and he was over seventy years old. He (1) composed vigorous, well-wrought verse. Shaykh Qutb al-Din relates—after citing a poem of his and ascribing it, as we did, to his father, Qadi Bahaʾ al-Din—that he inclined to give ʿAli preference over ʿUthman, in agreement with his mentor Muḥyī al-Din Ibn ʿArabi and because of a dream he once saw in the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus in which ʿAli turned away from him on account (2) of what the Umayyads had done to him at Ṣiffīn. When morning came he composed an ode (declaring his leaning toward ʿAli, although he himself was Umayyad) (3):
[metre: ṭawīl]
I hold to the creed of the Legatee and see none besides him,
even though Umayyad lineage is the stock from which I spring.
Had my cavalry been present at Ṣiffīn, blame would have ceased,
and the sons of (4) Ḥarb would have rued the sight of my stand.
With flashing blades I should have set matters right for him,
and with my own hand barred them from the caliphate. (5)
Among his other verses:
[metre: sarīʿ]
They said, “Is there not in Jallaq (Damascus) some promenade
to distract you from the one whose love enraptures you?”
O critic of mine, behold in the glance of his eye an arrow
while a line from his brow comes to meet it.
Al-Ṣāḥib Fakhr al-Din (6) Muḥammad ibn al-Ṣāḥib Bahāʾ al-Din ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn Salīm ibn al-Ḥanā al-Miṣrī once held the office of wazīr al-ṣiḥḥa (Minister of Health). A man of learning, he built a ribāṭ in the Greater Qarāfa, taught at his father’s madrasa in Egypt, and after Ibn Bint al-Aʿazz at the Shāfiʿīyya. He died in Shaʿbān, was buried at the foot of al-Muqaṭṭam, and the sultan assigned the wazārat al-ṣuḥba to his son Tāj al-Din.
Shaykh Abū Naṣr ibn Abī al-Ḥasan ibn al-Kharrāz (7), a Baghdadi Sufi poet, had a fine dīwān and was delightful in company and conversation. One day a friend entered upon him; he did not rise, but instead recited:
[metre: khafīf]
My heart rose when you approached, in reverence
for the sound affection it harbours within;
And hearts that rise out of love are worthier
than bodies that rise for mere bodies.