He is the king—should you speak of Khosrow or Caesar, know that in generosity and valor those two are but his servants.
Nor can Hatim (1) be matched with his liberality (2); accept what our own eyes have seen, and leave aside what mere reports relate.
Seek the refuge (3) of his protection, for he will shelter you from the injustice of time and its assaults.
Claim no favor from the rain-clouds when they pour, for the clouds of his beneficence (4) shower far richer gifts.
He lets his two hands (5) flow with all that their names suggest: good fortune lies in his right, and ease in his left (6).

When news (7) of his death reached (8) his brother, Sultan al-Malik al-Nasir Salah al-Din [ibn Ayyub] (9), who was encamped outside Homs, he was struck with deep sorrow (10). He began to recite, from memory, selections from the section on elegies in (11) al-Hamāsah—may Allah Most High have mercy on him (12).

In Rajab of that same year, the emissaries of the Caliph al-Nasir arrived bearing robes of honor and gifts (13) for al-Malik al-Nasir Salah al-Din. The Sultan donned the caliphal robe in Damascus; the city was festively adorned, and the day was one long remembered.

During that very year, in (14) Rajab (15), the Sultan set out from Syria for the lands of Egypt (16) to look into their conditions and affairs and to observe the fast of Ramadan there. He also resolved to perform the pilgrimage that year to the Sacred House of Allah. Over Syria he appointed as his deputy his nephew ʿIzz al-Din (17) Farrukhshah ibn Shāhanshāh ibn Ayyub.