his journey, he confined himself to his house for 40 years. He was never seen in a marketplace, and no one ever saw him breaking the fast except on a feast-day. He was a vigorous enjoiner of what is right: no report of any wrongdoing reached him but that he put a stop to it. (1)

Abū Muḥammad al-Jawharī said: I heard my brother al-Ḥusayn say, “I saw the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—in a dream. I said, ‘O Messenger of Allah, the schools of thought have become confusing to me.’ He answered, ‘Hold fast to Ibn Batta.’

“So the next morning I dressed and made my way to ʿUkbarā. I entered while Ibn Batta was in the mosque, and the moment he saw me he said, ‘The Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—has spoken the truth, the Messenger of Allah has spoken the truth.’”

Al-ʿAtīqī said: Ibn Batta—whose supplications were answered—died in Muḥarram, 387 AH.

Ibn Batta said: “I was born in 304 AH. My father had business partners in Baghdad. One of them said to him, ‘Send your son to Baghdad so that he may hear ḥadīth.’ My father replied, ‘He is still young.’ The man said, ‘I will take him with me,’ so he took me along, and when we arrived, ḥadīth was being read to Ibn Manīʿ.

“Someone said to me, ‘Ask the shaykh to bring out his Muʿjam (personal index of narrators).’ I asked his son, who replied, ‘We want a large sum of dirhams.’ I said, ‘My mother owns a brocade cloak; I will take it from her and sell it.’ We then read the Muʿjam to him in a small, select gathering over about ten days—this was at the end of 315 AH and the beginning of 316 AH.

“I remember him saying, ‘Isḥāq al-Ṭalqānī narrated to us in 224 AH.’ The prompter (mustamlī) then remarked, ‘Record this; it predates the birth of every ḥadīth scholar alive on earth today.’ I also heard the prompter—Abū ʿAbd Allah ibn Mihrān—say to him, ‘Whom did you just mention, O pillar of Islam?’”

I say: Despite his great merit, Ibn Batta did have some mistakes and slips.