—in Baghdad—his recitation of the Sunan of Abū Dāwūd, and it was heard from him by the judge Abū al-Ṭayyib al-Ṭabarī. Abū Bakr al-Khaṭīb declared him reliable and said: “The knowledge of the laws of inheritance terminated with him; he authored several books on the subject” (1). He died in Rabīʿ al-Awwal, 402 AH (2).
I say: I think he was in his eighties.
It is reported that he used to say: “There is no expert in the laws of inheritance anywhere in the world except someone who is one of my students, or a student of my students; otherwise he knows nothing at all” (3).
Abū Isḥāq al-Shīrāzī said: “Ibn al-Labbān was an imām in jurisprudence and inheritance; he wrote books on the subject the like of which no one else has produced. Leading imāms and scholars studied under him” (4).
And Ibn Arsalān (5) says in his History: “Ibn al-Labbān entered Khwarazm during the reign of—”
(1) Among them is his book al-Ijaz fi al-Faraid (Concise Treatise on the Laws of Inheritance).
(2) Tarikh Baghdad, vol. 5, p. 472.
(3) See Tabaqat al-Subki, vol. 4, p. 155; and Tabaqat al-Isnawi, vol. 2, p. 363.
(4) See also Tabaqat al-Subki, vol. 4, p. 154.
(5) He is the Imam, hadith scholar, jurist and historian Muzhir al-Din Abu Muhammad Mahmud b. Muhammad b. al-Abbas b. Arslan al-Abbasi al-Khwarizmi. Born in Khwarizm in 492/1099–1100, he authored al-Kafi (A Sufficient Manual) in jurisprudence and Tarikh Khwarizm (History of Khwarizm); he died in 568/1172–73. For his biography, consult Tabaqat al-Subki 7/289–291; Tabaqat al-Isnawi 2/352; Hadiyyat al-Arifin 2/403. Regarding his Tarikh Khwarizm, Haji Khalifa states in Kashf al-Zunun 1/293–294 that al-Dhahabi abridged it, while al-Sakhawi affirms in al-Ilan, p. 126, that al-Dhahabi merely selected portions from it. Al-Subki, Tabaqat al-Kubra 7/289, quotes al-Dhahabi: “I have examined the first part of it,” and adds that he himself saw that first volume—the very one al-Dhahabi consulted—which is the first of eight substantial volumes. Taqi al-Fasi reports in al-Iqd al-Thamin 1/292 that he transcribed the biography of Muhammad b. Ahmad b. Abi Sa‘id al-Makki from al-Dhahabi’s own hand in the excerpts he took from that first volume. These testimonies from al-Sakhawi, al-Subki, and al-Fasi thus show that al-Dhahabi only made selections from the first volume and did not abridge the entire work, contrary to Haji Khalifa’s claim.