and Aḥmad ibn Marwān al-Dīnawarī.
From him transmitted Ibn Abī al-Fatḥ al-Miṣrī, Abū ʿUmar Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Ṭalamankī, ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Miskīn al-Zajjāj, and several others.
He was numbered among the leading notables of Egypt.
Al-Ṭalamankī said: “I heard him remark, ‘I spent ten years building this residence of mine; it contains forty-eight thousand pieces of marble, and I laid out ten thousand dinars on it. Kāfūr al-Ikhshīdī took from me seventy-eight thousand dinars—yet trade proved a boon, for on honey alone I made a profit of four thousand dinars in four days.’”
Abū Isḥāq relates: He died in Jumādā al-Ūlā, 387 AH.
385 – The Ṣābian Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm ibn Hilāl al-Ḥarrānī
An eloquent littérateur and master of peerless epistolary prose: Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm ibn Hilāl, the Ṣābian from Ḥarrān, a polytheist. They were eager for him to embrace Islam, but he refused. He would fast the month of Ramadan, had committed the Quran to memory, and was indispensable for drafting state correspondence; he served as secretary to ʿIzz al-Dawla Bakhtiyār. He also left behind polished poetry.