تحفة النظار في غرايب الامصار وعجايب الاسفار 12.25: حكايات من بخل ابن الخليفة

There was friendship between him and me, and I often visited his house. When I set out on my travels I left with him a son of mine whom I had named Aḥmad, and I do not know what God has done with him. One day I said to him: "Why do you eat alone and do not gather your companions to eat?" He said to me: "I cannot bear to look at them, so many of them, eating my food!" So he used to eat alone, and he would give his companion Muḥammad b. Abī al-Sharafī some of the food for whomever he liked, and dispose of the rest!!

I used to visit him and would see the vestibule of the palace in which he lived dark, with no lamp in it. Many times I saw him gathering small twigs of firewood inside his garden, and he had filled storerooms with them. I spoke to him about it, and he said to me: "They are needed."

He used to make his companions, his mamlūks and his young servants work in tending the garden and in building it, and would say: "I will not allow them to eat my food while they do no work." Once I was in debt and was pressed for payment, and one day he said to me:

"By God, I had resolved to pay your debt for you, but my soul would not allow it nor help me in it!!"