He studied jurisprudence at the Niẓāmiyyah, listened to ḥadith, composed a history and other works, and was peerless in the elegant drafting of legal deeds. He possessed learning and produced polished verse, among which is the following ⦗1⦘:

[of the ṭawīl metre]
O you who have made my heart fall sick—will your abandonment never cease?
O you who have robbed my eyes of sleep, will your phantom not draw near?
You who take delight in torment, tasting oppression sweet through your cold aloofness—
is there in the law of love no check to restrain you?
Blessed is the heart I have devoted
to recalling the days we shared, while you still journey afar.
The burning sorrow shall never leave my thoughts
over your absence, until the All-Powerful ⦗2⦘ reunites those now sundered.
And if I die, my greeting of peace shall still reach you,
each time a tongue that remembers Allah proclaims the takbīr.

Abu al-Saʿādāt al-Ḥillī, the Baghdadi merchant, a Rāfiḍī.

Every Friday he would don battle-armor and stand behind the door of his house—the door closed upon him—while the people were performing the Friday prayer. He waited for the “Master of the Age” to emerge from the cellar of Sāmarrāʾ—namely Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan al-ʿAskarī ⦗3⦘—so that he might sweep through the people with his sword in support of the Mahdī.

Abu Ghalib ibn Kamanūnah, the Jewish scribe.

So skilful was his calligraphy that he forged documents in the hand of Ibn Muqla. He died—may Allah curse him—in the dungeon of Wāsiṭ. Ibn al-Saʿī mentioned him in his “History.”

[Then came the year 602]

In this year a great war broke out between Shihāb al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Sām al-Ghūrī, lord of Ghazna, and the Banū Kawkar ⦗4⦘, lords of Mount Judi. They had apostasized from Islam, so he fought them, routed them, and took from them an immense booty—beyond counting ⦗5⦘ or description. Some of them pursued him and assassinated him treacherously on the night of the first of Shaʿbān that year, after the ʿIshāʾ prayer. He was—may Allah have mercy on him—among