than he.

He produced a commentary on al-Muzani’s Mukhtasar, and authored many books on points of disagreement, on the Shāfiʿī school, on legal theory, and on dialectics—works to which no one else can lay claim. I kept his company for a dozen years; with his permission I taught his students in his mosque for several years. He seated me in his circle, and in 430 AH he asked me to take the teacher’s chair, which I did.

I say: Among Abū al-Ṭayyib’s distinctive positions in the school is that the discharge of semen breaks ablution, and another is that if a non-Muslim performs the prayer in enemy territory, that prayer itself constitutes his acceptance of Islam. (1)

I also say: Those who transmitted reports from him include al-Khatīb, Abū Isḥāq, Ibn Bakrān, Abū Muḥammad ibn al-Ābanūsī, Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥasan al-Shīrāzī, Abū Saʿd ibn al-Ṭayūrī, Abū ʿAlī ibn al-Mahdī, Abū Naṣr ibn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-ʿUkbarī, Abū al-ʿIzz ibn Kādish, Abū al-Mawāhib Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Mulūk, Hibat Allāh ibn al-Ḥuṣayn, Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Bāqī al-Anṣārī, and many others besides.

Al-Khatīb (2) said: He died with his intellect unimpaired and his understanding firm, in Rabīʿ al-Awwal of the year 450 AH, at the age of one hundred and two—may Allah have mercy on him.