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تحفة النظار في غرايب الامصار وعجايب الاسفار 12.26

English (machine translation) 12.26

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English

12.26.2

He once told me: "I left Baghdad as one of four, one of them being Muḥammad b. Abī al-Sharafī, his companion. We were on foot and had no provisions. We stopped at a spring of water in a certain village, and one of us found a dirham in the spring. We said: 'What shall we do with a dirham?' We agreed to buy bread with it and sent one of us to buy it. But the baker in that village refused to sell bread alone; he would only sell bread for a qīrāṭ and straw for a qīrāṭ. So he bought the bread and the straw from him; we threw away the straw, since we had no animal to eat it, and shared out the bread mouthful by mouthful! And today my condition has come to what you see." I said to him: "You ought to praise God for what He has granted you, and to favour the poor and the needy and give alms." He said: "I cannot do that!" I never saw him give anything generously or do any kindness. We seek refuge in God from stinginess!

12.26.3

Story

12.26.4

One day in Baghdad, after my return from Hind, I was sitting at the door of the Mustanṣiriyya college built by his grandfather, the Commander of the Faithful al-Mustanṣir, may God be pleased with him, when I saw a young man in poor circumstances running after a man coming out of the college. One of the students said to me: "This young man you see is the son of the amīr Muḥammad, the grandson of the caliph al-Mustanṣir, who is in Hind." I called him and said to him: "I have come from Hind, and I can give you news of your father!!" He said: "News of him reached me in these days," and went on running after the man. I asked about the man and was told: "He is the administrator of the endowment, and this young man is imām at one of the mosques, for which he has a wage of one dirham a day, and he is asking the man for his wage." I was greatly astonished at [his father]: by God, had he sent him one of the jewels from the robes of honour that reached him from the Sultan, he would have made him rich with it. We seek refuge in God from such a state.

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