outside Bab al-Nasr of Cairo (1), which he endowed in the year 566 AH.
I say: He also had a khānqāh in Damascus known as the Najmiyyah (2). He appointed his son as his deputy over Egypt when he set out for al-Karak, and vested him with authority over the treasuries (3). He was among the most generous of people. Poets praised him—al-ʿImād al-Kātib, ʿArqala, ʿImārah al-Yamanī (4), and many others (5). They wrote numerous elegies for him after his death, all of which Shihāb al-Dīn Abū Shāma recorded in detail in his book al-Rawḍatayn (6).
When he died, he was buried with his brother Asad al-Din Shīrkūh in the Dār al-Imārah. Later, in the year 580 AH, both were transferred to the Prophetic City and laid to rest in the cemetery (7) of the minister Jamāl al-Dīn (8) al-Mawṣilī, who had been a close companion of Asad al-Din Shīrkūh—this is the same Jamāl mentioned earlier, whose grave lies only about seventeen cubits from the Prophet’s Mosque, and so they were buried beside him (9).
Al-Ḥasan (10) ibn Ṣāfī (11): Shihāb al-Dīn Abū Shāma said (12): In this year the king of the grammarians, al-Ḥasan ibn Ṣāfī, passed away.
(1) In manuscript A: in Cairo.
(2) The final paragraph is placed earlier in A.
(3) Not in A.
(4) Not in the printed edition T.
(5) In T: “and others.”
(6) al-Rawdhatayn (vol. 1, pp. 212–213).
(7) In A: bi-turbat al-malik al-wazīr.
(8) Not in B.
(9) Only in T.
(10) T: “In this year died the king of the Rāfiḍa (Shiʿites) and grammarians, al-Ḥasan ibn Ṣāfī ibn Bazdan al-Turkī.” This passage contains several corruptions and mistakes, the most serious of which is conflating two distinct names into one, to say nothing of the misspelling of each name.
(11) His biography is found in Badran (vol. 4, p. 166), Mu‘jam al-Udabā’ (vol. 8, p. 122), Ibn al-Dubaythī (vol. 1, p. 281), Inbāh al-Ruwāt (p. 305), Mir’āt al-Zamān (vol. 8, p. 295), al-Rawdhatayn (vol. 1, p. 205), Wafayāt al-A‘yān (vol. 2, pp. 92–94), al-‘Ibar (vol. 4, p. 204) and Mir’āt al-Jinān (vol. 3, p. 386). According to these accounts, he was Abū n-Nazār al-Ḥasan ibn Abī al-Ḥasan Ṣāfī ibn ‘Abd Allāh ibn Nizār ibn Abī al-Ḥasan al-Naḥwī, nicknamed “king of the grammarians.” Born in Baghdad in 489 AH, he studied ḥadīth under Abū Ṭālib al-Zaynabī, fiqh under Aḥmad, uṣūl under Ibn Burhān, khilāf under As‘ad al-Mīhinī and grammar under al-Fuṣayḥī. He excelled in grammar, traveled to Khurāsān, Kirmān and Ghazna, then settled in Damascus, where he was challenged in poetry by Ibn Munayyar, al-Qaysarānī and al-Sharīf al-Wāsiṭī; after Ibn al-Ṣūfī disparaged him, he withdrew until their deaths. He was sound in creed, generous, eloquent and intelligent, though prone to vanity. He authored numerous works in grammar, jurisprudence, uṣūl, qirā’āt and prosody, as well as a dīwān and maqāmāt. He died in Damascus and was buried at Bab al-Ṣaghīr at about eighty years of age.
(12) al-Rawdhatayn (vol. 1, p. 205).