He was a poet and writer. He was the vizier of Ahmed b. Marwān al-Kurdī. He served as governor of Silvan and Diyarbakır. He was a virtuous, refined, and eminent personality. He went repeatedly as an envoy to Constantinople and returned. He obtained very valuable books. He endowed these to the mosques of Diyarbakır and Silvan. One day he went to visit Abū Alāʾ al-Maʿarrī. Abū Alāʾ said to him:
– I want to separate myself from people and retreat into seclusion. Because they torment me. I have left the world to them.
– You have left the hereafter to them as well.
– The hereafter too, O Qāḍī?
– Yes.
He had a rare and precious divan of poetry. The honorable Ahmed b. Yūsuf wanted to find it but could not. Ahmed b. Yūsuf al-Sīlīkī died this year. He has the following poem about the Nezāʿ valley:
“Such a valley that it dried up from the heat of the warmed stones. May the torrential rains that cover it on all sides protect it from thirst. We lodged under a tree at its edge. Like the compassion shown by a wet nurse to a weaned child. It also showed us compassion.
When we were thirsty, it gave us clear water to drink. That water is more delicious to the drinker than wine.
Whenever I came before the sun, it watched and followed that sun.
It blocked the fire with its shadow to allow the Nesīm wind to blow.
Pebbles are seen like the adornment of bachelors. And they are sought beside a beautifully arranged necklace.”
Ibn Ḥallikān said: These couplets are unique and exquisite in their own right.