During the period of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Yūsuf’s shihna-ship (1) the poet ʿArqala recited the following verses, composed in the mutaqārib metre (2):
“Easy now, you bandits of al-Shām, for I speak to you only as a well-wisher;
Beware the Prophet’s namesake, Yūsuf, lord of insight and perfection (3).
The first cut the women’s hands (4), while this one lops off the hands of men (5).”
Later his brother Tūrān Shāh governed the lands of Yemen and was styled Shams al-Dawla.
Among the notables who died this year was the ḥadīth master Muḥammad ibn Nāṣir ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn ʿUmar, Abū’l-Faḍl al-Baghdādī (6). He was born on the night of the fifteenth of Shaʿbān in 467 AH, heard a vast amount of ḥadīth, studied under numerous teachers, and became a prolific ḥāfiẓ, staunch upon the sunnah, constantly engaged in dhikr and quick to tears. A number of scholars graduated under him, among them Shaykh Abū’l-Faraj Ibn al-Jawzī, who heard the Musnad of Imām Aḥmad and other major works read in his presence and praised him frequently.
He rebutted Abū Saʿd al-Samʿānī for saying, “Muḥammad ibn Nāṣir enjoys finding fault with people.” Ibn al-Jawzī (7) replied, “Discussion of al-jarḥ (8) wa’l-taʿdīl—criticizing and accrediting narrators—is not of that sort. Rather, Ibn al-Samʿānī himself is the one who shows partisanship against the adherents of Imām Aḥmad. We seek refuge with Allah from ill intent and fanaticism (9).”
(1) Edition: Shuhna.
(2) The verses appear in the Diwan of ‘Arqalah (p. 87)—i.e. Ḥassan ibn Namīr al-Kalbī (Abū al-Nadā)—and also in al-Aḥkām al-Sulṭāniyya (p. 147) and in al-Rawḍatayn (vol. 1, p. 100).
(3) In the Atharī manuscript: “wa-al-jamal,” which is also the reading in the Diwan; in al-Rawḍatayn it reads “wa-al-Hijal.”
(4) In the Atharī manuscript: “fa-dhak yaqtaʿ … yaqtaʿ.”
(5) In the Atharī manuscript: “fa-dhak yaqtaʿ … yaqtaʿ.”
(6) His biography is recorded in al-Ansāb (p. 320, Atharī ed.), al-Muntaẓim (10/162), Ibn al-Athīr (9/247), Mirʾāt al-Zamān (8/225), Wafayāt al-Aʿyān (4/293), al-ʿIbar (4/140), al-Wāfī (5/104), Mirʾāt al-Jinān (3/290), Dhayl Ibn Rajab (1/225–229) and al-Manhaj al-Aḥmad (2/310). I have cited the sources for his nisbah—namely al-Sālamī—and the remarks of al-Samʿānī in his Dhayl Tārīkh Madīnat al-Salām, as transmitted by al-Dhahabī in Tārīkh al-Islām (11/992).
(7) al-Muntaẓim (10/163).
(8) In the Ta and B editions the reading is “wa-al-kalām fī al-nās bi-al-jarḥ,” whereas in al-Muntaẓim it reads “wa-al-khabar.”
(9) Bashār ibn ʿAwād, known as Afqar al-ʿIbād (the poorest of the servants), said: “On the contrary, this stems from Ibn al-Jawzī’s partisanship and his remarks on the scholars.” The foremost historian al-Dhahabī then retorted: “O Abū al-Faraj, do not forbid a practice in others and commit it yourself; in this chapter you incur numerous reproaches. Among them: that Abū Saʿd made no statement regarding takhrīj or taʿdīl but only remarked that he speaks of people’s private matters—rather, he said what was incumbent upon him; and indeed the man said of Ibn Nāṣir precisely the phrase you stole from him and applied as your own. Moreover, the bulk of the biographical entries in your al-Muntaẓim from 464 AH to the present is taken from this man’s Dhayl. Then you boast against him and show indignation, and whoever examines Ibn …”