He was exceedingly generous and charitable, and he left behind many praiseworthy works in both Mecca and Medina. Among them were the following: he diverted a spring to ʿArafāt and constructed reservoirs there; he built the ʿArafāt Mosque together with its stairways; he strengthened the doors of the Sacred Sanctuary, erected the al-Khaif Mosque, rebuilt the Ḥijr, embellished the Kaaba, overlaid it with gold and faced it with marble; he enclosed the Prophet’s City with a wall; and he built a bridge of hewn stone, iron, and lead across the Tigris at Jazīrat Ibn ʿUmar. He founded numerous ribāṭs, gave away one hundred dinars in alms each day at his gate, and every year ransomed captives for ten thousand dinars. His charities reached scholars and the poor wherever they were—whether in Baghdad or in other lands. He was imprisoned in 558 AH.

Ibn al-Sāʿī relates in his “History” that a man who shared his prison cell said: “Shortly before he died, a white bird descended to him and remained with him while he remembered Allah—exalted is He—until he passed away in Shaʿbān of this year; then the bird flew off.” He was buried in a ribāṭ he had built for himself in Mosul. A pact of brotherhood bound him to Asad al-Dīn Shīrkūh ibn Shādhī: whichever of them died first, the other would convey him to the Prophet’s City (1). Accordingly, Asad al-Dīn Shīrkūh hired men who transported him to Medina (2). Whenever they entered a town, its people performed the funeral prayer for him, invoked mercy upon him, and spoke well of him (3). Prayers were offered for him in Mosul, Tikrit, Baghdad, al-Ḥillah, Kūfah, Fayḍ, and Mecca, and his bier was carried in circumambulation around the Kaaba. He was then conveyed (4) to the Prophet’s City and buried in a ribāṭ he had erected to the east of the Prophet’s Mosque (5).

Ibn al-Jawzī (6) and Ibn al-Sāʿī said: “Only fifteen cubits separate him from the Sacred Precinct of the Messenger of Allah, blessings and peace be upon him, and his grave.” Ibn al-Sāʿī added—[the Messenger of Allah, blessings and peace be upon him] (7)—that when the funeral prayer was performed for him in al-Ḥillah, a young man mounted a rise and recited (8), saying (9):

—in the Ṭawīl metre— (10)

His bier has so often travelled on the shoulders of men,
  As long before his bounty rode forth upon their mounts.
He passes a valley: its shifting sands all praise him;
  He enters a gathering: its widows bless his gifts.