al-Dīn in the year sixty-four, and there he related hadith. Afterwards he enjoyed high favor with al-Malik al-Nāṣir Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn, and it was he who informed against ʿImārah al-Yamanī and his associates, whereupon they were crucified. He also held a distinguished position in Egypt. On the Friday when the first sermon was delivered in the Noble Sanctuary of Jerusalem (1) he spoke to the people after the service had ended, an event long remembered.

He lived in magnificent style (2), like kings in the matter of food and dress. He kept more than twenty (3)(4) slave-concubines of the finest beauty, each costing a thousand dinars, and he would circulate among them and have relations with them. Yet after all of that he died poor, leaving not even a shroud. While upon the pulpit he once recited, quoting the vizier Ṭalāʾiʿ (5) b. Ruzzīk (6):

—from the wāfir metre—
Your grey hair has erased the dye of youth (7),
the hawk has settled in the raven’s nest.
You sleep while the eye of events keeps watch,
and none can take the blows of fate for you.
How (8) can your life remain—a hidden treasure—
when you have spent of it without reckoning?

al-Muʾayyad al-Tikrītī (9): Shaykh Abū al-Barakāt Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. Saʿīd al-Tikrītī, known as al-Muʾayyad (10), was a man of letters and a poet. Among the verses he composed about al-Wajīh the grammarian (11)—who was first Ḥanbalī, then became Ḥanafī, and finally turned Shāfiʿī—are the following, which he produced (12) in the grammar circle of the Niẓāmiyyah; he said (13):

—from the ṭawīl metre—