And (1) Ibn al-Najjār (2) said: “We were informed that his grandfather Muḥammad’s mother was named Taymiyyah. She was a preacher, and he was therefore ascribed to her and became known by her name.
Our Shaykh, Abū al-ʿAbbās, was born in Ḥarrān (3) on Monday, the tenth—others say the twelfth—of Rabīʿ al-Awwal in the year 661 AH. His father (4) emigrated with him and his brothers to al-Shām when the Tatars’ oppression intensified. They travelled by night, their books loaded on a cart because they had no beasts of burden (5); the enemy almost overtook them and the cart came to a halt (6). They then implored Allah and sought His help, and He delivered them safe and sound.
They reached Damascus in the course of the year 667 AH (7), and there they received from Shaykh Zayn al-Dīn Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Dāʾim ibn Niʿmah al-Maqdisī the juzʾ entitled “Juzʾ Ibn …”
(1) Manuscript K reads: “qala” (he said).
(2) The passage is probably found in al-Mutafaq wa-l-Muftarq or in Intisab al-Muhaddithin ila al-Aba wa-l-Buldan, as Ibn Nasir al-Din al-Dimashqi’s quotation in al-Tibyan suggests.
(3) Harran—spelled with a doubled r and ending with a nun; its adjectival form (nisba) is irregularly Harranani, while the regular form is Harrani, which is also the popular usage. It was a large, famed city in the Jazira region (the island of Aqurah), the capital of Diyar Mudar, situated one day’s journey from Ruha and two days from Raqqa; see Muʿjam al-Buldan, 2/235-236. Today it is a district of Sanliurfa province in the Republic of Turkey; see The Geographical Gazetteer of the Ottoman Empire, p. 250.
(4) Manuscript F reads: “and his parents arrived,” whereas manuscript K has: “and his parents travelled.” The reading adopted in the base text is corroborated by the author’s Mukhtasar Ulama al-Hadith—al-Jami, p. 249.
(5) Al-Dhahabi records in Dhayl Tarikhihi—al-Jami (p. 267): “The enemy left no animals in the town except the plough oxen; the cattle grew exhausted under the weight of the wagon, and the firan stood still” (sic).
(6) The words “and the wagon stopped” are absent from manuscript B.
(7) The expression “and six hundred” is absent from manuscript Q.