al-Akfānī. Sahl ibn Bishr told us, saying: I heard ʿAlī ibn ʿUmar al-Ḥarrānī say, “I heard the ḥāfiẓ Ḥamzah ibn Muḥammad—after a stranger had come to him—declare, ‘The army of Abū Tamīm, meaning the North Africans, has already reached Alexandria.’ He then supplicated, ‘O Allah, do not take my soul until You allow me to witness the yellow banners.’
Ḥamzah died, and three days after his death their army entered the city.
The author says: This was the army of al-Muʿizz al-ʿUbaydī, the Ismāʿīlī Fatimids. They seized Egypt at that time and at once founded the city of al-Qāhira al-Muʿizziyya (Cairo). They suppressed the Sunnah and openly propagated Rafidism. Their dynasty lasted for more than two hundred years, until Sultan Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn wiped them out. Their claim to descend from ʿAlī—may Allah be pleased with him—is unfounded.
According to the hadith scholar Yaḥyā ibn ʿAlī ibn al-Ṭaḥḥān, Ḥamzah died in Dhū al-Ḥijjah of the year 357 AH, at a little over eighty years of age.
In that same year there also passed away: the ḥāfiẓ Abū Saʿīd Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Rumaīḥ al-Nasawī al-Nakhaʿī; Abū al-ʿAbbās ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Naḍrī al-Marwī; ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-ʿAbbās al-Mukhlis; ʿUmar ibn Jaʿfar al-Baṣrī; and Abū ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥrim.
Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān and ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad informed us, saying: al-Ḥasan ibn Ṣabāḥ related to us; Ibn Rifāʿah related to us; Abū al-Ḥasan al-Khilaʿī related to us; ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿUmar related to us; Ḥamzah ibn Muḥammad the ḥāfiẓ narrated to us, saying: I heard the pharmacist ʿAbbās al-Dūrī say, ‘I heard Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn remark, “If you see a man leave his house to seek ḥadith without carrying an inkwell and a pen, he has already resolved to lie.”’
129 – al-Mughafalī, Abū Muḥammad Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad.
The imam, scholar, exemplar, ḥāfiẓ, and polymath, Abū Muḥammad Aḥmad ibn