This is a manifest error, for al-Ḥākim dated his death to the end of the year 365 AH, in Shāsh. Likewise, Abū Saʿd al-Samʿānī gave the same date and added that he was born in 291 AH.

Abū Isḥāq also claimed that he studied jurisprudence under Ibn Surayj, and this is another mistake, for Ibn Surayj died three years before al-Qaffāl’s arrival.

He said: “He authored many works, the like of which no one else produced. He was the first of the jurists to compose an excellent treatise on dialectic; he wrote a book on legal theory and a commentary on the Risālah, and through him Shāfiʿī jurisprudence spread to the lands beyond the river.”

I say: Among the unusual rulings ascribed to him in al-Rawḍah is that a sick person may combine the two prayers (1). Another is that he considered it recommended for an adult to offer the ʿaqīqah sacrifice on his own behalf, whereas al-Shāfiʿī said: “No ʿaqīqah is offered for an adult.” (2)

Those who narrated from him include: Ibn Mandah, al-Ḥākim, al-Sulamī, Abū ʿAbd Allah al-Ḥalīmī, Abū Naṣr ibn Qatādah, and his son al-Qāsim—the author of al-Taqrīb, a useful but rarely encountered book, quoted by the author of al-Nihāyah, Imām al-Ḥaramayn, and by the author of al-Wasīṭ in the chapter on pledges—who nevertheless erred and called him Abū al-Qāsim.

Al-Samʿānī said: “Abū Bakr also wrote Kitāb Dalāʾil al-Nubuwwah and Kitāb Maḥāsin al-Sharīʿah.”

Al-Ḥalīmī said: “Our shaykh al-Qaffāl was the most knowledgeable scholar of his era that I ever met.”

Shaykh Muḥyī al-Dīn al-Nawawī said: “When the name al-Qaffāl al-Shāshī is mentioned, it is he who is intended; and when al-Qaffāl al-Marwazī is mentioned, that refers to the younger al-Qaffāl who came after …”