and the champion of Abū al-Ḥasan’s path; in his day the leadership of the Mālikī school rested with him, and in the congregational mosque of Basra he presided over a large teaching circle.

Those who transmitted ḥadith from him were: the ḥāfiẓ Abū Dharr al-Harawī, Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Simnānī, the judge of Mosul, and al-Ḥusayn ibn Ḥātim al-Uṣūlī.

Abū Bakr al-Khaṭīb (1) said: “His nightly devotion, whether at home or on a journey, was twenty units of tarāwīḥ; when he had finished them, he would write thirty-five pages of his own work.” I heard Abū al-Faraj Muḥammad ibn ʿImrān relate that.

I also heard ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad al-Ḥarbī say: “Everything Abū Bakr ibn al-Bāqillānī cited concerning the disagreements among people he composed from memory; no one ever wrote on points of dispute without needing to consult the books of his opponents—except Ibn al-Bāqillānī.”

I (the author) say: Qāḍī Abū Bakr learned rational theology from Abū ʿAbdillāh Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Mujāhid al-Ṭāʾī, a disciple of Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī.

The judge later travelled as an envoy of the Commander of the Faithful to the tyrant of Byzantium, and several incidents occurred. One was that the emperor had him admitted through a low postern gate (2) so that he would have to enter bowing, but the judge noticed the ruse and went in backwards (3).

On another occasion he asked their monk, “How are the wife and children?” The emperor protested, “Enough! Do you not know that a monk keeps himself above such things?” He replied, “You spare him this, yet you do not spare the Lord…"