dinars for granting the ijazah.’

So I left him and said to Ibn Ḥaydar, ‘I want to attend the recitation from Ibn Ghaylan.’

He replied, ‘He is suffering from a bowel illness and is one hundred years old.’

I said, ‘Then I must hurry so I can hear from him.’

He answered, ‘Not until you have completed the ḥajj.’

I said, ‘How can my heart be content with that?’

He said, ‘He has a thousand dinars; they are brought in and emptied into his lap, he turns them over in his hands, and that gives him strength.’

So I sought Allah’s guidance, performed the pilgrimage, caught up with him, and Abū Bakr al-Khaṭīb (1) read to him on my behalf.

Al-Khaṭīb (2) said: ‘Ibn Ghaylan died on the sixth of Shawwal in the year 440 AH.’

I add: He lived ninety-four years.

As for the aforementioned al-Rashīdī, he was reliable; he died in 498 AH at a little over eighty years of age.

Those who died in the year forty (440 AH) include: Abū Bakr ibn Rīdhah (3), a companion of al-Ṭabarānī; Abū Dharr Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Ṣāliḥānī; al-Ḥasan ibn ʿĪsā ibn al-Muqtadir; ʿUbayd Allāh ibn ʿUmar ibn Shāhīn; Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Ḥakīmī; ʿAlī ibn Rabīʿah al-Rabaʿī; the Shaykh of Khurasan; Abū Saʿīd Faḍl Allāh ibn Abī al-Khayr al-Mīhanī (4); the traditionist al-Ṣūrī (5); the master of Qur’an reciters al-Kārazīnī; Abū Manṣūr Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Sawwaq (6) of Baghdad; and the Shāfiʿī authority Abū Ḥātim Maḥmūd ibn al-Ḥasan al-Qazwīnī of Āmid.