caliph al-Muqtafī marched with a large army to Tikrīt and besieged its citadel. [There] (5) he encountered a host of Turks and Turkmens; Allah (6) granted him victory over them, [routing them on his behalf and exalting His word above them] (7). He then returned to Baghdad [supported and triumphant] (8).

[The rule of Sultan Nūr al-Dīn, the Martyr, in Damascus] (9)

News arrived that Egypt’s caliph al-Ẓāfir had been killed, leaving none of his line save a small boy, five (10) years old, who had—