O master of the age, how many a heart you have left scorched with grief for you, how many an eye whose tears cascade without cease!

Knowledge itself will lament your passing; jurisprudence and dialectical debate will shed tears for you as well.

People will mourn you whenever they arrive from distant lands, bearing questions whose difficulties have bewildered them.

The very house you once inhabited will grieve for you; both dawn and dusk will complain of your absence.

Blessed are those who gained your learning—they found true felicity, for they never turned away from the broad sanctuary of your protection.

Your renown has spread throughout the entire world; among mankind you are the exemplar to which all comparisons are made.

All the peoples of the earth deferred to your knowledge; you are the grand mufti of creation in every matter they do not know.

I have likened your learning to the surrounding ocean, for just as that ocean encompasses the whole earth,
so, in the field of instruction, you were a charging lion, and from your very words sprang lances.

You would recount the various opinions, present the foundational principles, and transmit what the hadith scholars said and conveyed.

Your knowledge (1) has diffused to every horizon, flowing on through the nights, never to be cut off.

How countless are the legal questions that came to you! You answered their petitioners concerning all that they asked.

How often you responded to the Christians’ inquiries with dazzling proofs of learning that streamed from you (2).

How many innovations you suppressed—may my own life be a ransom for you—prevailing over them by Allah’s command!

How often, despite your vast knowledge and insight, you humbled yourself in piety, even while your stature strode among the stars of Orion (3).

You transmitted the clearest of reports, just as the trustworthy early masters had transmitted them.

Who could rival you in the favors you were granted, when from the sea of your knowledge pours an unceasing, drenching rain?