وَمَا مِثْلُهُ فِي النَّاسِ حَيٌّ يُقَارِبُهُ
No living person among people approaches his rank.
This opening of the celebrated praise verse by al-Farazdaq is broadly intelligible. The syntactic puzzle arises in the continuation, إلّا مُمَلَّكًا أَبُو أُمِّهِ أَبُوهُ, where related components are unusually arranged.
The intended comparison rests on a particular royal kinship connection. Multiple pronouns and displaced dependents make that relationship difficult to reconstruct, illustrating verbal taʿqid.