He added, “He was a man of virtue, precision, and stern adherence to the Sunnah (1).

Ibn Bashkuwāl said: “He was a sword unsheathed against the people of whims and innovation, suppressing them, fiercely protective of the Sacred Law, uncompromising for Allah’s sake. He taught the Qur’an to the public purely for the sake of reward, transmitted hadith, and assumed the office of imam in the Manʿa Mosque (2). Later he left, moved to the frontier, and the people there benefited from his knowledge. In the final part of his life he returned to his hometown, where he died.”

Ismāʿīl ibn ʿĪsā ibn Muḥammad ibn Baqiyy al-Ḥijāzī told us, from his father, who said:

“Abū ʿUmar al-Talamankī came out to us while we were reading before him and said, ‘Last night I saw in my dream someone reciting to me:

Seize the chance to honor a shaykh who now lies still—
For him (3) both commoners and nobles beg for mercy.
He has brought his span of years to its close long ago;
After him no festival remains.’

He died in that very year, in Dhū al-Ḥijjah 429 AH (4).”

I say: He lived ninety years minus a few months. Because of the vehemence of his denunciations he was put to trial; a group of his adversaries rose against him and testified that he was a Harūrī—i.e., a Kharijite—who considered it lawful to draw the sword against upright Muslims. Those who testified against him numbered fifteen jurists. Yet the judge of Saragossa defended him in 425 AH, publicly annulling their testimony; that judge was Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allah ibn Qarnūn (5).