was born (1) in 480 AH. He studied hadith, mastered jurisprudence, and preached, his exhortations being marked by gentle eloquence. Ibn al-Jawzi (2) spoke highly of him on that score and relates that he was once asked about the hadiths concerning the divine attributes; he forbade any discussion of them and recited (3):

[Ṭawīl] (4)
“The angry reproacher, O soul, refuses to be appeased (5)—
while you are the one who has made obeying him a duty (6).
So do not abandon the One whose abandonment you cannot endure;
and if He should incline to leave you, press your cheeks to the ground (7).”

Ibn al-Jawzi (8) further reports that he said: “I once feared the caliph, and in my sleep a voice called out to me, saying, ‘Write (9):

[from al-Kāmil]
Repel the sudden blows of time with patience, and hope for the kindness of the One, the All-Knowing. (10)
Never despair, even when its anguish tightens and the vicissitudes of fate shoot their arrows at you.
For with Him—exalted be He—there is in the midst of all that an opening unseen by eyes and beyond all imaginings. (11)
How many have slipped away from between the points of lances, and how many a quarry has escaped the lion’s maw.’”

He died in Shaʿbān of this year (12) at the age of eighty-four (13), and was buried beside the ribāṭ of al-Zawzanī, after which he was moved to the cemetery of Imām Aḥmad.

Shāwar ibn Mujīr, Abū Shujāʿ al-Saʿdī (14), nicknamed “Commander of the Armies,” was vizier of Egypt in the days of al-ʿĀḍid.