the judge, and when he finished I asked, “Was it read to you exactly as written?”
He replied, “Yes—except for slip after slip in the grammar.”
I said, “Your honour, then did you yourself hear it fully and correctly inflected?”
He answered, “No.”
So I replied, “Then one thing cancels the other,” and that very night I went off to sit with al-Yatīm the grammarian.

Ṭalḥah ibn Muḥammad ibn Jaʿfar said: In the year 329 AH the caliph al-Muttaqī lil-Lāh appointed Abū al-Ṭāhir Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Dhuhlī to the judiciary. He already enjoyed a kind of “paternal” seniority in that field; his doctrinal stance was sound, and his grasp of Mālikī jurisprudence was moderate. He held an open session to which people of differing views would come, debate before him, and he would mediate between them, speaking with measured and upright words. After four months he was removed, then in 334 AH he was appointed judge of the Eastern Province and was dismissed again a few months later (1).

ʿAbd al-Ghanī said: I asked Abū al-Ṭāhir about the first time he took office as judge and he said, “The year 310 AH.” He had earlier served as judge of Baṣrah. He also told me, “I began writing down knowledge in 288 AH.”

ʿAbd al-Ghanī added: He had completed his recitation of the Qur’an at the age of eight. He was eloquent, quick-witted, a poet and a scholar, ever ready with evidence, well-versed in the chronicles of people, and possessed a prodigious memory; one never tired of his delightful conversation. He was open-handed and generous. He assumed the judgeship of Egypt in 348 AH and remained in that office for eighteen years.

ʿAbd al-Ghanī further said: I heard the vizier Abū al-Faraj Yaʿqūb ibn Yūsuf relate that the ustādh Kāfūr told him, “Meet Judge Abū al-Ṭāhir, greet him, and say to him: ‘It has reached me that you are too informal with your companions, and such informality diminishes the awe of the judiciary.’” I conveyed this to the judge and he replied, “Say to the ustādh: I am not a man of wealth who can shower his companions with gifts, so let not…"