التاريخ اليميني 19.45

19.45

Khalaf ibn Aḥmad's court was thronged by visitors from the far ends of the lands, because of the openness of his hand, the abundance of his bounty, and his generosity to the people of learning and their company. He was praised by the tongues of poets and scholars in verses that circulate widely, and his fame flew to the horizons. He had gathered the scholars to compose a book of commentary on the Book of God Most High, [118b] in which not a letter was left out of the sayings of the commentators, the interpretations of the interpreters, and the subtle points of the preachers. He followed this with the various readings, the grounds of grammar and morphology, and the marks of masculine and feminine, and adorned it with what he transmitted from trustworthy, reliable authorities [of ḥadīth]. I have heard that during the time they were occupied in helping him compile and compose it he spent twenty thousand dinars on them. A copy of it exists in Nīshāpūr in the madrasa of al-Ṣābūnī, but it would consume the lifetime of a scribe and exhaust the ink of a copyist, unless copyists divide it among themselves in different hands. Abū al-Fatḥ [ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad] al-Bustī [may God have mercy on him] told me: "I had composed three verses about him without any intention of having them conveyed to him, but they travelled to him on the tongues of transmitters, and before I knew it there was a purse containing three hundred dinars which he presented to me through one of his trusted men, as a gift for what I had said and composed." The verses are these: