Taymiyyah—may Allah have mercy on him—while he was in Cairo, having come to us. I said to him, “Shaykh al-Imam Zayn al-Din Abu al-ʿAbbas Ahmad ibn ʿAbd al-Daʿim ibn Niʿmah al-Maqdisi has narrated to you,” whereupon he cited a hadith taken from the Juzʾ of Ibn ʿArafah (1).

Shaykh ʿAlam al-Din al-Barzali said in his Maʿjam of Teachers (2):
“Ahmad ibn ʿAbd al-Halim ibn ʿAbd al-Salam ibn ʿAbd Allah (3) ibn Abi al-Qasim ibn Muhammad ibn Taymiyyah al-Harrani, Shaykh Taqi al-Din Abu al-ʿAbbas—the imam whose excellence, nobility (4), and piety are unanimously recognized—memorised the Quran (5) and excelled in its recitation, mastered Arabic and the principles of jurisprudence, and became proficient in the twin sciences of Qur’anic exegesis and hadith. He was an imam whom no one could outstrip in any field; he attained the rank of ijtihad, fulfilling all the conditions required of a mujtahid.

Whenever he (6) spoke on tafsir he left the audience dumbfounded by the vastness of what he had memorised and the beauty of his presentation,