In the last year of his life—356 AH—a severe drought struck. The Nile fell to just under thirteen cubits, lacking only a few finger-breadths, an extraordinarily low level. Bread sold at two ratls for a single dirham.
Some alleged that Kāfūr committed acts of injustice and confiscation, yet during the famine he bore patiently and provided shrouds for countless dead. Each morning around five hundred corpses would be found at the public watering place. Further reports about Kāfūr are recorded in al-Duwal al-Munqaṭiʿa and elsewhere.
- Ibn Ḥamdān Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Ḥamdān al-Ḥīrī
Son of ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Sinān—the imam and ḥadith scholar—known as Abū al-ʿAbbās; brother of the ascetic Abū ʿUmar. The two were sons of the ḥadith master Abū Jaʿfar al-Ḥīrī al-Naysābūrī, the transmitter of Khwārazm.
He was born in 273 AH.
He studied under: Muḥammad ibn Ayyūb al-Rāzī, Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Būshanjī, Muḥammad ibn ʿAmr Qashmarda, Muḥammad ibn Nuʿaym, al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī ibn Ziyād al-Surri, Mūsā ibn Isḥāq al-Anṣārī, Judge ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ubayy al-Khwārazmī, Ibrāhīm ibn ʿAlī al-Dhuhlī, Tamīm ibn Muḥammad al-Ṭūsī, al-Ḥusayn ibn Muḥammad al-Qabbānī, Muḥammad ibn al-Naḍr ibn Salama al-Jārūdī, Abū ʿAmr Aḥmad ibn Naṣr al-Khaffāf, ʿImrān ibn Mūsā ibn Mujāshiʿ, Abū al-Faḍl Aḥmad ibn Salama al-Naysābūrī, ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn al-Junayd, Ibrāhīm ibn Abī Ṭālib, Ibn Khuzayma, al-Sarrāj, and many others.