in writing, all the while commanding dignity and awe. Yet he did not possess a strong mastery of ḥadith, so he would occasionally adduce weak reports as proof.
Among those who studied jurisprudence under him were: Abū al-Ḥasan al-Baghdādī, Abū Jaʿfar al-Hāshimī, Abū al-Ghanāʾim ibn al-Ghubārī, Abū ʿAlī ibn al-Bannāʾ, Abū al-Wafāʾ ibn al-Qawwās, Abū al-Ḥasan al-Nahrī, Ibn ʿAqīl, Abū al-Khaṭṭāb, Abū al-Ḥasan ibn Jaddā, Abū Yaʿlā al-Kayyāl, and Abū al-Faraj al-Shīrāzī.
He authored the following works: Aḥkām al-Qurʾān (Legal Rulings Drawn from the Qur’an); Masāʾil al-Īmān (Questions on Faith); al-Muʿtamid and its abridgment; al-Muqtabas; ʿUyūn al-Masāʾil; Refutation of the Karrāmiyya; Refutation of the Sālamiyya and the Anthropomorphists; Refutation of the Jahmiyya; A Discourse on Divine Istiwaʾ; al-ʿUdda in legal theory—and its abridgment; Faḍāʾil Aḥmad (The Merits of Aḥmad); the Book of Medicine; and many other compositions which I have listed in my History of Islam.
He was abstemious, pure-souled, of high standing, and of weighty scrupulousness.
He passed away in 458 AH.
Among those who also died that year were: al-Bayhaqī; the judge of Sāriyya, Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad al-Sarawī; Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan ibn Ghālib, the Qur’an-reciter; Abū al-Ṭayyib ʿAbd al-Razzāq ibn Shama; and Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Ismāʿīl ibn Saydah—the author of