—of the narrators, so much so that he left al-Mizzi little room to maneuver in that discipline … He was a man unique in his era. I saw him stand shoulder to shoulder with our shaykh Jamal al-Din al-Mizzi, even rebutting him on matters of narrator nomenclature. I met him on more than one occasion and would put to him questions in literature and Arabic; I found him, in these subjects, a rushing torrent. Had he lived on, he would truly have been a marvel.”

5 – al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Kathīr (d. 774 AH):
A contemporary of his, he said (1): “Our companion, the shaykh, the imam, the learned authority, the expert critic, outstanding in many branches of knowledge … he did not reach forty years of age, yet he amassed learning beyond what elder shaykhs attain. He mastered hadith, grammar, morphology, jurisprudence, Qur’an exegesis, the two foundational sciences, history, and the modes of recitation. He produced numerous compilations and valuable notes. He had an excellent memory for the names of narrators and the routes of transmission, was versed in disparagement and accreditation, keen-sighted regarding hidden defects, possessed sound understanding, excelled in scholarly discussion, had a clear mind, remained firmly upon the way of the early generations in following the Book and the Sunnah, and was constant in doing good deeds.”

6 – al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Rajab al-Ḥanbalī (d. 795 AH):
He said (2): “The Qur’an reciter, jurist, hadith scholar and memorizer, critic, grammarian, man of many talents … he recited according to the canonical transmissions and heard a great deal … he devoted himself to hadith and its various branches, to the study of narrators and hidden defects, and he excelled therein. He studied the school’s jurisprudence and issued legal opinions, read the two foundational sciences and Arabic, and achieved mastery in them.”