He was my companion; he took his seat to preach, and Sultan Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn attended his gatherings. He recited to him several brief poems, among them the verses he would declaim in his sessions:

[from al-Basīṭ]

(1)
O Master of my heart, O limit of my hope,
O One present, witnessing both heart and thought!
You fashioned me from dust—You alone the Maker—
Until I stood an image among images.
Into my mould You poured a radiant spirit
That courses through me as water flows within a tree.
You joined in me the clarity of a shining soul
With a body You cast from murky ore.
If I disappear in You, what pride, what honour is mine!
If I remain, You are my hearing and my sight.
Should I be veiled, my secret in You is in ardent longing;
And if I stir, my heart is with You in
(2)
movement.
You appear, effacing my traces, then restore them;
Should You withdraw, I live on what You have left behind.

Among those who died in this year
(3)
of the notable figures was
the great ḥāfiẓ Abū al-Qāsim Ibn ʿAsākir
(4): ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥasan ibn Hibat Allah Ibn ʿAsākir, Abū al-Qāsim al-Dimashqī,
one of the foremost guardians of hadith, wholly devoted to its audition and transmission
(5), to collecting, authoring, research, preserving its chains and texts, and mastering its methods and disciplines.
He composed The History of Syria in eighty volumes, which remains after him as an enduring monument
(6). He outstripped the historians who came before him and exhausted those who came
(7) after him among the later scholars, thus winning the laurel
(8) in that race, [and setting a benchmark that secures him from any rival catching up]
(9). Whoever studies it carefully and observes what he recorded therein
(10) and established will judge it unique
(11) among historical works.