who, by Your enabling grace, has come to You upon the primordial fitrah.”

Abu al-Nadr al-Fami says in his History of Herat: “Abu Muhammad al-Mughafali was, without dispute, the leading imam of his time in every branch of learning, while also holding the rank of vizier and enjoying singular esteem with the ruler.”

Among his poetry (1):
“We settled there against our will; yet when
We grew accustomed, we left unwillingly.
It is not love of the place that holds us fast—
The bitterest lot is parting from those we love.”

Al-Ḥakim said: “He died on the seventeenth of Ramadan in the year 356 AH.

“I saw the vizier Abū ʿAlī al-Balʿamī being carried in his coffin and brought to the Sultan’s gate—meaning in Bukhara—for the funeral prayer; then his coffin was taken to Herat, where he was buried.

“I also heard Abū al-Faḍl al-Sulaymānī—who was a righteous man—say: ‘I saw Abū Muḥammad al-Muzanī in a dream two nights after his death. He was strutting as he walked and proclaiming in a loud voice, “But what is with Allah is better and more lasting” (al-Qaṣaṣ 28:60).’

“A letter arrived from Egypt instructing that Abū Muḥammad al-Mughafali lead the people in the Hajj and deliver the sermon at ʿArafah and Minā.

“He therefore led the prayer at ʿArafah and performed it in full. When the people protested, he mounted the pulpit and said, ‘People, I am a resident while you (2) are travelers; that is why I completed the prayer.’

“And in the same year six there also died: the Egyptian Qur’an-reciter Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad ibn Usāmah ibn Aḥmad al-Tujībī—Yahyā al-Ṭaḥḥān recorded his death—; the ruler of Iraq, Muʿizz al-Dawlah Aḥmad ibn Būyah al-Daylamī; and the hadith scholar Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad ibn