67 – Ibn Shuq al-Layl, Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Mūsā al-Anṣārī *
The shaykh, imam, ḥadith master, meticulous transmitter, and seasoned traveler, Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Mūsā ibn ʿAbd al-Salām al-Anṣārī, the Andalusian, the Toledan, known as Ibn Shuq al-Layl.
He performed the pilgrimage and, in Makkah, met Aḥmad ibn Firās al-ʿAbqasī, ʿUbayd Allāh al-Saqaṭī, and Abū al-Ḥasan ibn Jahḍam.
In Egypt he studied with Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Ghanī ibn Saʿīd the ḥāfiẓ, Abū Muḥammad ibn al-Naḥḥās, Aḥmad ibn Tharthāl, Ibn Munīr al-Khashshāb, and a number of others.
Back in al-Andalus he learned from the two companions (1) Abū Isḥāq ibn Shanzīr and Abū Jaʿfar ibn Maymūn, transmitting extensively from them, and his chain of narration was higher than theirs. He also related from al-Mundhir ibn al-Mundhir and Abū al-Ḥasan ibn Muṣliḥ.
Ibn Bashkuwāl (2) and others said: “Ibn Shuq al-Layl was a jurist, imam, theologian, thoroughly versed in the school of Mālik, a precise ḥāfiẓ, insightful in matters of narrators and hidden defects, handsome in handwriting, widely engaged in many disciplines, a grammarian, accomplished poet, linguist, devout and upright, a prolific author (3) with a graceful turn of phrase (4).”
He was born around the year 380 AH, and he died in the city of Ṭalbirah (5) in mid-Shaʿbān, in the year five—