He was the vizier of the governor of Mosul, Kutb al-Din Maudud b. Zengi. He had many virtues and acts of charity. His real name was Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. Abī Manṣūr. His kunyah was Abū Jaʿfar. He was from Isfahan. His laqab was Jamāl al-Dīn. He gave much charity and did good and ihsān (spiritual excellence) to the poor. He commissioned beautiful works in Mecca and Medina. Indeed, he had a water line laid in ʿArafāt, establishing facilities there for the pilgrims; he paved the Masjid al-Ḥayf and its stairs with marble; he built a wall around the city of Medina; he constructed a bridge over the Tigris River on the Island of Ibn ʿUmar with carved stones, reinforcing the bridge with iron and lead; and he built many caravanserais. Every day, one hundred dinars in charity were distributed at his door. Every year, he gave one thousand dinars as ransom to free captives. His charity was continuous. He regularly sent charity to the fuqahāʾ (jurists) and the poor, whether they were in Baghdad or elsewhere. In the year 558 AH, he was imprisoned.
According to a report transmitted by Ibn al-Sāʿī in his history from a man who was with Jamāl al-Dīn in prison, before his death a white bird came and perched in his prison cell and remained with him, engaged in dhikr (remembrance of God). Until Jamāl al-Dīn passed away in the month of Shaʿbān of that year, the bird did not leave. After Jamāl al-Dīn died, the bird flew away. Jamāl al-Dīn was buried in Mosul in a khānqah he had built for himself. There was an agreement between him and ʿAsad al-Dīn Shīrkūh b. Ṣāʿid: whichever of them died first, the survivor would take his body to Medina.
According to this agreement, ʿAsad al-Dīn took his corpse from Mosul and sent it on the shoulders of men to Medina. Wherever the funeral procession passed, a funeral prayer was performed for him and prayers for mercy were made, and he was remembered with goodness. Funeral prayers were held for him in Mosul, Tikrit, Baghdad, Ḥilla, Kūfa, Fayḍ, and Mecca. Then his body was circumambulated (ṭawāf) around the Kaʿba and afterwards sent to Medina, where he was buried in the khānqah he had built east of the Prophet’s Mosque. According to the narrations of Ibn al-Jawzī and Ibn al-Sāʿī, the place where he was buried was only fifteen ziraʿ (cubits) away from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him)’s sacred precinct and grave. Ibn al-Sāʿī said:
When the funeral prayer was performed in Ḥilla, a young man immediately climbed a hill and recited this poem:
“The bier walked on shoulders carried away.
His generosity flowed like gifts upon mounts.
When passing through a valley, its sands inclined to him,
And when in a gathering, widows turned to him to express their needs.”