In that same year the following passed away: [al-Amjad] Bahram Shah ibn Farukhshah ibn Shahanshah (1) ibn Ayyub, lord of Baalbek (2).

He remained in office until al-Ashraf Musa ibn al-ʿAdil came to Damascus and seized the city in the year twenty-six; in the following year, twenty-seven, he wrested Baalbek from him and lodged him in Damascus in his father’s residence. In the month of Shawwal of that year a Turkish mamluk of his attacked him at night and killed him. Al-Amjad had accused the man of embezzling (3) some of his property and had imprisoned him; the slave overpowered him one night and slew him, and the mamluk himself was killed soon afterwards.

Al-Amjad was buried in his own mausoleum beside his father’s tomb in the northern al-Sharaf quarter (4) — may Allah Most High have mercy on him. He was an accomplished poet with a collected dīwān; Ibn al-Saʿī has preserved an excellent selection of his refined and exquisite verse. His biography is included in “Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿiyyah,” yet Abū Shāmah omits him from his “al-Dhail,” which is truly astonishing.

Among the poems cited by Ibn al-Saʿī (5) is one he composed extemporaneously (6) when he saw a youth cutting willow branches; he said (7):

[al-kāmil]
Who will bring me that slender youth who, when I reproached him
for cutting every graceful willow switch (8), replied:

His movements rival the gazelle (9) when it bends,
fresh and supple amid brooks and gardens.

The willow boughs had stolen the softness of my gestures,
so I cut them down—for cutting is the thief’s due punishment.

Another of his poems, may Allah Most High have mercy on him, reads:

[al-wāfir]
Longing and remembrance drive away my sleep,
now that the encampments and dwellings lie deserted.

The travelers have gone far away, yet my heart
journeys with the howdahs wherever they may roam.