He was appointed judge in Irbil; witty and free-spirited, a delight of his days. He composed polished verses and lofty meanings, among them (1) the following:

[Metre: al-Mutaqārib]
Old age has come and youth has fled—(2)
care now settles wherever they settle.
My lifetime has slipped away without obedience;
woe to you, O soul, what is this lapse? (3)
Your sins are many—so turn back, return,
for the appointed hour is at hand.
Make God your religion and fall not short;
let not the length of hope beguile you.
You have no helper but God-fearingness,
no companion but good deeds. (4)

Abū al-Thanāʾ Maḥmūd ibn Zākī (5) ibn ʿAlī ibn Yaḥyā al-Ṭāʾī al-Riqī, a resident of Irbil, served as administrator there for King Muẓaffar al-Dīn. He was an erudite and refined shaykh, and among his poetry are these lines:

[Metre: al-Ṭawīl]
A slender one—his very stature is the lance;
his suppleness the branch that the breeze bends.
No dune exists save the curve of his waist,
no arrow save what his eyelids fletch.
No wine is there but the brightness of his mouth,
no magic but what his eyes conceal.
Beauty itself is nothing but all of him—
so who, on seeing him, does not grow still more mad?

Ibn Muʿṭī the grammarian, Yaḥyā (6), was given an entry by Abū Shāmah last year—and his notice is the more precise, for he attended the funeral (7) in Egypt. Ibn al-Saʿī, however, places the obituary this year, stating that Ibn Muʿṭī enjoyed the favor of al-Kāmil Muḥammad, ruler of Egypt; that he versified “A Rajaz Poem on the Seven Readings” and “The Vocabulary of the Jamharah”; and that he had intended to render al-Jawharī’s Ṣiḥāḥ into verse.