al-Harawī, the linguist and Shafiʿī.

He set out in quest of knowledge after first hearing, in his own land, from al-Ḥusayn ibn Idrīs, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sāmī, and several others.

In Baghdad he studied under Abū al-Qāsim al-Baghawī, Ibn Abī Dāwūd, Ibrāhīm ibn ʿArafah, Ibn al-Sarrāj, and Abū al-Faḍl al-Munḏirī. He deliberately avoided Ibn Durayd out of religious scruple, saying, “I entered his house and, despite his advanced age, found him drunk.”

Those who transmitted from him include Abū ʿUbayd al-Harawī—the author of al-Gharībayn—Abū Yaʿqūb al-Qarrāb, Abū Dharr ʿAbd ibn Aḥmad al-Ḥāfiẓ, Saʿīd ibn ʿUthmān al-Qurashī, al-Ḥusayn ibn Muḥammad al-Bāshānī, and others.

He was a foremost authority in language and jurisprudence—trustworthy, firmly grounded, devout.

He related: “I was taken captive the year the Qarmaṭians attacked the pilgrims at al-Habīr. I found myself among people who spoke in their natural Bedouin tongue, and scarcely did one hear in their speech a solecism or blatant error. I remained in their captivity for a long time; we wintered in al-Dahnāʾ and pastured in al-Ṣammān, and I gained from them a vast store of vocabulary (1).”

I say: Some of his highly elevated chains of transmission have come down to me.

Among his works are the famous Tahdhīb al-Lugha (Refinement of the Language), a Tafsīr, Tafsīr Alfāẓ al-Muzanī (Explanation of al-Muzanī’s Terminology), ʿIlal al-Qirāʾāt (Critical Issues in the Variant Readings), the book al-Rūḥ (The Spirit), and the book