Ibn Nāqiyā spent his childhood in a district of Baghdad previously occupied by the palaces of the Tahirids and their outbuildings.
[2] Ibn Nāqiyā composed an elegy for the Shāfiʿī scholar Abū Isḥāq al-Shīrāzī and has accordingly been thought to have been a disciple of his.
[1] Preserved in a single manuscript, his Maqāmāt are considered a long-neglected treasure of Arabic literature.
[2] Sometimes disguised as a preacher, sometimes as a beggar, sometimes as a pious man, he travels the country and masters the challenges of life and survival in an outrageous and clever way.
[2] Scholarly Arabic editions of this text have been published by Aḥmad Maṭlūb and Khadīja al-Ḥadīthī (Baghdad, 1968), Muṣtafā al-Ṣāwī al-Juwaynī (Alexandria, 1974) and Muḥammad Riḍwān al-Dāya (Beirut, 1991); Keegan views the first of these as the best.